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      Want a more perfect union? Watch the Rugby World Cup | Martin Pengelly

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      On Friday, the 10th Rugby World Cup will kick-off in Paris with a monumental match-up, France against New Zealand, les Bleus against the All Blacks. Like most rugby fans in Washington, and across the US, I will be watching on TV.With my sister-in-law, who played at Dartmouth, I’ll be at the French embassy in Georgetown. We are promised a taste of “the extraordinary atmosphere found at rugby matches at French stadiums”. Lucky us. Less fortunately, the US men’s team will also watch from these shores. The Eagles failed to qualify for France, losing out to Uruguay, Chile and Portugal. Nonetheless, American sports fans who do not know rugby should consider tuning in too.Most will see something familiar. Rugby springs from the same root as football. A rugby ball is similar in shape to a football, if slightly fatter. A rugby tackle is similar in form to a football tackle, if slightly lower. A rugby player is similar in craziness to a football player, if slightly madder.A century ago, American rugby might have seized its moment. As American football struggled to contain the violent passions it provoked, its wilder cousin flowered. Teams full of Stanford students won Olympic gold in 1920 and 1924. But then football got its house in order, becoming the dominant pastime.Rugby survived, in colleges and clubs, a sport for outsiders but also for future Washington giants. Bill Clinton (Oxford), George W Bush (Yale) and Joe Biden (Syracuse) played. So did James Baker (Princeton) and Ted Kennedy (Harvard). The women’s game also took hold. Ask Gina Raimondo, Biden’s commerce secretary. She has said rugby at Radcliffe was good preparation for politics.I’m not American but I am a rugby lifer. And, more than 20 years ago, on my first visit to Washington, I had a game for the Maryland Exiles.We played in Bethesda, at Burning Tree elementary, against the Potomac Athletic Club. The facilities were spare, the game was fast, I made friends that last to this day. I’ve recently moved to DC. Just last week, I met an old Exile (Jason Maloni, memorably called “rugby pretty boy” by Jake Tapper of CNN) at Millie’s on Massachusetts. Paul Sheehy, once an Eagles wing, and Chris Dunlavey, co-owners of the DC pro team, were there too.A couple years after that game in Bethesda, American rugby found me again. Playing for Rosslyn Park, a London club, I faced the cadets of West Point. The game was one to remember. As time passed, I found myself wondering what happened when those cadets went into an army at war. Eight years ago, on the eve of a previous World Cup, I set out to find out.That piece for the Guardian has now become a book. The research took me across America: to the borderlands of Ohio and Pennsylvania, to California, to towns and bases in between. Two of the team I faced died, at Ranger School in Georgia and on a lake in Texas, before any had seen action. Most of the rest saw it, in Iraq or Afghanistan. One was killed in Baghdad, by an IED. Another died recently, of cancer. All have been touched by loss.The survivors are in their 40s, consumed by life and work. Some are in the defense industry, some are investors, others work in oil. All have families to support. But in twos or threes or full reunions they remain a band of brothers, their bond forged in rugby. Their team contained a Rhodes scholar, two special forces operators, two helicopter pilots, a bunch of infantry officers. It contained a few classic rugby berserkers, the kind that populate most college teams. Most dreamt of playing army football but saw such dreams dashed. But that only sent them to rugby, where they found their tribe.In Texas and Oklahoma, in Massachusetts and Virginia, they will watch the World Cup too. Like me, and like millions of others in America, they may try to watch the biggest games in friendly bars, with fans of all national and political stripes.One American fan I know prefers to count his stars. HR McMaster is a retired three-star general and former national security adviser. He is also a rugby nut, having played on the wing for West Point. We have talked on record as well as off it at the bar. I have asked him what rugby means. I think his words bear repeating.He said: “We’re more connected to each other electronically than ever before but more distant from each other psychologically and emotionally than ever before. So I recommend that we come together on basketball courts and rugby pitches, to renew our fellowship with one another and to transcend the vitriol that we see on social media.”Clearly, rugby is not the only sport which can bring Americans together. But McMaster feels that rugby fuels an “abundance of what seems scarce in society today: exemplars of comradeship and the willingness to sacrifice for one another and one’s fellow citizens”.I think, or hope, he’s right. Rugby has its magic to work.American rugby is gaining a foothold. A men’s professional competition, Major League Rugby, has played six seasons. World Rugby has placed a big bet. In 2031, the men’s World Cup, the third-biggest global sporting event, will come to the US. Two years later, the women will follow.So though the US men will be missing from France over the next month, any curious American who finds a game on NBC or passes a bar full of fans – in DC, perhaps the Tight Five in Adams Morgan, where “every day is a rugby day” – might pause to take in the show. Rugby is not unique, but it is special. When the rugby bug bites, it holds.
