In Texas, the onetime New York Yankee slugger Mark Teixeira is campaigning to represent a solidly red House district — and recently picked up an endorsement from President Trump.
In Arizona, the former N.F.L. kicker Jay Feely is running in a crowded Republican primary for a prized House seat in a swing district.
And in Minnesota, Michele Tafoya, who for years roamed N.F.L. sidelines as a reporter for NBC, ABC and ESPN, has entered the Republican primary race for an open Senate seat, joining a field that includes the former N.B.A. player and third-time political candidate Royce White.
Not long ago, athletes were encouraged to stay away from politics, and often admonished to “stick to sports” if they strayed. These days, though, the U.S. political scene is flush with sports figures.
The Republican Party, in particular, has drawn contenders looking to make the jump from the locker room to the legislature, as the line between sports and politics — on talk radio, TV and podcasts — has blurred. Some candidates have found encouragement from a sports-loving president who has been quick to embrace conservative athletes-turned-candidates, and even quicker to lash out at sports stars who criticize him.
“President Trump’s had a lot of influence,” said Todd Graham, a former Arizona State football coach who considered running for the House this year but decided against it. He said he was “activated” by Mr. Trump’s defiant response to the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa., in July 2024, and may run in a future cycle.
Many of the candidates lean heavily on their sports backgrounds in promoting their candidacies. Mr. Feely’s campaign logo centers his name between the laces of a football, and he has received donations from a star-studded cast of N.F.L. figures that includes the former linebacker Brian Urlacher and the former coach Tom Coughlin, according to campaign finance filings.
Mr. Teixeira’s commercials show him on the baseball diamond and highlight his time on the Texas Rangers. Ms. Tafoya’s campaign launch video includes a series of snapshots of her interviewing football stars.
“That job taught me about more than football,” Ms. Tafoya says in the video. “It taught me about how leadership really works. When leaders are prepared and accountable, teams succeed. When they aren’t, people pay the price.”
It is not the first time that the athletic and political arenas have overlapped. Prominent sports figures have successfully run for public office over the years, among them the N.B.A. player Tom McMillen (a House Democrat), the Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning (a House Republican), the star quarterback Jack Kemp (a House Republican and vice-presidential nominee), the N.B.A. all-star Bill Bradley (a Democratic senator), the Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent (a House Republican), the national champion college football coach Tom Osborne (a House Republican), and the Pro Bowl offensive lineman Jon Runyan (a House Republican).
But the current crop of candidates is large, and high profile, by any historical standard.
The trend appears to be accelerating as Mr. Trump, who once owned a franchise in the short-lived United States Football League, presses politics into many traditionally apolitical spheres of American life.
In recent election cycles, Mr. Trump has thrown his weight behind the Heisman Trophy-winning running back Herschel Walker in his disastrous 2022 campaign for a swing Senate seat in Georgia, and behind the former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville in his successful 2020 run for Senate in deep-red Alabama.
This year, Senator Tuberville has his eyes on the Alabama Governor’s Mansion. (He joins the former N.B.A. player Chris Dudley, an Oregon Republican, in running for governor this year.) And in Georgia, yet another sports figure, the former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, is angling for Mr. Trump’s endorsement in a competitive Republican Senate primary.
Mr. Feely, who spent a decade as a sports analyst for CBS after retiring from the N.F.L., said his House campaign in Arizona was inspired by Mr. Trump. But he also cited another factor: Conservatives in sports broadcasting feel “vilified” at work if they disclose their political views, he said.
“You get to a point where you feel like engaging in the fight rather than just being on the periphery,” Mr. Feely said. “I wanted to — to use a sports metaphor — get off the sidelines.”
The pipeline is not confined to the Republican Party. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat who had a brief career as a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans, is seeking a return to the House after giving up his seat in 2024 to challenge Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. (Mr. Allred, a former three-term congressman, briefly staged a run for Senate this cycle, too, before pivoting back to a House race.)
Mr. Allred said the current generation of athletes was the “most vocal” politically that he had seen. He attributed the shift to the rise of podcasting and frequent, unavoidable collisions of sports and current events.
“The times are more volatile than they were,” Mr. Allred said, noting that a professional athlete playing in Minnesota might naturally be asked about protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He added, “Now tons of guys have podcasts, and they’ll go right on their podcast as soon as their game is over and tell you exactly what they think.”
The condemnation of athletes who speak out on social issues — once forcefully deployed by conservatives, including Mr. Trump — no longer muzzles left-leaning players the way it once did, Mr. Allred said. Republicans have been more open than Democrats to inviting athletes into the world of campaigns, he added, but he believes that is changing.
In at least one potential case of sports-to-politics conversion, party allegiance may be less central. Stephen A. Smith, the sharp-tongued sports talk show host who has built a giant following across two decades at ESPN, has said he has “no choice” but to contemplate a run for president in 2028.
A self-described independent, Mr. Smith hosts both liberals and conservatives on his podcast. And while Democratic lawmakers have discussed inviting him to speak to their membership in Washington, his recent analysis of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show — it “would have been nice if some of the songs were in English,” he suggested — was a reminder that his politics might not line up with theirs. Still, he has indicated he would most likely run as a Democrat.
Republican strategists say a prominent sports background is a powerful advantage in an era when campaigns are expensive. Voters sometimes flock to political outsiders, and visibility can supercharge a candidacy.
Eric Beach, a former chairman of the conservative Great America PAC, suggested that voters were attracted to the “bravado” of high-performing athletes.
But Mr. McMillen, a Democrat who ran for Congress while still playing for the Washington Bullets of the N.B.A. and then served three terms representing Maryland in the 1980s and ’90s, cautioned that a high-level sports background may not necessarily translate into electoral victory. “You don’t have a record,” Mr. McMillen said. “You have to learn nuance.”
His main question about the wave of athletes running now: How many will win?
“That’s the ultimate test,” he said. “Notoriety, notability, celebrity opens the door. But it doesn’t take you to the end zone.”
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