Roger Staubach probably never realized how he altered history by going to the Naval Academy and blocking the otherwise promising collegiate football career of a young Joe Biden.
Though, he probably never realized it because Biden just told the world about it on Saturday, and there are some very obvious flaws in the story.
During a commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday, Biden claimed that he gained acceptance to Annapolis in 1965 but opted not to go there due to the presence of future Super Bowl champion and NFL Hall of Famer Roger Staubach.
An exciting story, to be sure. The only problem with it is there’s no record of Biden declining an offer to play football at Navy. Likewise, there’s no record of him playing varsity football at the school he ultimately did attend, the University of Delaware. Plus, there’s the not-so-small matter of the dates which Biden provided not syncing up at all.
Biden claims that he applied to the Naval Academy with a letter he received from then-Senator J. Caleb Boggs in 1965. The only problem with that is that 1965 is when Biden graduated from the University of Delaware, making it impossible that he would have applied to Annapolis in that year since the academy does not provide graduate degrees.
“I was told the Class of ’72 is here. I was appointed to the academy in 1965 by a senator who I was running against in 1972, never planned it that way. I wasn’t old enough to be sworn in. I was only 29 years old when I was running,” Biden claimed.
“I didn’t come to the academy because I wanted to be a football star. And you had a guy named [Roger] Staubach and [Joe] Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”
Interesting, because again, Biden didn’t play varsity football at Delaware. You know, the school he chose so he could be a “star.” Instead, Biden only played freshman football for the Fightin’ Blue Hens.
Also odd that Biden would apply to Navy with his sights set on being a football star, given that he received five student draft deferments during his college years at Delaware. One would think it would be difficult to obtain a deferment while being a star athlete at a school that churned out warriors during the height of the Vietnam War.
In any event, Biden has a history of telling tall tales to relate to his audience. For example, in April, Biden told a group of truckers that he once drove a tractor-trailer and worked with a dispatcher named “Big Mama.”
That, too, turned out to be a lie.
There are plenty of other examples of Biden lying to appease his audience, but that would be more of a book than an article.
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