American football exploits trump controversial past for Herschel Walker

Herschel Walker’s campaign to become the next Republican senator from the state of Georgia took him to Sugar Hill Church just north of Atlanta the other week. The kind of venue where his devout Christianity and celebrity status as arguably his home state’s greatest ever college footballer guaranteed a warm welcome. During an interview with the pastor, Chuck Allen, Walker started to riff about his belief in a higher power.

“The earth started and then he had to put them on earth,” he said. “Adam was there. Adam came, then Eve came, so somebody had to start it out. That means it had to be a God. It wasn’t just some bomb blew up and started it out. I think about this, at one time, science said man came from apes - did it not? Well, this is what’s interesting though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”

That clip went viral almost immediately, causing a stir on social media. The kind of anti-evolution stance that, once upon a time, might have been expected to damage any credible candidacy for higher office. That was then. These days, it’s likely to enhance the 60-year-old’s chances of wresting the seat back from the Democrats. Red meat to a huge and growing constituency out there who relish any attack on science and its bothersome factual basis. Walker was merely preaching to the converted.

It helps his cause too that, 41 years ago, he led the Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship as a peerless, freshman running back out of nearby Wrightsville. A terrifying amalgam of power, poise and pace (he competed regularly against Carl Lewis in the 100m at collegiate level), the local hero left university early to turn pro with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League (USFL). In that upstart outfit, a wannabe NFL rival, he crossed paths with a brash New York business tycoon named Donald Trump and a peculiar friendship was formed.

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The future president once stormed into the Generals’ locker-room to berate the coach for not giving Walker enough opportunities to run with the ball. A rare instance of good judgment from the club owner whose greed subsequently destroyed the entire league from within, evincing the kind of ill-fated decision-making later to make him world infamous and take him all the way to the White House. Throughout all that, the relationship between himself and his star player somehow endured, even surviving Trump firing Walker during a season of NBC’s The Apprentice.

All of which might explain why he is the most Trumpian of candidates, a character hoping a lingering high profile and instant name recognition will obviate the many disturbing entries on his resume. Like his hero, he lied about his achievements in business, claiming to employ 600 people when the true figure was eight, and was exposed for carrying $9m in unpaid or defaulted loans. He’s also faced a slew of allegations of threatening behaviour towards women. His ex-wife took out an order of protection against him and, in one domestic incident, police removed his gun because he was talking of having a shootout with them.

So far, so shocking. Yet, the example of his mentor’s 2016 electoral triumph and continuing popularity has demonstrated that, once the cult of personality is rabid enough, no amount of dodgy carry-on impacts on certain voters, and, in the Deep South, college football has always retained a quasi-religious feel.

“The first touchdown run was instantly burned into the souls of Dog fans forever because during the few seconds it took Walker to slant right, cut back and explode 16 yards up the middle, they could see the future - and the future had WALKER MY DOG plastered on bumpers all over the state,” wrote Curry Kirkpatrick in Sports Illustrated of his debut touchdown for Georgia in 1980. “Walker beat six different Tennessee defenders, most notably Safety Bill Bates, who met him helmet-on and was toppled head-over-fanny backward as easily as if he were an inflatable rubber toy with sand in the base.”

When some of his former team-mates sued the NFL for concussion-related health problems, Walker dismissed their case, arguing, “we are all crazy in some sense.” In his 2008 autobiography, Breaking Free, he wrote about suffering from dissociative personality disorder, a condition that caused him to create multiple alter egos and which he blames for his violent interactions with women and other incidents, including once driving around Texas with a gun searching out an errant business associate.

There is no word on whether it also explains his rambling, disjointed performances on television shows where he often speaks about policy in non sequiturs and makes very little sense. Aside from talking about himself in the third person, Walker has shown scant knowledge of what Nato is and denied that in vitro fertilization is a thing. Although one Republican apparatchik dismissed his run for office as “an autograph tour”, his historic sporting prowess and Trump’s ringing endorsement should be enough to win the primary in May (he refuses to debate his opponents in that race) and could well stamp his ticket to Washington come November.

This Saturday, he and the ex-president are speaking at a rally at the Banks County Dragway in Commerce, Georgia. Whatever nonsense they come out with that night won’t matter a jot. Who they are is all that counts to the faithful.