      Martin Pengelly’s book Brotherhood: When West Point Rugby Went To War will be published by Godine on 17 October More

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      Orlando Magic NBA team donated $50,000 to Ron DeSantis super PAC

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      The Orlando Magic NBA team has donated $50,000 to a super PAC supporting Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid.According to Federal Election Commission records, the Never Back Down super PAC received the donation made by the basketball team on 26 June. Further results showed the team making donations to other political causes in past years, with $500 going to Conservative Results in 2016, $2,000 to Maverick PAC USA in 2014 and another $500 to Linda Chapin for Congress in 2000.In an initial statement to Popular Information, a Magic spokesperson said: “We don’t comment publicly on political contributions.” However, in a later follow-up statement, a spokesperson clarified the donation, saying that the check was “dated/delivered on May 19”, five days before DeSantis declared his presidential bid.“This gift was given before governor DeSantis entered the presidential race. [It] was given as a Florida business in support of a Florida governor for the continued prosperity of Central Florida,” the spokesperson said.According to Never Back Down’s website, the super PAC describes itself as a “grassroots movement to elect governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024”.The donation has drawn criticism online, particularly given the Magic’s claims of supporting “diversity, equity and inclusion all year long” and DeSantis’s culture wars in which he announced plans to block DEI programs in state colleges among other legislation targeting minority and marginalized groups including LGBTQ+ communities.The Orlando Magic team is under Amway North America, a multi-level marketing firm co-established by Richard DeVos, the late father-in-law of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos.Over the years, the DeVos family has made multiple donations to conservative organizations. In 2006, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation made a $540,000 donation to Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based organization that opposes same-sex marriage and abortions, HuffPost reports. In 2008, Richard DeVos donated $100,000 to Florida4Marriage, a group that campaigned to add a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s just a sacred issue of respecting marriage,” Richard DeVos said in a 2009 interview in reference to his donation. More

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      US government prepares to look into LIV-PGA merger amid sportswashing claims

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      The leader of a US Senate subcommittee is demanding the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf present records about the negotiations that led to their planned merger.Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, sent letters on Monday to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and LIV CEO Greg Norman.“While few details about the agreement are known, PIF’s role as an arm of the Saudi government and PGA Tour’s sudden and drastic reversal of position concerning LIV Golf raise serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the announced agreement,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Monahan.The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) will pour huge sums – confirmed by its governor, Yasir al-Rumuyyan, as running into billions – into a newly formed entity to run top-tier golf. The PIF has assets of more than $700bn and will lead efforts to move Saudi Arabia on from its reliance on its oil assets.Blumenthal, who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he also wanted to hear the tour’s plans to retain its tax-exempt status.Last week, LIV and the tour stunned the golf world by agreeing to merge the PGA Tour and European tour with the Saudi golf interests, while also dropping all lawsuits between the parties. Al-Rumuyyan will join the PGA Tour board of directors and lead a new business venture as its chairman. The PGA Tour itself will remain a tax-exempt entity.It was a move expected to receive scrutiny from US federal regulators and lawmakers, and the launch of a Senate investigation is among the first dominoes to fall.Among the uncertainties is how LIV Golf goes forward after 2023.In his letters to Monahan and Norman, Blumenthal wrote about the skepticism critics hold over the Saudis’ intent “to use investments in sports to further the Saudi government’s strategic objectives.”