The White House punted Tuesday when asked about President Joe Biden‘s apparent football fib.
Biden told graduating Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy Friday that he spurned an invitation to the venerable military institution back in 1965 because future NFL Hall of Fame Roger Staubach blocked his path to gridiron glory. But as The Daily Wire reported Saturday, nothing about the claim adds up. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed about the claim Tuesday and ducked the question.
“I did not see that part of the speech,” Jean-Pierre said.
Q: "Joe Biden was born in 1942, graduated from Delaware in 1965. In his address, he said he was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965. Was he?"
Jean-Pierre: "I did not see that part of the speech." pic.twitter.com/KGfbzQiGvg
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 31, 2022
In his speech, Biden said he was “appointed to the Academy in 1965,” but passed on Navy and went to the University of Delaware to pursue pigskin prominence.
“I didn’t come to the Academy because I wanted to be a football star,” Biden said. “And you had a guy named Staubach and Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”
One problem with the story is that Biden would’ve been 23 in 1965 and graduated from the University of Delaware that same year. There’s also no evidence he ever declined a spot at Navy, and he did not play varsity football at Delaware.
Staubach and Joe Bellino, the only two Navy players to win the Heisman trophy, were gone by 1965. Staubach also graduated in 1965, and went off to fight in Vietnam before coming home and having a storied career with the Dallas Cowboys. Bellino was a halfback who graduated in 1961, also fought in Vietnam, and had a brief career in the NFL.
Biden was a pretty good wide receiver at Wilmington’s Archmere Academy, once catching three touchdown passes from quarterback Bill Peterman during their 1-6 junior year. During his 1960 senior year at Archmere, with a new coach, Biden scored 10 touchdowns in eight games and the team went undefeated.
“In almost any group I was the leader,” Biden later wrote in his autobiography. “I was the leading scorer on our undefeated and untied football team my senior year, and I didn’t lack for confidence on the field.”
In 2008, Biden took heat for telling what seemed to be a tall football tale about playing for the University of Delaware against Ohio University.
“I came here in 1963, and I had to go back, I just double checked my memory — you know, you get my age and you’re not so sure of it, you know, your glory days look more glorious than they really were and all that, so we went back on the Internet and I just want you to know, I came here in October 1963, and we beat you Bobcats 29-12,” he claimed.
But a subsequent fact-check determined that Biden had only briefly been on the school’s freshman football team during the 1961 season.
“Joe Biden DID play on the 1961 University of Delaware freshman team, but did not finish out the season in order to earn a letter,” Delaware Sports Information Director Scott Selheimer said in 2012. “He later came out for the team in the spring of 1963 and took part in practices, but did not end up playing varsity football in the fall of 1963 when the official competition season takes place. Thus he was not listed on the roster.”
An aide to Biden at the time later clarified that the then-vice president meant he had gone to Ohio to cheer for Delaware, not actually play.
“The Vice President went to Athens with the University of Delaware football team to cheer,” the aide said. “As he makes clear in his statement, he played football, but not during the fall of his junior year.”