A former high school football coach will be on the Presidential ticket this November
The only time we typically pay attention to the game of thrones in Washington here at FootballScoop is when the Commanders make a coaching change, but when one of our own finds his way to the Presidential ticket, we make an exception.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President this November, announced Tuesday she has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate in the election this fall.
In our world, that's former former state-champion high school football coach Tim Walz.
A native of West Point, Neb., Walz played football in high school and attended Chadron State College in his native Nebraska after a stint in the National Guard, then took a teaching job overseas. Upon returning to the States, he took a teaching and football coaching job at Alliance High School in Nebraska. Walz moved to Mankato West High School in Minnesota to be closer to his wife's family in the late 1990s, where he was the defensive coordinator for close to a decade. His unit helped the school win its first state championship in 1999.
That team started its season 2-4 before ripping off eight straight wins to claim the title. This story from the Mankato Free Press noted the West defense posted three shutouts that season, including two in the playoffs.
"We ran a 4-4. We read guards at the time," Walz said on Pod Save America in February. "I had really good athletes and good linebackers. That was an age it was unusual to see a 2,500-3,000 yard passer on the other side, but it was coming along. In high school if you if pull a guard you can pretty much tell where the ball's going."
Mankato West had lost 27 consecutive games before Walz arrived. "We said, 'This is nonsense. Let's turn this thing around.' Three years later we were state champions, and now they're a powerhouse."
Football served as a pivotal moment in his life, in ways good and bad. In 1995, he was arrested for speeding and pinned it on the adrenaline rush from watching football (Tom Osborne's dominant '95 Huskers squad, no doubt). From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
In the fall of 1995, Tim Walz, then 31, was pulled over for going 96 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone. He said he'd been watching college football with pals. Walz failed a sobriety test and a breath test and later pleaded guilty to reckless driving.
"You have obligations to people," Gwen Walz said she told her husband. "You can't make dumb choices."
Later, at Mankato West, Walz used his status as a football coach to start the school's gay-straight alliance.
"It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said. In other words, he would be a symbol that disparate worlds could coexist peacefully.
Walz ran successfully ran for Congress in 2006 -- he said in the Pod Save America interview he was "convinced" the state championship helped him get elected -- and remained there until winning the Minnesota governorship in 2018.
If the Harris-Walz ticket is elected in November, Walz will join the surprisingly sparse list of football players/coaches-turned-presidents and vice presidents, considering the our nation's highest and second-highest offices have been (almost) exclusively male, and football's place in our culture as a masculine proving ground.
John F. Kennedy, our nation's 35th President, played JV football at Harvard, and Gerald Ford, our 38th President, remains the most accomplished football player-turned-POTUS, having played center at Michigan in the 1930s.
Richard Nixon, the 36th Vice President and 37th President, played high school football at Fullerton Union High School in California, and Joe Biden, the 47th VP and current POTUS, played at Archmere Academy in Delaware. (Update: Readers also pointed out Presidents Dwight Eisenhower [Army] and Ronald Reagan [Eureka College]. Eisenhower also coached at Peacock Military Academy and St. Louis College.)
Harry Truman once owned a share of the Los Angeles Rams after leaving the Oval Office, but never played the game himself. Teddy Roosevelt has an honorary membership in the Pigskin POTUS Hall of Honor for his interventions to save the game from itself in the first decade of the 20th century, but best I can tell no other President or VP has ever placed his hand in the dirt.
Walz's former and current occupations could intersect in an important way moving forward. If elected, Walz would serve as a tie-breaking vote in the Senate as part of his role as Vice President, which means there's a chance he could rule on a bill to standardize NIL payments in college football, if such a bill came to the floor during the next Congressional session.
In the meantime, Walz's role will be to use the energy and enthusiasm that got him on the ticket to get Harris elected. “As a football coach," Walz said, "we’re back on offense."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.