“Critics have cast such Saudi investments in sports as a means of “sportswashing” – an attempt to soften the country’s image around the world – given Saudi Arabia’s deeply disturbing human rights record at home and abroad,” the letter said.Blumenthal asked for a a huge trove of documents – essentially all communications between LIV and the tour beginning in October 2021 through to the present.Al-Rumayyan said last week that Norman was not apprised of the deal until shortly before it was announced. More

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      ‘Trump’s not a good sport’: Chris Cillizza on presidents at play

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      From The Big Lebowski to Alice on The Brady Bunch, depictions of bowling abound in American pop culture. The sport’s real-life adherents included Richard Nixon, who installed bowling lanes in the White House and was known to play between seven to 12 games late at night. Characteristically, he played alone. This is one of many athletic accounts from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a new book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency, by the longtime political journalist Chris Cillizza.Bowling solo personified “Nixon the loner”, Cillizza says. “He didn’t play tennis or golf with friends. He did enjoy bowling by himself. It’s a powerful image, a telling image.”Tricky Dick’s love of bowling also helped with a crucial voting bloc: “Nixon viewed it as the sport of the Silent Majority – white, blue-collar men who sort of made up his base. He was very aware of this.”A Washington journalist for four decades, most recently for CNN, Cillizza pitched the book as about “the sports presidents play, love, spectate, and what it tells us about who they are and how they govern. That was the germ of the idea, the seed going in.”Power Players surveys 13 presidents of the modern era, from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden. Some of its narratives are well-known – think Ike’s extensive golf-playing, John F Kennedy’s touch football games or Barack Obama’s pickup basketball on the campaign trail. The book explores less-remembered sides of these stories, including a scary moment on the links for Eisenhower.While golfing in Colorado in 1955, he fielded multiple stressful phone calls from his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. After eating a hamburger with onions and getting yet another call from Dulles, Ike felt too angry to keep playing. Chest pains followed that night. The White House initially claimed indigestion but an electrocardiogram found something more serious – a heart attack. At the time, there was no 25th amendment specifying the chain of command if a president became incapacitated. Fortunately, Ike never lost consciousness during the episode.Golf was a popular sport for many presidents, as reflected in a previous book about White House athletics, First Off the Tee by Don Van Natta Jr, whom Cillizza interviewed. Yet the list of presidential pastimes is long and diverse, from Nixon’s bowling to Jimmy Carter’s fly fishing to George HW Bush’s horseshoes. Yes, horseshoes. In addition to Bush’s well-known prowess on the Yale University baseball team, he was a pretty good horseshoes player who established his own league in the White House, with a commissioner and tournaments. The White House permanent staff fielded teams; Queen Elizabeth II even gifted Bush a quartet of silver horseshoes.In the greatest-presidential-athlete discussion, Cillizza lands in Gerald Ford’s corner.“No debate, he’s the best athlete ever, I think, with [George HW] Bush a distant second, among modern presidents.”Ford sometimes lived up to the bumbling stereotypes made famous by Chevy Chase and Bob Hope – including when he accidentally hit people with golf balls. Yet he was an All-American center on the national-champion University of Michigan football team and received contract offers from two NFL squads, the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.In addition to the sports presidents play, Cillizza’s book examines how presidents use sports to connect to the public.Calling sports “a common language that lots and lots and lots of Americans speak”, Cillizza says: “I think politicians are forever trying to identify with the average person … I think