Football coach-turned-politician thinks incoming football players should avoid talking politics

This is not a story from our colleagues at The Onion.

Tommy Tuberville knows all about NFL draft night. As a former college football coach, he saw some of his players move on to the pros. And now, as a U.S. Senator from Alabama, the coach spoke to TMZ about what players should and shouldn’t do. When it comes to issues outside of football, the Senator says, “talk about what you know about.”

Talk about what you know about. That’s generally a good rule of thumb. So here’s the US Senator on the three branches of government.

“Nobody’s looking for an outspoken person, we’re too divided as it is.” Tuberville, who broke with his own party in the Senate to object to the 2020 election results after the Capitol insurrection, said.

“Everybody wants to make an opinion and that’s fine,” Tuberville told the camera. “But, I think, especially for young people to get involved in something that maybe they might not understand as much, I think they need to let people that, whatever they do for a living, justify it.”

So how about those young, outspoken football prospects who will be drafted tonight? Trevor Lawrence spoke at a Black Lives Matter rally over the summer. Justin Fields and his teammates recorded a video after the murder of George Floyd. Najee Harris helped lead a racial justice march on the University of Alabama campus. They’ll all get picked to play for a team. And they can say what they want and play football, too.

Tuberville’s best line outside the Capitol, though, came at the end of the two-and-a-half-minute video.

“I’d just like to see our country be more settled down in terms of people getting into politics or in sports and vice versa,” the football coach turned politician said.