The New Yorker:

Football has been central to the Texas congressman’s campaign to unseat Ted Cruz in the Senate, aligning with a broader Democratic strategy.

By Louisa Thomas

Something strange is happening in Texas: a Democratic challenger is within striking distance of winning a Senate seat. Stranger still, that challenger, Colin Allred, is a former professional football player who is running as a Democrat.

Allred played for Baylor University, then spent four years in the N.F.L. as a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans, before making his way into politics. It’s the central part of his campaign biography—the son of a single mom in Dallas overcomes long odds to make it into the N.F.L. The rest of his story gets shorter shrift: law school; his work as a civil-rights attorney in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama; his stint in Congress, after he upset the incumbent Republican Pete Sessions for a House seat, in 2018. His rhetoric is studded with football references. The launch video for his Senate campaign was filmed in an empty football stadium; he once even referred to the border with Mexico as the “one-yard line.”

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