sports is a way into that world for a lot of presidents.”There’s the practice of inviting championship teams to the White House, which Cillizza traces to Ronald Reagan, although instances date back decades. While not much of a sports fan, Reagan came from a sports radio background, played the legendary Gipper in the film Knute Rockne, All American and understood the importance of proximity to winners, Cillizza says.There’s also the tradition of presidential first pitches at baseball games, arguably the most iconic thrown by George W Bush at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series, in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. Cillizza notes Dubya’s baseball pedigree as president of the Texas Rangers, and that he reportedly contemplated becoming commissioner of Major League Baseball.Of the presidents surveyed, Cillizza says George HW Bush had the most sportsmanship, thanks to early lessons about fair play from his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, a strong tennis player herself. The least sportsmanlike, according to the author? Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump. Cillizza cites an account of Trump’s time on the Fordham University squash team. After a loss to the Naval Academy, he drove to a department store and bought golf equipment. He and his teammates vented their frustration by hitting golf balls off a bluff into the Chesapeake Bay, then drove away, sans clubs.“That’s Trump, in a lot of ways,” Cillizza says. “He’s not a good sport who’s going to be genteel.”The author notes similar behavior throughout Trump’s career, including bombastic performances in World Wrestling Entertainment storylines and a whole recent book about his alleged cheating at golf, as well as a recent news item about the former president going to Ireland to visit one of his courses.“He hit a drive, and said Joe Biden could never do this,” Cillizza recalls. “It went 280ft right down the middle of the fairway. He talks about his virility, his health, through the lens of sports.”Not too long ago, two ex-presidents from rival parties teamed up as part of a golf foursome. George HW Bush joined the man who beat him in 1992 – Bill Clinton – en route to an unlikely friendship. Rounding out the foursome were the broadcasting legend Jim Nantz and NFL superstar Tom Brady.“It’s remarkable what sports can do to bring presidents together,” Cillizza says. “This day and age, it’s hard to consider … I don’t think Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be playing golf together anytime soon.”
      Power Players is published in the US by Twelve More

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      Trump/Steinbrenner: how the Yankees owner fired a president’s ego

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      Trump/Steinbrenner: how the Yankees owner fired a president’s egoDonald Trump is exiled in Florida but he was made in New York – in part by a friendship with a controversial baseball ownerWhen Donald Trump was looking to make his mark in 1980s Manhattan, he found a role model up in the Bronx: the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Trump was also a professional team owner: his New Jersey Generals competed in the short-lived United States Football League. But though Trump and Steinbrenner would ultimately become good friends, they didn’t get off to the best start.Trump to publish book of letters from Kim Jong-un, Oprah Winfrey and othersRead moreAs Maggie Haberman of the New York Times writes in her bestselling book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the two men sat on the board of the New York State Sportsplex Corporation, which was looking into building new stadiums. Trump was eyeing one in Queens, where the Generals could play.“At a press conference following the board’s first meeting, in 1984, Steinbrenner complained that Trump was hogging the microphone. ‘This isn’t going to be a one-man show or I’m not going to stick around,’ he said, raising his arms to obscure Trump so that photographers could not capture them together.“That show of ego, and willingness to set the terms of debate, did not stop the men from becoming friends, and Trump was a constant presence in the owner’s box at Yankee Stadium.”Years later, Steinbrenner provided inspiration for Trump on his hit TV show, The Apprentice.“He ad-libbed the ‘You’re fired’ line used to dispatch each week’s loser as an apparent, and unacknowledged, homage” to Steinbrenner, Haberman writes, describing how the Yankees owner’s “revolving door of managers was one of New York’s great ongoing tragicomedies.