U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was greeted by a chorus of boos at Saturday’s University of Texas football game in Austin.
Indeed, the jeers swelled into such a cacophony that it was almost impossible to hear him speak during an interview segment over chants of “Ted, you suck.”
Alas, even wearing UT colors didn’t spare Cruz from the ire of the Austin crowd, game day footage shows.
Hardly audible above the crowd’s growing hostility, Cruz discussed antitrust laws and how they harm college sports. What a fun guy to have at parties.
Cruz made the comments to ESPN’s College GameDay ahead of the big showdown between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 4 Texas. GameDay stoked controversy by running the live, on-set interview with Cruz, the lead sponsor of a bill called the Protect College Sports Act, which would regulate the business of college sports.
GameDay host Rece Davis interviewed Cruz for nearly 10 minutes on the proposal, which could be voted on soon. The show has a history of wading into political discourse around sports, and just last week urged Congress to pass the bill on air, according to a report by the Poynter Institute.
This led to metaphorical boos for ESPN as well — even from some of the cable network’s alumni.
“Did not know ESPN had become a political lobbying firm,” former ESPN personality Jemele Hill tweeted.
The bill would cap how much college athletes can earn, instead diverting the money to the programs. It would also limit their freedom to transfer.
College sports are subject to federal antitrust laws under the Sherman Act, meaning the NCAA and its conferences can’t block fair compensation for players without facing major legal liability. As such, the NCAA has long sought an antitrust exemption.
“Even by the standards of ‘College GameDay,’ which has been known to put its thumb on the scale when it wanted, this whole affair has been wildly inappropriate,” sports blog Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley wrote.
Keeley went on to say that it was inappropriate for the show to “put its full weight behind a congressional bill without providing ample time to those proponents and opponents, especially when those who oppose the bill do so on the grounds that it will negatively impact the earning ability of the athletes who make the sport work.”
While some X users argued that the bill is relevant to college sports and thus worth discussing, ESPN personality Bomani Jones tweeted, “Talking about it and shilling for it — without disclosing that the company is literally lobbying for it — are vastly different things.”
The Athletic’s Justin Williams and Stewart Mandel wrote that “an ESPN source told The Athletic that Cruz, who was in Austin for the game, expressed interest in coming on the show to discuss the legislation.
Don’t they know Cruz is a jinx? Somehow, UT won anyway, with a score of 24 to 23.
Sharing a photo of himself meeting UT superfan Matthew McConaughey, this prompted a two-word response from Cruz: “What curse?”
But it turns out that you don’t have to be a jinx for football fans to let you know that you’re not welcome there.
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