AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — Tommy Tuberville is a U.S. senator and wants to become the next Alabama governor. But his new campaign paraphernalia recognize his old job: coach.
“Y’all see the name on the hat,” Tuberville told supporters this week at Byron’s Smokehouse, his favorite barbecue joint when he was the head football coach at Auburn University. “They’ve called me ‘coach’ for four-and-a-half years in D.C.,” the senator continued. “You’re gonna call me ‘coach’ here as governor.”
It was the same aw-shucks manner the 70-year-old Republican wielded over a long career of glad-handing boosters, fans and players. It’s also a deliberate branding tactic that demonstrates how figures like Tuberville transition from athletics to politics.
Michael Giardina, a Florida State University professor and expert on sports in American culture, called sports “connective tissue that runs throughout the country, binding together disparate groups.”
So, he said, it is not a surprise when politicians embrace sports figures as validators or when coaches and athletes themselves run for office. Giardina noted, however, that sports fame does not ensure electoral success.
“It’s gives them a leg up,” he said, not unlike actors, businesspeople or other celebrities — President Donald Trump included.
Here’s a look at Tuberville and other sports figures-turned-politicians.
For Tuberville, football meant skipping the usual political rungs
Tuberville coached at Auburn from 1999-2008. After ending his career at Cincinnati in 2016, Tuberville told friends in Alabama that he might run for governor in 2018.
His plan was stymied, though, when a term-limited governor resigned, elevating then-Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey and setting her up to run. Tuberville shifted his attention to the Senate, where he campaigned as a staunch Trump ally in 2020 and cruised to victory.
The mere fact he could start his career toggling so easily between top statewide offices reflects the familiarity Alabamians had with the former Auburn coach.
“I’ve been in every high school in the state,” he said Tuesday.
Now, Ivey is term-limited and Tuberville has returned to his original pursuit.
Tuberville has played up his football days the whole way. His official Senate portrait shows him with a football and he’s free with the football metaphors. “I’m a recruiter,” he said Tuesday, promising to bring new jobs to the state.
Gerald Ford brought his football loyalties to the Oval Office
Many U.S. presidents leverage sports on the job. Barack Obama played pickup basketball with NBA stars. Ronald Reagan enjoyed being called “The Gipper” after his role in a 1940 football movie. Trump attends many events — NASCAR, mixed martial arts fights and the Super Bowl.
But the most accomplished Oval Office athlete was Ford, the 38th president, who played football at the University of Michigan from 1932-34. The Wolverines won national championships in 1932 and 1933, with Ford as a center and linebacker. In 1934, he was voted team MVP.
Ford had NFL offers but opted for law school at Yale, where he doubled as a football assistant coach.
As president from 1974-77, Ford often asked the Marine Band to play Michigan’s fight song, “Hail to the Victors,” instead of “Hail to the Chief.”
Ford’s moderate-to-liberal politics were on display in his playing days. Willis Ward, the second Black player at Michigan, was Ford’s closest teammate. During the 1934 season, Georgia Tech officials told Michigan the Yellow Jackets would not take the field in Ann Arbor if Ward played. Michigan decided to sit its leading scorer. Ford protested by refusing to play. He relented only when Ward urged him not to sit out.
Michigan won 9-2, its only win of the season.
Tom Osborne and Herschel Walker: Even legends don’t always win
Osborne was a Nebraska hero, winning three national championships as head football coach for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. He retired after winning the 1997 crown and launched a congressional campaign three years later in the district where he’d grown up. Osborne coasted in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
The 2006 governor’s race was different. He entered as the presumed favorite against Gov. Dave Heineman, who took office in 2005 after his predecessor resigned. But Heineman, who’d won statewide elections previously as treasurer and lieutenant governor, overtook Osborne’s advantage around Omaha and Lincoln to hold on to the office.
Like Osborne, Walker was a homegrown football hero. A generational talent at running back, he carried the University of Georgia Bulldogs to the 1980 national championship and won the 1982 Heisman Trophy before a successful professional career – during which he became friends with Trump.
Walker ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 with Trump’s backing and the Bulldogs’ red and black as campaign colors. He broadcast ads of his endorsement from his UGA coach, Vince Dooley, a beloved Georgian. Walker outpaced GOP rivals with more conventional political resumes, but questions about his business interests and personal life proved fatal to his campaign.
“Voters ultimately have to assess these former sports figures as political figures,” said Giardina.
Jim Bunning and Bill Bradley: Hall of Famers as longtime lawmakers
Not all athlete-politicians embrace the “jock” image.
Bill Bradley is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He was also a U.S. senator and Democratic presidential contender. Certainly, his career for the NBA’s New York Knicks helped when he won a New Jersey Senate seat in 1978, a year after his basketball retirement. But in Washington, Bradley established himself as a serious policy maker, including as a forceful advocate for universal health insurance. He ran for president in 2000, running to then-Vice President Al Gore’s left in the primaries.
Jim Bunning pitched his way into the Baseball Hall of Fame for the Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies and others, and helped solidify the Major League Baseball’s players’ union.
After baseball, Bunning returned to his native Kentucky and, unlike many sports stars who enter politics, started at the bottom: He became a city councilman, then a state senator. He won the Republican nomination for governor in 1983 but lost in November. In 1986, he was elected to Congress, serving six terms before a promotion to the U.S. Senate, where he served 12 years.
Bunning was outspoken in urging congressional investigations into steroid use in professional baseball.
Sharice Davids played up her MMA experience
Davids, a Kansas congresswoman, competed as an amateur and professional MMA fighter and played up the experience in her 2018 House campaign.
“This is a tough place to be a woman. I’ve been put down, and pushed aside, knocked out. Truth is, I’ve had to fight my whole life … but I didn’t let anything get in my way,” she said in one ad showing her training in the gym.
Men dominate the ranks of U.S. politicians from the sports world. But Giardina, the Florida State University professor, said that is shifting, especially with the rise of team leagues like the WNBA.
“As women’s professional sports continue to grow in popularity, the likelihood that former athletes will run for political office and win necessarily increases, given that they will have had a more prominent platform,” Giardina said.
Stars like the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark, whose college career at Iowa propelled her to the national stage, and Olympian swimmer Katie Ledecky, he said, “are completely normalized” for younger sports fans who, in turn, will help shape future electorates.
“Could we see Sen. Caitlin Clark from Iowa or Indiana” where she plays professionally, Giardina asked. “It’s certainly possible.”
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Bill Barrow, The Associated Press