“As he was still trying to figure out how to be a boss of a company, Trump looked upon Steinbrenner – and the ease, even glee, with which he fired people – and other members of Steinbrenner’s social circle as examples. When he had to play an executive on television, Trump adopted Steinbrenner’s voice and recast The Apprentice’s spirit as gleefully punitive.”Memorably, Steinbrenner cashed in on the catchphrase in a 1978 Miller Lite commercial, which shows him clashing with manager Billy Martin.Steinbrenner says: “Tastes great.”Martin insists: “Less filling.”“Billy,” Steinbrenner.“Yeah, George?”“You’re fired,” Steinbrenner says, with a grin.“Not again!” Martin replies, as the two men chuckle.In real life, Martin had five stints as Yankees manager.Steinbrenner and Trump became etched into popular culture – as executives who made firing people an art form.In 2010, following Steinbrenner’s death, Jim Caple on ESPN wrote: “During his prime, Steinbrenner single-handedly raised the national unemployment rate by a percent, firing managers so regularly that he made Donald Trump look like the head of a teachers union.”Trump told the writer Mark Leibovich Steinbrenner had been his best friend, calling him a “big time winner”. Those comments were published in 2017, when Trump had taken Steinbrenner’s human resources philosophy to the White House, dispensing with officials the way Steinbrenner fired executives and managers.However, when, in 1973, the syndicate Steinbrenner led bought the Yankees, he gave no indication he would be so involved in personnel matters.“‘I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all,” he said, making arguably the least accurate prediction in sports business history.“We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned,” Steinbrenner added. “We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”Steinbrenner’s stint with the Yankees did feature one thing more scarce in Trump’s business career: eye-catching financial success. His group bought the team from CBS for a measly $10m. Last year, Forbes pegged the Yankees’ value at $6bn.There was a reason for the bargain price. Steinbrenner, then 42, chairman of the American Ship Building Company and part‐owner of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, purchased the most successful franchise in baseball at close to rock bottom, at least by its standards. The year before, the Yankees finished fourth in the American League East and drew just 966,000 fans: their first time under a million since the second world war, when attendance was down across baseball. Steinbrenner’s group got the Yankees for less than the small-market Cleveland Indians had recently fetched.Around the same time, Steinbrenner and Trump both got into trouble with the US justice department.In 1973, the department sued Trump’s real estate firm for discriminating against Black tenants and thereby violating the Fair Housing Act, a case eventually settled.The following year, the justice department indicted Steinbrenner for illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. That case ended in a guilty plea in August 1974, two weeks after Nixon resigned, and Steinbrenner being suspended from running the team. (Trump would also befriend Nixon – he will include 25 letters from the former president in a book due out in April.)Untouchable review: Trump as ‘lawless Houdini’ above US justiceRead moreSteinbrenner wound up returning the Yankees to the pinnacle, spending liberally on star players, especially in the early years of free agency, and winning 11 pennants and seven World Series titles.In 2006, with the Yankees on their way to a ninth straight AL East title, Trump threw out the ceremonial pitch at Fenway Park before a game against the Boston Red Sox. In August 2020, as president, he said he had canceled plans to throw the opening pitch at Yankee Stadium, also against the Red Sox – citing his “strong focus” on the coronavirus pandemic. The Times said no invitation was made for that specific game.We’ll never know how Trump would have been received. But he has weighed in from the peanut gallery himself. In 2013, with the Yankees on their way to a first playoff miss in five seasons, he called out the team.“The Yankees are sure lucky George Steinbrenner is not around,” Trump tweeted, before going back to the firing imagery that marked both men’s careers.“A lot of people would be losing their jobs.”
