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Tommy Tuberville trolls Alabama leadership with 'favorite scenes' in education meeting with Kalen DeBoer, Greg Byrne

by:Alex Byington•04/09/25•

_AlexByington

Byrne-Tuberville-DeBoer
Greg Byrne (Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images) | Tommy Tuberville (Jack Gruber/USA TODAY NETWORK) | Kalen DeBoer (Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama reached across the aisle — or rather the Iron Bowl rivalry — when he met with Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne, second-year head football coach Kalen DeBoer and other University of Alabama representatives in his Washington, D.C.-based offices Wednesday.

Of course, the former Auburn head football coach-turned-politician didn’t miss out on an opportunity to remind the rival Crimson Tide contingent of all the success he had against Alabama during his time on The Plains. Tuberville famously went 7-3 against the Tide during his 10 years at Auburn (1999-2008), including a rare six-game Iron Bowl win streak between 2002-2007.

Check out the scene below:

Byrne and DeBoer were joined by Alabama president Stuart R. Bell and several student-athletes as part of the Crimson Tide contingent on Capitol Hill for “College Sports Day” in Washington, D.C.

They were in the nation’s capitol Wednesday as part of a coalition of conference commissioners, athletic administrators, coaches and student-athletes from the Power Four conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC — to “make the case for legislation creating a national standard for name, image and likeness (NIL),” according to a press release.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Dartmouth basketball union: ‘This will absolutely kill college sports’

A day after the Dartmouth men’s basketball team voted to form a union — a historic moment in college sports — former college football coach and current U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville shared his thoughts.

Sitting for a March 6 interview on Fox News’ American Reports, the former Auburn and Ole Miss head coach did not hold back on how he thinks unionization would reshape college sports.

The senior U.S. Senator from Alabama has reemerged as a figure in college sports in the last 18 months, working closely with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) on the “Protecting Athletes, Schools and Sports Act of 2023,” nicknamed the “Pass Act,” which was released this past July.

“They’re going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg—all these athletes are—because it pays for everything,” the Senator said. “Scholarships are paid — men and women — but there’s a lot of people that don’t bring in money to universities. But what’s going to happen here is you’re going to see groups of people that’s going to try to unionize and then it’s going to spread across the country. We’ve been fighting it here. Joe Manchin and I did a NIL bill that was bipartisan, but it kept unionization out, but the Democrats wanted it in.

“That’s the reason we haven’t gotten it to the floor. But this will absolutely kill college sports. You know, the last time I looked, they’re not employees. These students are student-athletes. And if you want the federal government involved and ruin something, you try to make the student-athletes employees. Soon the federal government will get involved, unions will get involved, and it will be a total disaster.”

— On3’s Pete Nakos contributed to this report.