After five years in the United States Senate, Republican Tommy Tuberville wants Alabamians to know one thing above all else as he embarks on a gubernatorial bid: His time as a college football coach.

That his campaign website is framed by a banner reading “Coach Tuberville for Governor” speaks to how much the GOP is relying upon local sports heroes to compete for offices up and down the ballot as the pivotal midterm elections approach.

Athletes and coaches are playing in some of the highest-profile races of the 2026 cycle, with control over Congress up for grabs in a year expected to favor Democrats. In Georgia, former University of Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley is hoping to capitalize on his athletic experience – and his father’s football fame in Athens – to break through in a competitive Republican primary and unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Former NFL kicker Jay Feely is running for Congress in Arizona. And former MLB star Mark Teixeira is a front-runner for Rep. Chip Roy’s open House seat in Texas.

Tuberville, who once led the Auburn University football team, still goes by “coach” around the Capitol.

Athletes-turned-politicians are hardly a new concept: former Rep. Jack Kemp brought his football background to the halls of Congress and the 1996 GOP presidential ticket; Jesse Ventura leveraged his WWE fame to win Minnesota’s governorship; and two-time NBA champion Bill Bradley served New Jersey in the Senate for nearly two decades and mounted a bid for the White House.

But at a moment of deep distrust and disdain for elected officials in Washington, both parties are looking for outsider candidates and athletes are increasingly fitting that mold. And the trend of leveraging sports fame for political gain has been supercharged in the era of Trump, who once owned a pro football team. The president has routinely campaigned alongside athletes and coaches, including Notre Dame hero Lou Holtz — whom he later awarded a presidential medal of freedom — and professional wrestling star Hulk Hogan. He backed Tuberville in his Senate run and endorsed former University of Georgia star running back Herschel Walker in his unsuccessful Senate bid in 2022.

This trend has been especially prevalent in the southeast, where college football culture reigns. Tuberville’s successful entrance into politics has inspired a new crop of football figures to make their own bids as Republicans in the SEC corridor, and many of them have consulted directly with the coach-turned-legislator about how to replicate his win.

Tuberville used his gridiron fame in Alabama to rocket to the Senate in 2020 without any experience in the public eye off the football field.

“I spent a lot of time in public life going to a lot of alumni meetings, shaking hands, marketing our program, selling recruits on the road, dealing a lot with parents – and it’s no different than being in politics,” he said in an interview.

The party in Alabama isn’t making an active push to recruit former sports stars to run for office, but that hasn’t stopped other like-minded college athletes and sports figures from running their own plays for office.

“I think there’s a natural bend towards these figures,” said Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl, who worked on Tuberville’s 2020 Senate campaign. “They already have some name I.D., they have fundraising capabilities, but they’re seen as political outsiders and people who are going to represent the average, everyday American.”

Dooley, who is running for Senate with the backing of Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, approached Tuberville for some coaching prior to his run.

“The people that have called me, they ask: what is this? What do I have to do? And what does it entail? You know, first of all, being a senator, they all want to know first about campaigning. They want to know the ins and outs of it and what you have to do with raising money,” Tuberville said.

Dooley’s campaign did not make him available for an interview for this article.

Earlier this year, former University of Alabama star quarterback AJ McCarron launched his own bid for lieutenant governor – opening the possibility that, alongside Tuberville, the state could have been helmed by figures representing rival local football programs. He ended his bid on Wednesday, announcing he would no longer seek Montgomery’s second-in-command post “in order to accept a new career opportunity in football.”

Paul Finebaum, the lauded college football commentator, passed on a run for Tuberville’s seat earlier this month. He, too, spoke with the senator about the job as he was exploring a run, according to Tuberville. So did fellow Auburn Tigers basketball coach Bruce Pearl, who similarly opted against a bid after retiring from coaching.

But there will still be plenty of ‘Bama pride left: Sen. Katie Britt’s (R-Ala.) husband Wesley Britt starred for the Crimson Tide before playing three seasons in the NFL, a fact she was sure to highlight in her ads during her 2022 run for Senate.