      Frederic J Frommer’s books include Red Sox vs Yankees: The Great Rivalry and You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals
      TopicsNew York YankeesDonald TrumpMLBBaseballUS sportsUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Tommy Tuberville made $25m off Black men. God forbid they get anything back

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      Tommy Tuberville made $25m off Black men. God forbid they get anything backAndrew LawrenceThe former Auburn football coach earned a small fortune thanks to Black athletes. As a US senator he has shown them little but contempt Tommy Tuberville wasn’t the best available football coach in Alabama when Republicans tapped him for a US Senate run in 2020. He wasn’t, in fact, even the best available former Auburn coach. What he was was a silver fox with name recognition who had pledged allegiance to Donald Trump and to toe the party line. A useful idiot, in other words.After trouncing former US attorney general Jeff Sessions in the Republican primary and winning election to the Senate by double digits, Tuberville has proven as much a far-right team player as advertised; not surprisingly, he believed the Big Lie and was one of the dozen Republican senators who were prepared to vote against certifying Joe Biden as US president. And yet the 68-year-old really didn’t distinguish himself in his new career as a Trump surrogate until this month.Speaking at a Trump rally in western Nevada on Saturday, Tuberville blasted Democrats as crime enablers who risked destroying the republic by engaging with Black Americans in an overdue conversation about reparations. “[Democrats] want crime because they want to take over what you got,” Tuberville crowed to the blindingly white crowd. “They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They are not owed that.”’I signed my life to rich white guys’: athletes on the racial dynamics of college sportsRead moreThe offensive play, though met with thunderous applause on the stump, ran swiftly out of that arena and smack bang into a wall of backlash. NAACP president Derrick Johnson pronounced Tuberville’s rant “flat out racist” and of a piece with “a centuries-old lie about Black people that throughout history has resulted in the most dangerous policies and violent attacks on our community.” Former South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers was more blunt, saying Tuberville “can go to hell.”Doug Jones, Tuberville’s Democratic predecessor, scorned the senator’s comments as “deplorable.” Jones added: “He made millions of dollars as a coach supposedly trying to mentor Black men. He should know better.”Should he, though?If the past half-century of college football has taught us anything, it’s that the system, rather than helping Black players, exploits them to enrich old white coaches. And like those coaches, the bulk of them decidedly mediocre, Tuberville mastered the hokey art of ingratiating himself with Black families and promising their sons a better life – as long as they did precisely as he said. While that bargain notionally worked out for some signees, not least the 29 Auburn players who reached the NFL during Tuberville’s time in charge of the Tigers, scores more got very little.The NCAA’s freshman success rate (FSR) charts graduation rates for college athletes. During Tuberville’s decade-long tenure at Auburn, from 1998 through 2008, his teams posted an average FSR of just 53%, well below the national average. In a country where having a college degree is a requisite for a vast array of jobs, Tuberville was far more interested in upholding his one-percenter status than setting up his charges for a bright future.Also, like a lot of fringe former players turned big-time football coaches, Tuberville is a shameless climber. After helping the Miami Hurricanes to the 1993 national championship as defensive coordinator, he left for the same job at Texas A&M, where the team went undefeated in 1994. As coach of Ole Miss in 1998 he famously vowed to die in the job, declaring that he’d have to be carried out of Oxford, Mississippi, “in a pine box”. Two days later he took the Auburn job reportedly without so much as saying goodbye to his Ole Miss players.At Auburn, Tuberville guided the program out of the doldrums to a 13-0 record in 2004 with a backfield that included three Black stars – quarterback Jason Campbell and tailbacks Carnell Williams and Ronnie Brown. That success earned Tuberville a seven-year extension that paid $2m a year. But no sooner had the trio of Black stars who had helped secure him a lucrative contract headed to the NFL, Tuberville’s hot streak cooled. In 2008, the Tigers fell to a woeful 5-7 – a record that included losses to conference cellar-dweller Vanderbilt and shutout to blood rival Alabama. At the end of that season, with three years still to serve on his contract, Tuberville tendered his resignation in a two-paragraph letter to the school – along with an invoice for $5m, thanks to a well-buried early termination clause.Moving on to Texas Tech in 2010, Tuberville logged three seasons in Lubbock before skulking out of a 2012 dinner with recruits to accept a job at Cincinnati, outraging the student