On Tuesday, voters will go to the polls in an election across the U.S., and one of the key races to follow is a U.S. Senate race in Georgia. There, former NFL running back Herschel Walker, a Republican, is taking on incumbent Democratic senator Raphael Warnock.
Walker’s campaign has involved a lot of controversial and unusual moments, from two women saying Walker (a staunchly anti-abortion candidate) paid for them to have abortions to the “honorary” sheriff’s office badge he flashed during a debate to his son’s criticisms of him and reports that he didn’t tell his own campaign staff how many kids he had. His own comments have gotten lots of attention, too, from him not knowing how many U.S. states there are to “our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air” to “Don’t we have enough trees around here?” And while many across the country are weighing in on Walker’s run, some particularly interesting comments come in a USA Today piece from Jarrett Bell, which features remarks from Walker’s former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson and from many of his former Cowboys’ teammates, including Nate Newton, Kevin Gogan, Jim Jeffcoat and more.
Bell’s piece has lots of notable thoughts from a variety of Walker’s former teammates. Those range across the map, from those who have different political views but still support his run (Jeff Rohrer, a registered Democrat and the first former NFL player to marry a person of the same sex) to those who keep in touch with him but under an agreement not to talk politics (Jim Jeffcoat) to those who thoroughly oppose his run (Everson Walls). And there’s discussion of a lot of things with Walker, from his 1986 NFL entrance “like a political candidate” to his controversial replacement of Tony Dorsett as the team’s main running back to the 1991 incident where he was hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning after being found unconscious in his car in his garage with the engine running. (He said he was listening to a song and fell asleep.) But some of the most notable may be the perplexed comments from Nate Newton and Kevin Gogan:
“Not even on our very best day would I have seen this coming – for any of us,” said Kevin Gogan.
…“I may not agree with his policies, but this is who Herschel has been since I’ve known him,” said Nate Newton, who joined the Cowboys in 1986 and blossomed into an all-pro guard.
“He’s always been strange … Am I lying?”
…“If he calls me today, I’ll still answer the phone,” Newton said. “But Georgia, hold on baby. That’s all I can say.”
It of course makes sense that different former teammates and coaches have different perspectives on Walker and his suitability for public office. And Bell does a good job of presenting a cross-section of those perspectives. But maybe the most notable thing here is how much of the dissent isn’t head-on criticism of Walker, his various strange comments, or his proposed policies. Instead, it’s just former teammates incredibly surprised to see him in this situation.
