President Donald Trump on Wednesday mistakenly said Super Bowl-winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes developed under the tutelage of Tommy Tuberville while giving a shoutout to Alabama’s senior senator as Trump signed an executive order banning trans girls from women’s sports under Title IX.
Tuberville, who authored a Senate bill codifying the provisions of the executive order into law, was among the numerous elected officials Trump thanked at Wednesday’s signing ceremony.
“A great coach,” Trump said of Tuberville, who was head coach at Auburn, Texas Tech and elsewhere before being elected to the Senate in 2020.
“You know, his quarterback was named Mahomes. He was a great college coach. And I said, ‘How good was he?’ He said, ‘You don’t wanna know how good. He made me into a great coach.’ He’s a pretty good quarterback, right? Yeah, he was very good. And he’s a good guy, too.”
Mahomes played at Texas Tech before being selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2017 NFL Draft but did not arrive in Lubbock until after Tuberville departed the school in late 2012.
Mahomes was a high school junior at the time — and in his first year as playing as a quarterback.
Tuberville had claimed that he recruited Mahomes to Texas Tech.
According to a fact check by the Cover 3 podcast, Texas Tech was recruiting another quarterback, D.J. Gillen, and Mahomes was not being recruited by Texas Tech until a month after Tuberville left the school for the University of Cincinnati and Gillen decommitted.
