Just over a quarter of a century has passed since Tommy Tuberville, then coach of the University of Mississippi, took an unpopular stand against fans waving the Confederate flag during home games. At a time when his Ole Miss gridiron teams often boasted the highest percentage of African-American players in the Southeastern Conference, he argued that offensive relic tarnished the image of the college and, crucially for his purposes, hindered his ability to recruit the best black players from across the American south.
A few weeks back, Tuberville, now a senator representing Alabama, was asked if white nationalists should be allowed in the US military. These days, he sings a different tune.
“Well, they call them that. I call them Americans,” he said. “You think a white nationalist is a Nazi? I don’t look at it like that. I look at a white nationalist as a Trump republican. That’s what we’re called all the time, a Maga person.”
Surprisingly, that quote and his repertoire of many others of a similarly offensive tinge are not the reason why the one-time college football play-caller is now described by the White House as “a threat to national security” and regarded by USA Today as “a danger to the country”.
Sports Books of the Year: Conor Niland’s The Racket the best in a year dominated by autobiographies
GAA Congress explainer: It’s the most wonderful time of the year
Ireland v Australia: TV details, kick-off time, team news and more
Tough love for Jack Crowley as big opportunity knocks for Sam Prendergast
He’s earned those brickbats by using his senatorial veto to block nearly 250 military promotions. Since March, he has refused to endorse otherwise routine elevations in rank, most to succeed vacancies left by retiring colleagues, until the government rescinds its health insurance policy that provides time off and reimbursement to service members who travel for abortions.
“The Biden administration,” he claims, “has turned the Department of Defense into an abortion travel agency.”
Tuberville’s intransigence has angered some fellow Republicans as much as Democrats in Washington where, in a piece of very American childishness, grown-ups along the corridors of power insist on calling him “coach”. It is a measure of the grip college football exerts on the national imagination too that his lingering name recognition from long-past glory days allowed him to romp home by 20 points in November 2020. Never mind that at 65 he had very little experience of the world beyond the sidelines.
A native of Arkansas, he was an assistant at the University of Miami when it was one of the pre-eminent football colleges in the nation, briefly crossing paths there with Duane “The Rock” Johnson. He then made his name as head coach at Ole Miss – earning the nickname of the Riverboat Gambler for audacious play-calling – before moving on to even greater success at Auburn in Alabama. A subsequent stint at Texas Tech was less impressive and included an ugly incident where he smacked one of his own graduate assistants during a game.
After finishing up with a brief, lucrative spell at Cincinnati, he moved into capital management, establishing an investment outfit that quickly became embroiled in controversy and legal disputes. As did a now-defunct charitable foundation he set up in his own name. The latter two embarrassing entries on his resume may explain why he was inspired to enter politics by the example of Donald Trump, the other great opportunist who set the all-time standard for dodgy businesses and questionable carry-on in the name of charity.
Aside from having that in common, the pair also share a stunning ignorance of the US constitution and laws. Among other gaps in his knowledge, Tuberville has been exposed for knowing nothing about the Voting Rights Act, not realising the role of the supreme court in the branches system of government and failing to grasp how presidents are duly elected. After promoting all Trump’s stolen votes nonsense and having to hide in a closet from berserk rioters in the Capitol on January 6th, he still refused to certify Biden that day, and has spewed all manner of outrageous guff since.
“The Democrats are not soft on crime,” he said. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations [the idea of compensating black families for the suffering of their ancestors during slavery] because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
[ An Irish solution to a US abortion problemOpens in new window ]
Quite a take from a man who trousered $25 million as a coach of teams predominantly peopled by African Americans, young men being exploited by a college sport structure often compared by its most fervent critics to a plantation. Aside from putting their bodies on the line each week for no money, it was discovered many of his players at Auburn were directed to take sociology classes with a professor who demanded little work and no class attendance but, somehow, always gave them A grades. Even still, half of his squads never graduated from the institution.
All of the above hasn’t stopped Tuberville railing against teachers (a favourite target of all Trumplicans) for being unqualified to teach and somehow destroying the national work ethic. To be fair, he’s equally objectionable about Muslims, believing sharia now rules in many American cities, and immigrants, even accusing those who come to the US with papers as being disease-spreaders. A lot of his ravings are shot through too with an inordinate fear of socialism, a menace he claims his father went to Europe to fight against in the second World War.
The sort of statement that makes people wonder how angry he’ll be when he discovers a thing called fascism.