This same trend is playing out in other parts of the country too. Michelle Tafoya, the longtime NFL sideline reporter, is inching toward mounting a bid as a Republican in Minnesota’s open Senate race. Meanwhile, Democrats have yet to significantly capitalize on that same trend in the deep-red part of the country to challenge the Republicans’ regional hegemony.

That isn’t to say they don’t have a bench elsewhere: former Rep. Colin Allred leaned hard on his bio as an NFL player in his unsuccessful 2024 Senate bid in Texas (he’s now running for his old seat). Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy played a few years of professional basketball in Europe before returning to the Bay State to launch her political career. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) is a former professional mixed martial arts fighter.

“Democrats tend to recruit a lot of ex-military or CIA people. They seem to think that’s more in their wheelhouse,” said long-time Democratic strategist James Carville.

“I think as people become increasingly turned off by ‘politics of Washington, ’you’re going to find these parties are going to be looking for different kinds of candidates,” he continued. “It might be a good idea to look for more opportunities like this.”

Nearly three-quarters of American adults are “frustrated” by the Democratic Party, an October Pew Research Center poll found. Sixty-four percent of Americans held similarly negative views of Republicans. That dissatisfaction makes the appeal of an outsider candidate who hasn’t touched politics before even stronger.

“I think people are ready for change,” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and president of the progressive candidate recruitment organization Run for Something. “Often the best folks to shepherd that change are people who are new to the system, whether that’s new to politics or new to community engagement.”

“I wouldn’t say athletes is, like, a specific profile we’re looking for, because you have to be really in it to solve a problem,” she continued, adding that wants to see “more artists, I want more musicians, and I want more nurses and teachers to run for office. I want more people who really care and who maybe come with a fresh perspective.”

While outsider candidates may prove a balm to those fiery sentiments, the public is not entirely sold on athletes wading into a political space. A late 2024 poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC at the University of Chicago showed that 26 percent of adults approve of athletes speaking out about political issues. 36 percent of respondents said they explicitly disapprove of athletes specifically sharing their political opinions.

“When you’re famous in athletics, everybody likes you,” Carville said. “In politics, as soon as you open your mouth, half the people hate you.”

Wyoming GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman on Tuesday announced her campaign for Senate, hoping to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis in next year’s election.

The Wyoming Republican is a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, and with his backing she helped oust Republican then-Rep. Liz Cheney, a vocal critic of Trump’s, in the 2022 primary.

“This fight is about making sure the next century sees the advancements of the last, while protecting our culture and our way of life,” Hageman said in her launch video. “We must dedicate ourselves to ensuring that the next 100 years is the next great American century.”

Lummis announced she would not seek reelection last week, saying she felt like a “sprinter in a marathon” despite being a “devout legislator.” Hageman, who had been debating a gubernatorial bid, was expected to enter the Senate race.

Hageman touted her ties to the president in her announcement video, highlighting her record of support for Trump’s policies during her time in the House and vowing to keep Wyoming a “leader in energy and food production.”

“I worked with President Trump to pass 46 billion in additional funding for border security, while ensuring that Wyomingites do not pay the cost of new immigration. We work together to secure the border and fund efforts to remove and deport those in the country illegally,” she said.

Trump won the deep-red state by nearly 46 points in last year’s election, and Hageman herself was reelected by nearly 48 points, according to exit polling.

Still, Hageman bore the brunt of voters’ displeasure earlier this year during a town hall. As she spoke of the Department of Government Efficiency, federal cuts and Social Security, the crowd booed her.

Former Sen. Ben Sasse announced on Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer.

The Nebraska Republican shared the news on X, writing in a lengthy social media post that he had received the diagnosis last week.

“Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence,” Sasse said. “But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.”

The two term senator retired in 2023 and then went on to serve as president of the University of Florida. He eventually left the school to spend more time with his wife, Melissa, after she was diagnosed with epilepsy.

Sasse continued to teach classes at University of Florida’s Hamilton Center after he stepped down as president. He previously served as a professor at the University of Texas, as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services and as president of Midland University.

Sasse on Tuesday shared that he and his wife have only grown closer since and opened up about his children’s recent successes and milestones.

“There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst,” Sasse said. “As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.”

Sasse said he’ll have more to share in the future, adding that he is “not going down without a fight” and will be undergoing treatment.

“Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape,” Sasse said.