Hello, welcome to your Thursday FOIAball. We’ve got a fun one, so I’ll keep the housekeeping to a minimum.
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Okay, on to the blog.
The politicians who watched games from luxury boxes
This past season, loads of congressmen joined university presidents and chancellors in their luxury boxes for football games. They do it all the time, except that now, Congress is openly debating the future of college sports. So we thought we should name names.
If you’re a student-athlete, can you ply your representative with canapes and craft cocktails and talk about what would make your life better? You absolutely cannot. But the people deciding their future have no qualms about being wined and dined by the side with much more money.
Sure, there are ethical rules around what legislators can or cannot accept, but I don’t care about them. Don’t care if they reimbursed the schools for these tickets. Don’t care if the food they ate was on a toothpick. What I care about is that these people are sitting in luxury suites with the folks in charge. Not with the kids who need their help.
At least they had to endure some god-awful football while living in the lap of luxury. Like real bad games.
In November, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) hopped down to Morgantown to watch the Mountaineers take on Texas Tech, joining WVU’s president in his suite. She was greeted by four three-and-outs by the home team on their first five drives. Bet that blew. And it only got worse. The Red Raiders were up 28-0 at halftime and won 49-0. Forty-nine to zero!
An absolute massacre. Capito went to the game as a guest of her husband, who just so happens to be on the school’s Board of Governors. Was he appointed to that role after his wife became one of the most prominent politicians in the state? Yes!
Across the chamber, Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) saw some actual good ball, taking in a 31-24 overtime victory against Pitt. He was joined by Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R), a bunch of members of the state cabinet and the House of Delegates, as well as former Sen. Joe Manchin. A happy Joe Manchin. Gross!
But not every politician in the box that day was ecstatic. Also there? That would be Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who watched the Panthers fall in overtime. I’ve been around WV fans after my team lost. I hope they afforded him no courtesy.
One of the more progressive voices in the college sports debate is Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). She released a bill on Sept. 29, 2025, called the SAFE Act, which got high marks from student-athlete groups.
Nice. Two days before that, she was sitting in the suite of Washington President Robert Jones. Might they have discussed matters of college athletics? Might he have weighed in on her pending legislation in a way a Husky athlete could not?
Can’t say what they talked about! Can say she sat literally right behind him, though, thanks to a handy seating chart we got.
Next to Cantwell was the then-mayor of Seattle, a politician turned Amazon lobbyist, and a bunch of state politicos. They all watched as Ohio State smothered the Huskies, sacking Demond Williams six times in a 24-6 win. Love it.
UVA played one of the most thrilling games of the season this year, defeating Florida State in double overtime. Did any of Virginia’s biggest politicians see it in person? Nope. Sucks to be them!
Instead, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) saw the Hoos eke out a win against Washington State on a safety of all things. I guess that’s kinda cool.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Rep. John McGuire (R-VA), and Adam Spanberger, the husband of the state’s newly elected governor, all watched the Cavaliers best Virginia Tech, who’d given up on the season months ago. Good for them.
As part of the game, they were invited to a pre-game reception in the President’s Box at Scott Stadium. I wish I’d FOIAed the spread.
There admittedly weren’t many opportunities to catch a bad game, with UVA losing at home just once. Thankfully, that’s not the case for its neighbor to the south.
In North Carolina, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC) just barely held off a primary challenge from the left. Closing out a victory wasn’t a lesson she learned from watching Bill Belichick in person this season.
She was on the list for four UNC home games. All of them were awful losses. She watched his brutal debut against TCU. Foushee then caught the low point of the season, when Clemson trounced the Tar Heels. She was there as they fell in overtime against UVA. And she ended the year sitting in on a thwacking by Duke.
Thanks to her narrow win, she’s probably heading back to Congress. But attending all those games shows a horrible lack of judgment that merits impeachment. IMO.
Also at the Duke game was Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC). Does he have a “Controversial 9/11 tweet” section of his Wikipedia page? You tell me.
Some politicians were better at picking winning games. Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), a Bowling Green alum, attended the season opener and debut of head coach Eddie George, where the school beat Lafayette.
I can’t fault the delegation from Minnesota for its choices, because North Star State congresswomen didn’t see a single defeat.