guests. Tuberville hung in that job for four seasons before resigning again, telling fans disenchanted with his 29-22 record to “go to hell” and “get a job.” In between those coaching gigs, he started a hedge fund with a former Lehman Brothers broker who’d wind up serving a 10-year federal prison for fraud. Tuberville, meanwhile, was not prosecuted, casting himself as an unwitting victim.Football primed Tuberville for the politics of hypocrisy. Where he once effectively kicked off the era of megamillions reparations for college football coaches, now he scolds society’s most vulnerable for “leaning on this country for a handout.” (Never mind that Auburn’s $26m in football and basketball coaching severances paid over 15 years, including his, ranked second in the NCAA, according to a 2020 study.) While at Ole Miss, he called on fans to stop brandishing the Confederate flag at football games. As a rookie senator, Tuberville has not only embraced Maga Republicanism; he was seen fraternizing with members of the 6 January mob at Trump International Hotel the night before they stormed the Capitol. And even Tuberville’s early civil rights stand was self-serving. “In the state of Mississippi, all the best players are Black,” one state spin doctor recalled Tuberville saying in 1997. “With the flags on campus, we’re not getting our share of Black players that are going to other schools.”Tuberville, yet to apologize for his comments, has always been a salesman first; he’s been calling himself as much for years, all the while pocketing north of $25m during his time as a football coach. And like a true American huckster who’s simply hustling to survive, Tuberville will do whatever it takes to close the deal: Take credit for the careers of Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes (despite them being recruited by Texas Tech successor Kliff Kingsbury, now head coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals). Start a foundation to build homes for veterans (while reportedly withholding two-thirds of the donations). Dog whistle to appeal to adherents of white power. Whatever it takes to win. So what if he doesn’t exactly know how the federal government actually works? “That’s where he stands right now,” Karlos Dansby, who played under Tuberville at Auburn, told AL.com. “I guess it’s a game within the game that’s being played. He just took it to the extreme.”Alabamians should have known better than to elect a football coach to the country’s highest legislative body. As much as they preach God and family and respecting the tenants of the game, big-time football coaches aren’t programmed for compromise. They measure success by how often they get their way, 10 yards at a time. It hardly matters who gets run over in the process.TopicsCollege footballCollege sportsUS sportsUS politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      US congressman accuses LIV CEO Greg Norman of pushing Saudi ‘propaganda’

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      US congressman accuses LIV CEO Greg Norman of pushing Saudi ‘propaganda’ Australian visits Capitol Hill in attempt to promote rebel tourLIV’s role questioned by Democrats and Republicans Greg Norman faced accusations of promoting Saudi “propaganda” following meetings with Washington lawmakers, in which the Australian golfer sought to garner support for the Saudi-backed LIV Series in its bitter dispute with the PGA Tour.Norman, who serves as LIV’s CEO and has been the public face of the breakaway tour, ostensibly came to the US capital this week to criticise what he has called the PGA’s “anti-competitive efforts” to stifle LIV.But – apart from some lawmakers who allegedly sought to take their picture with Norman – the Saudi tour has instead faced a considerable backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, who have defended the PGA and accused LIV of being little more than a sportswashing vehicle for the kingdom.Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, left a meeting of the Republican Study Committee on Wednesday at which dozens of his party colleagues had met with Norman, expressing dismay that members of Congress were discussing a golf league backed by Saudi funds. He also called Norman’s LIV pitch “propaganda”.‘I hate it. I really do’: McIlroy opens up on golf’s civil war after FedEx Cup winRead more“We need to get out of bed with these people. They are bad actors. We need to keep them at arm’s length,” Burchett told the Guardian. He cited the September 11 attacks on the US, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the kingdom’s treatment of gay people and women, which he called “just unacceptable”.While Burchett is a conservative Republican, LIV has also come under fire from the left. