Donald Trump may be an NFL fan, but his memory of college football history just took a major hit. The 47th U.S. president made a huge factual blunder during a press event on February 5, 2025, when he mistakenly credited Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville as the college coach of Super Bowl-bound quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The fun part is that the two never crossed paths at Texas Tech.
The incident occurred while Trump was discussing his latest executive order, which aims at protecting female athletes from competing against trans athletes.
During his remarks, he praised Tuberville, with the belief the senator had coached Mahomes. “You know, his quarterback was named Mahomes. He was a great college coach. I said, ‘How good was he?’ He said, ‘You don’t wanna know how good. He made me into a great coach.’ Pretty good quarterback, right? Ya, he was very good. He is a good guy too,” Trump said.
Trump praises Tommy Tuberville for doing a great job as Patrick Mahomes’s college coach, despite the fact he never coached Mahomes pic.twitter.com/44Y7YMeSXU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2025
Well, there seems to be a serious issue here. Tuberville walked away from Texas Tech in 2012, two years before Mahomes even joined the program in 2014. The real coach behind Mahomes’ college career? Kliff Kingsbury, who succeeded Tuberville. He had previously claimed credit for Mahomes’ recruitment, though that assertion was taken down by ‘Cover 3 College Football Podcast.’ The podcast clarified that Texas Tech’s focus had been on recruiting a different quarterback, D.J. Gillen before they eventually landed Mahomes a month after Tuberville left for Cincinnati.
It is not clear how much of this Trump actually discussed with Tuberville. The senator retired from coaching in 2016 and got involved in politics, even winning a Senate seat in Alabama in 2020.
NFL fans wasted no time fact-checking and mocking Trump’s mistakes across social media. Some comments were outright brutal. “Yep, and Vince Lombardi did a whale of a job with Michael Jordan,” read one comment. Another user wrote, “He just flat out lied about a conversation that clearly never happened.” “It’s true in the Trump multiverse,” wrote another one! However, some supporters shrugged it off. They argued that the president had “more important things to worry about” than getting Mahomes’ coaching history right.
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Trump is not unknown to mixing up sports facts, though. Back in February 2020, after the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV, Trump congratulated them in a now-infamous tweet where he said: “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas… and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well.”
For the unversed, The Chiefs are based in Missouri, not Kansas, though the two states share a border. The mistake instantly went viral as the Internet didn’t back off from questioning Trump’s knowledge of American sports.
Despite the latest row of roasts that have come his way, Trump is set to make history this weekend as he becomes the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Super Bowl. He has dropped a hint at supporting a certain quarterback, as evident from his statement, “I don’t want to say, but there’s a certain quarterback that seems to be a pretty good winner.”
Mahomes reacted to the news of the President’s arrival to watch the game and his comments, saying, “It’ll be cool to be able to play in front of the sitting president. Someone who’s at the top position in our country. I didn’t see that clip, but obviously it’s cool to hear that he has seen me play football and respects the game that I play.”
His teammate Travis Kelce, however, sounded more enthusiastic.“That’s awesome. It’s a great honor. No matter who the president is, I know I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life. Having the president there, it’s the best country in the world and that’s pretty cool.”
However, the real question stands strong: Will he get his football facts right this time? Or are we in for another viral Trump sports blunder?
