BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Beginning in 2019, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville rewrote the book on how to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama.
He took the art of the football locker room speech and combined it with red-meat conservative politics to win the Republican nomination for one of Alabama’s U.S. Senate seats in 2020.
He defeated one of Alabama’s all-time most popular Republican politicians in Jeff Sessions for the GOP nod. He followed that up by beating a well-funded then-incumbent U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), who had pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in Alabama history three years earlier.
University of Georgia football great Herschel Walker hopes to replicate Tuberville’s success by capitalizing on the popularity of college football in his home state as Tuberville had in 2020.
The two appeared together at the swanky Birmingham venue The Club for a campaign event a few days ago.
Before giving remarks to roughly 50 of Alabama’s political elite, both Tuberville and Walker sat down with Breitbart News to discuss the political climate and how any of their football experience was relevant to the task of politics and campaigns.
BREITBART NEWS: Getting into this game of politics, what motivated your decision to run for the United States Senate?
HERSCHEL WALKER: I think my biggest motivation was my faith in Christ. I’ve been blessed my whole life. When I started out, I had some tough times, but I’ve had so many great people to help me, and when you see something going wrong, and you don’t stand up, as I told my mom, what type of man would I be?
There’s something going on in Georgia and around this country. And I know right now, I can beat this Senator in Georgia.
I can beat him, and if I didn’t do it, I don’t think I could live with myself.
BN: How much was Donald Trump a factor, an influence on you getting into politics?
WALKER: It’s funny. He wasn’t that big of a factor. Being a friend and getting his endorsement meant a great deal. But he wasn’t that big of a factor because one of the things I had to weigh is whether I think I’m ready or whether I think I’m prepared.
This is not a game. It is not something I think you can into blindly. It is something I prayed about for a long time. And I thought about it for a long time. And so, one thing I said is I was not going to get into something I knew I was not going to be prepared for.
BN: This is for both of you — big games, obviously, throughout your careers. How does that prepare you for politics? Say you’ve got to make a big decision — here we are, real world. You see what is going on in the world. You see who is president. You see who is running the country right now. Is any of your experience in football applicable to what’s going on in Washington, D.C.?
TUBERVILLE: Yeah, it’s comparable. It’s not a game, though. Sports is a game. At the end of the day, you’ve got a winner and a loser. But you go on, and next year, there’s another season.
Herschel and I were just talking about this. I’ve affected people’s lives in sports. He affected millions of people’s lives in sports. But in politics, you affect everybody’s life.
Some people don’t like sports, but at the end of the day, they like their community. They like their family and God. They like the military. They like their state, and they like their country.
And so, people look up to people like senators to help them. I wondered when I ran for this position, can you really help. You’re one of 100. Can you really help? Yeah, it didn’t take me long to figure out you can make a difference.
Now, we’re in the minority right now. As Republicans, we’re in the minority because the Democrats have control. There hasn’t been a lot of offense. There’s been a lot of defense.
Herschel is going to win his race over there, and he’s going to help us become a majority. Then we can play offense and defense, and we can make a huge difference.
But yeah — politics is slow. In football, we played or coached every week. It might take six months to get a bill done. It might look like the end of the tunnel. You might not be able to get it done. Then all of a sudden, it happens. And so, you can see a lot of benefit from these jobs.
BN: The learning curve — the rules of football are pretty straightforward. The rules of politics — knowing what is good, what is bad, what is taboo, and what isn’t. Talk about learning on the job as you are making your way around on the campaign trail.
WALKER: Well, I think you have to realize, you do have people — and that’s why having the opportunity to play a game and be on a team, you’ve got teammates. One of the first things that I decided to do is talk to some of the other senators and get their advice on certain things because right now, going into a field as I get familiar with it — you want to learn. You want to learn what they’re looking for, what you’re going to have to do. It’s just how things go and not go into it like you know everything.
That’s one of the problems a lot of people have, and you see it now. A lot of people go into it like they know everything, and they’re not willing to learn and not willing to listen. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re in the situation we’re in right now. Everyone is talking, and no one is listening to what the other has to say.
BN: You talk about listening. What are you hearing in Georgia? What are they concerned about?
WALKER: Well, the people in Georgia right now — they’re concerned about this economy. The economy is killing everyone right now. It is all the bad policies that are being released if you look at what’s happening in such a short period of time with this economy.
Then, in Atlanta, crime. Crime has really picked up a great deal. I won’t even let my wife. It’s sad when you go to the mall, when you’re hiring a security guard to protect your wife going to the mall. That’s not a place I want to live.
I think right now, kids have got to get back in school. I think right now. There is all this overreach in our government. I’m glad they’re removing that mask mandate. I think that’s one of the best things you can do right now — let kids have freedom again.