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said earlier this month on Twitter that the LIV tour was using a “golf glove [to] try and cover a blood-stained hand” of the Saudi government. He added that the series was part of a “continued, desperate attempt to clean up [Saudi Arabia’s] image”.Durbin added in a second tweet: “Money shouldn’t be allowed to cover up the murder and dismemberment of a journalist or the imprisonment and harassment of activists like Raif Badawi, Waleed Abu Ak-Khair, and Salma al-Shehab.”The LIV spokesperson Jonathan Grella said: “Greg Norman had a very productive day on Capitol Hill today in front of some 60 members of Congress. His message about the benefits of competition was very well received, even if a couple members of Congress say otherwise.”Even as LIV and the PGA are engaged in litigation in the US involving allegations that the PGA has engaged in anti-competitive practices, some lawmakers have asked whether proponents of the Saudi-backed tour, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, ought to be filing as foreign agents of the kingdom.Department of Justice rules require agents of “foreign principals” who are engaged in “political activities” to disclose their relationship with the foreign principal – in this case, Saudi Arabia – as well as receipts, contracts, and payments in support of those activities. The justice department has notably stepped up its enforcement of such rules – known as the Foreign Agent Registration Act (Fara) – over the last 12 months, and has charged individuals who the department has deemed have acted as foreign agents without disclosing their activities.Chip Roy, a conservative Republican congressman from Texas, in a letter in July called on the DOJ to investigate “potential violations” of the Fara rules.“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is funneling money through its Public Investment Fund (PIF) to stand up LIV Golf as an exercise in public relations. In other words, a foreign government’s dollars are being used to enhance that government’s brand and positioning here in the United States,” Roy wrote.One legal expert interviewed by the Guardian said that business ventures that are owned by foreign governments do sometimes escape scrutiny, but not when they are owned by a nation’s sovereign wealth fund, and not when there are legitimate questions about whether the business also has public relations goals involving the country’s image abroad.“I think there are a lot of signs that LIV is not a typical business interest. I think there are a lot of reasons for the DoJ to potentially kick tires on this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did,” said Matt Sanderson, a lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale who specialises in Fara cases. Sanderson said it was also unclear whether LIV intended to make a profit in the long run, raising further questions about its intentions.He added that while he did not think the golfers who have signed up with LIV would personally have to file under Fara, he said any individuals who talk to government officials or engage in PR activities would most likely come under scrutiny if they had not disclosed their activity.Asked whether LIV officials would file under Fara, Grella said: “Our lawyers have informed us that it is not applicable.”TopicsLIV Golf SeriesGolfUS politicsUS political lobbyingSaudi ArabiaMiddle East and north AfricaUS sportsnewsReuse this content More

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      NBA to pause on election day to encourage US fans to vote

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      NBA to pause on election day to encourage US fans to voteLeague wants to encourage civic engagement in NovemberNBA players have been involved in voter registration in past The NBA will be off on election day. The league’s schedule for the coming season will have all 30 teams playing on 7 November, the night before the US midterm elections. The NBA is hoping teams use that night as an opportunity to encourage fans to vote, as well as amplifying the need for civic engagement.But on 8 November, which is election day in the US, no NBA teams have games scheduled. Teams are being encouraged to share election information – such as registration deadlines – with their fanbases in the weeks leading up to 8 November.’How do we fix this?’: LeBron James takes fight to black voter suppressionRead more“The scheduling decision came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections,” the league said on Tuesday.All 435 US House seats will be up for grabs on 8 November, along with more than 30 US Senate seats and gubernatorial races. The Senate is currently split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. The move is a rarity for the league, which typically plays no games on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and tries to avoid scheduling games on the day of the NCAA men’s basketball championship game. It also has a few days off built around the All-Star Game, which takes place in February.The NBA and its players were openly involved in several election-related pushes in 2020, largely after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor reignited the quest to eliminate racial inequality and police brutality.Many players, including LeBron James, were involved in voting registration drives and other get-out-the-vote initiatives. Some teams turned their arenas into registration or voting centers.The NBA’s full schedule for the season will be released at 3pm ET on Wednesday.TopicsNBABasketballUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022US sportsnewsReuse this content More