Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is once again trending, and, as always, it’s because he’s done or said something utterly stupid and morally reprehensible.
Save this post, and refer back to this URL the next time Senator Tuberville behaves in a manner that is egregiously dumb and/or totally evil. Because it will happen again; and again and again.
This is the latest bs that he’s been up to this Memorial Day weekend:
Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly stalling more than 200 Pentagon nominations.
Also, he is getting his military advice from a former food critic.https://t.co/d9cLJLW4xn
— Ben Terris (@bterris) May 26, 2023
However, if you wanted to know why Tuberville was trending on social media, entering the long holiday weekend, it was for an entirely different, but similarly awful reason.
See below for this example of is deplorableness:
Tommy Tuberville: “How bad our teachers are in the inner city. I don’t know how they got degrees. I don’t know whether they can read and write. They want a raise and less time to work, less time in school. We ruined work ethic in this country.” pic.twitter.com/DeQbo6islQ
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 26, 2023
Of course, we’re not here to go any further or dig any deeper on his political record. Honestly, his CV is razor thin, as he was a college football coach nearly his entire adult life, before he won his first race for public office in 2021.
We just want to discuss Sept. 7, 2013, when the Cincinnati Bearcats, the team led by Tuberville, got utterly destroyed by the Illinois Fighting Illini 45-17.
Now blowouts in football happen all the time, so that’s not the story here.
What’s interesting about this specific college football Saturday is that a man who now wields so much power, at the highest level of the Federal government, a decade ago got totally out-smarted by one of the worst college football coaches in modern history, Tim Beckman.
And it happened on a day where the side of Tuberville was favored by eight points.
The previous week saw the Bearcats hold the Purdue Boilermakers to just 226 yards of total offense, en route to destroying them 42-7.
Meanwhile the Illini barely escaped, to get a win by a slim margin against a lowly FCS opponent in SIU. I was at that postgame presser in Champaign, and I recall Beckman saying: “Well, that’s good for them,” when he was told the score of the Purdue-Cincinnati game.
All the media laughed, and there was a lot of Tim Beckman “listening face” going on in this presser.
So basically no one thought that Beckman, who was bad at what he does for a living, and as we would later find out, also a bad person towards his own team, was going to beat Tuberville and Cincinnati the next week.
Beckman has been banished from coaching since Illinois fired him two years after this game. He’s banished from the public eye, and for good reason.
Documented evidence of the manner in which he abused his own players came to light a couple years after this game.
He was a bad guy, bad at coaching (he went just 12-25 at Illinois) and the absolute worst at public speaking. There are countless examples of that last property to point to.
But at the end of the day, Beckman owned Tuberville lock, stock and barrel, and that itself is utterly hilarious.
Remember this the next time sometime expects you to take Tommy Tuberville seriously, on anything.
Illini quarterback Nate Scheelhaase threw for four touchdown passes, and 312 yards, on 26-37 passing. Tuberville has no defense, just like when he tries to make a political point. in the opener.
Against arguably the worst defensive coordinator in Tim Banks and worst defensive unit in school history (until Hardy Nickerson and the 2018 side came along), Tuberville could only manage 148 yards rushing.
Just like when Tuberville discusses a pressing sociopolitical topic, he had no clue what he was doing. I went to his postgame press conference at Memorial Stadium that day, and I quickly noticed what a moron he was.
It was quite clear, almost immediately that Tuberville was a total idiot. That’s why it is not surprising to hear him struggle, constantly, with Government 101 these days.
And honestly that is the whole point here- someone this grossly unqualified and egregiously incompetent (not quite Herschel Walker level, but close) has his hands on the levers of power.
That reality is utterly frightening.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now. Follow the website on Twitter and Instagram.