These former sports figures turned to politics — and scored Election Day victories
While Tuesday’s election was dominated by the race for the White House, some former athletes made a splash of their own by either snagging a first-time victory in the political world or by winning their reelection campaigns.
Here are some of the sports figures who had big wins on Tuesday.
Tommy Tuberville
Former college football coach Tommy Tuberville, who spent 21 seasons with four programs, most notably Auburn, defeated Sen. Doug Jones to recapture a U.S. Senate seat for Republicans in Alabama.
The decorated Tuberville was 85-40 with the Tigers, who went undefeated in 2004, leading them to an SEC title, ESPN said. The former two-time SEC coach of the year spent his final coaching years with Texas Tech and Cincinnati.
In the months leading up to the election, Tuberville had been taking to Twitter in order to crack down on those who opposed him — including Jones and former U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions.
In May, Sessions challenged the Alabama republican by ripping his college football coaching past, McClatchy News said.
Tuberville echoed his time leading football teams to greatness by saying, “if coaching taught me anything, it’s that you don’t let the losing team dictate the game when you’re sitting on a lead” after Sessions had challenged him to a series of debates.
“If watching you coach taught me anything @TTuberville, it’s that you’re no good at sitting on a lead,” Sessions responded in a tweet. “That’s why you finished 5-7 and 4-8 in your last seasons at Auburn and Cincinnati. If you’re too weak to debate, you do not deserve to represent the people of Alabama.”
Tuberville, who had the backing of President Donald Trump, defeated Sessions in a July runoff to win the GOP Senate nomination.
Tuberville has never held public office.
Kelly Loeffler
Kelly “more conservative than Attila the Hun” Loeffler, who co-owns the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, will be headed into a runoff contest at the beginning of next year after Rep. Doug Collins conceded to Loeffler in the Georgia special election race, Fox News said.
Loeffler, the former CEO of a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, which is owned by her husband, ran a campaign based on holding on tightly to conservative values, including abolishing a woman’s right to choose.
“I will always fight for the unborn, and I will always stand up against the radical left and the cancel culture,” she said, according to NPR. “You can see what’s happening in our country today. You’ve got anarchy. You’ve got mob rule.”
The runoff is scheduled for Jan. 5, when she will face Democrat Raphael Warnock.
Loeffler drew controversy in August after sending a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert in objection to players protesting civil injustice.
“The truth is, we need less — not more politics in sports. In a time when polarizing politics is as divisive as ever, sports has the power to be a unifying antidote,” Loeffler wrote. “And now more than ever, we should be united in our goal to remove politics from sports.”
Anthony Gonzalez
Republican Anthony Gonzalez, a former Ohio State University and Indianapolis Colts wide receiver, won re-election in Ohio’s 16th Congressional District as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Gonzalez, who was elected in 2018, beat out Democratic candidate Aaron Godfrey, 62.2 percent to 37.8 percent, the New York Times reported.
In three seasons with the Buckeyes, Gonzalez had 87 receptions for 1,286 yards and 13 touchdowns, Bleacher Report said. In his final season, he had 51 catches for 734 yard and eight touchdowns.
He spent five seasons with the Colts after being drafted with the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft. In Indianapolis, Gonzalez accrued 99 catches for 1,307 yards and seven touchdowns according to Bleacher Report.
In September, Gonzalez co-wrote a bill that “would open the door for college athletes to make money from a wide variety of endorsement deals and create some flexibility to adjust their proposed regulations over the course of the next three years,” ESPN said.
Tito Ortiz
The UFC Hall of Famer known as “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” won a place on Huntington Beach’s city council Tuesday night. Tito Ortiz finished first in a 15-candidate field and became city councilor-elect for his hometown, MMA Junkie said.
Ortiz appeared on “The Apprentice” when Trump was hosting the reality show and became one of his first backers during the president’s 2016 campaign.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Ortiz said to “The Ringer” that he believed the virus to be a form of “population control,” and that it’s just like the flu.
“I’m not a doctor,” he said after saying that he believed ventilators are just “speeding up the process of COVID” when they pump air into a patient’s lungs.
In the UFC world, Ortiz was the light heavyweight champion from 2000-03 and though he won another championship afterward, he was an inaugural piece in building the modern-era UFC according to MMA Junkie. He retired for a time in 2012 before returning in 2014.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 11:52 AM with the headline "These former sports figures turned to politics — and scored Election Day victories."