The worst game any of them watched was when Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) went to the season opener against Buffalo. It was a total drag, the Golden Gophers leading by just a field goal heading into the fourth quarter.
Imagine her dressing down PJ Fleck for that performance in the locker room after. Meanwhile, Reps. Kelly Morrison (D-MN) and Angie Craig (D-MN) saw Minnesota beat Nebraska 24-6 and Michigan State 23-20. Cool.
But the Big Ten had a lot of other teams that played a lot of extremely bad football. Which a lot of politicians were present for.
UCLA just sent FOIAball a list of everyone who sat in their chancellor’s suite without specifying what games they went to. Annoying! But thanks to a very carefully framed selfie that tried to hide that she was sitting in a luxury box, we can say Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) watched the Bruins play Maryland. Hey, they won, 20-17.
Christ, imagine sitting through a 20-17 Maryland-UCLA game. Maybe I was wrong about politicians not getting what they deserved.
Speaking of awful Maryland football, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) just announced he was leaving Congress after over 40 years. It’ll give him more time to attend Terps games. Not that he needs it. Serving in Congress didn’t hinder the longtime representative from going to Byrd Stadium five different times this year. He caught Maryland play FAU, Washington, Nebraska, Indiana, and Michigan.
The Terps went 1-4 when Hoyer was there.
Rep. Sara Elfreth (D-MD) watched a win over Towson, but also went to the losses to Washington and Indiana. About that Indiana game. Hoyer and Elfreth saw the Terps lose 55-10!
Still not as bad as WVU’s loss to Texas Tech.
A Maryland congressman named Johnny Olszewski also went to the Towson game. On his Wikipedia, it says he goes by Johnny O.
This country is so washed.
At least Hoyer’s five jaunts to College Park only took thirty minutes. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) sat in the president’s box at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford at least five times last season.
Ole Miss was undefeated at home last year, so he didn’t see any defeats. For the LSU game, he was joined by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who at least caught the beginning of the end for Brian Kelly. Although maybe that made him happy. I hope not.
The president’s suite at Ole Miss games is something else, not gonna lie. Here’s a collection of first names from that game: Reeves, Stormy, Delbert, Reagan, Jackson, Borne, LouAnn, Gayle, Bray, Stanford, Gindi, Courtenay.
None of those includes the car dealership magnate or the lawyer who makes a living helping big chemical firms dodge responsibility for toxic waste. Look at this firm’s page.
Wicker is a longtime opponent of the EPA. Did the two talk about how they can make it easier for big corporations to dump radioactive sludge in your neighborhood? Or about how college athletes deserve collective bargaining rights? I’ll gander a guess.
At the Ole-Miss Florida game, Wicker was joined by Reps. Michael Guest (R-MS) and Trent Kelly (R-MS). I don’t know who they are, and I don’t care. I want to look at more Ole Miss presidential suite first names.
Against the Gators, we have: Brittany. Madalyn. Waverly. Hope. Barron. Roman. Adelyn. Lynlee. Cheryle. Evangeline. There were two different people there with the first name Briggs. When I told an Ole Miss grad this, he said, “Oh, must have been a Sr. and a Jr.”
Nope, two totally unrelated Briggs!
With names like ours, you and I will never be in these rooms.
Sorry. I feel like we are losing the plot here a bit. I’m not gonna lie. The whole point of this article was to crack a singular joke. Let’s get on with it.
At the University of South Carolina, most of its Republican congressional delegation caught the Gamecocks taking on Coastal Carolina. They whalloped the Chanticleers, 51-7.
But a separate South Carolina representative went to a game without any of her counterparts. Alone.
On Sept. 13, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) watched a loss to Vanderbilt.
Did the school make sure there was a one-seat buffer around her so no one had to sit directly next to the notoriously volatile congresswoman?
I can only say what the documents show me.
Seems like it. That was the joke. I hope you liked it.
Behind her was the founder of the Palmetto State Armory, whose stated mission on its website is to “Sell as many guns as possible to as many Americans.”
Great. These are the people who get to have influence. And power. I hate it here.
But… we do not want to end on a down note. So FOIAball perused the founder's FEC donations. He appears to have never given to Mace.
Which means maybe these Second Amendment folks actually do grasp the logic behind red-flag laws.
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