You know, one of the things we have to think about is what kinds of mental problems are we going to give to our kids down the road because we’ve got to deal with that. And sometimes, people don’t want to touch these sensitive subjects.
That’s one reason I said I was going to run. I don’t mind touching sensitive subjects. And I’m going to have to do that in my run.
BN: You mentioned government, masks on kids — all of these things we’ve done have really changed our way of life. How do we start unraveling some of that and getting back to a sense of normalcy?
WALKER: I think one of the things I’ve said is I’m not going to promise you this, promise you that. I think that’s the worst thing a politician can do is start promising things.
But one thing I said I will promise is I can bring people together. I can get together with people. We’ve got to get together because you’ve got to vote. That’s one of the things I’ve been telling everyone. When you have a candidate standing in front of you saying he is going to do this, do that — first, he better be able to bring people together. That’s one thing you’ve got to do.
And that’s one thing Coach was saying — you’ve got to get the majority back. This country right now is the greatest country in the world. But it seems like some of the people running it want us to be second.
You know, I don’t like being second. I don’t like being second, and we shouldn’t be second. We’re not that type of place. We’re good people here.
Right now, my race is going to be a tough race. I got someone coming in that is running for governor, that is going to make it very difficult. They are going to bring race back in it again.
We’ve got to be prepared for it. My race is Senator Warnock and Stacey Abrams. It is going to be a tough, tough race.
Whoever wins on the governor’s side of the primary, I’m going to tell the loser he has got to go out and get his people to vote for the winner.
We’ve got to bring this party back together, and that’s the way we can get out and do something.
TUBERVILLE: The one thing I want to throw in there with this is the one thing I heard when I was campaigning for two years: “Why do you think you’re qualified to be a senator? You’re a coach.”
No, wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m an American. I’ve learned more things through coaching and being in sports than most people will ever learn because you deal with problems, with different races, with religions, urban, rural, fans. You learn from winning. You learn from losing. And people say, “You’ve got to change when you…”
No, no, no. You want to take what you already know up there and don’t let anybody change you. Use your common sense and use your judgment because he has earned the right. He’s been an American. He’s done more than most of these people up there combined. And so he knows the good and the bad. He doesn’t need to change. He’s going to his principles, his Christianity, to Washington, D.C., and sell that to the people up there who think they know things that don’t.
BN: To piggyback off of that answer — what would tell him out on the campaign trail? You did this for two years. I watched you, the progression, and how you improved. What kind of advice would you give to Herschel Walker?
TUBERVILLE: Get people to trust you. I mean, it’s all about trust. You want to be a better listener on the campaign trail than you do a speaker. Just listen to problems. You don’t have all of the answers. I mean, there’s an offense, a defense and a kicking game in football. Up there, there are about 20 different specialties that you have to hire good people to help you with. And you’ll learn as you go.
But at the end of the day, you make a decision best for the people that are going to trust you to make those decisions. And so, he’s a perfect guy to do this. He’s been out there. People know him.
Now he’s out there selling that fact that this is what I know and this is what I want to help you with. And this is what I want to take and carry to Washington, D.C. for you.
BN: You blazed a trail for a lot of people in sports. Do you see that role perhaps in politics? You could blaze a trail for others that look up to you and say, “Hey, I want to run for Senate.” “I want to run for governor.” “I want to run for city council,” whatever it may be.
WALKER: You know, that was one of the big things I said when I decided to run. I wanted other people to step out, as well.
Coach said, “What qualifies me to run?” Being American is one thing, and loving the Constitution.
I think people have to remember everyone has a cross to bear. But at the same time, you have got to love this country. At the same time, you have got to love the Constitution, which you should stand for.
I’ve said it many times — I think the Constitution is the second-greatest thing ever written, since the Bible because as you read the Constitution, a lot of things that we have been fighting for on the streets, if thewy hold people accountable to the Constitution, they could be solved. But we seem to want to change it, and I think that’s the worst thing you can ever do.
I want to encourage other people to step up into this range. You know, this country is changing. It’s changing all the time. So, what we’ve got to do is get new people in with new ideas. And that’s what makes this the greatest country in the world.
It’s not just one mindset. You look at all these countries that have one mindset. They’re not the best place to be at. But this country — it has a lot of great minds if you put them all together.
That’s what made the United States of America.
BN: We’ll wrap it up on this last question: Day one, you’re elected to the United States Senate. Where do you see yourself? What do you see being your priority? Where do you want to focus a lot of your energy?
WALKER: Well, I think the very first thing is go around and meet everyone. Let everyone know who I am, what I’m about because, as you said early on, everyone knows me as a football player.
They don’t know all of the other things I bring to the table. I want to know what I can bring to the table and what I can do to help because I’m not just going in there with all the ideas.
I’m going in there to try to make a difference and help and bring things to this country that this country needs.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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