Something strange is happening in Texas: a Democratic challenger is poised to win a Senate seat. What’s even stranger is that this 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 NFL as a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans before finding his way into politics. It’s the central part of his campaign biography – the son of a single mother in Dallas overcoming long odds to get into the NFL. The rest of his story becomes shorter: law school; his work as a civil rights attorney in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama; his time in Congress after upsetting Republican incumbent Pete Sessions for a House seat in 2018. His rhetoric is peppered with football references. The launch video for his Senate campaign was shot in an empty football stadium; He once even referred to the border with Mexico as a “one-yard line.”

Politicians often resort to shorthand when it comes to shorthand. The guys on the other side are constantly moving goal posts. But Allred can talk about the pain that comes with sacrifice and mean it. After a collision with former Dallas Cowboys tight end Martellus Bennett during a power run, he had to have two cervical vertebrae fused.

There are only two sports in Texas: football and spring football. (And whatever happened when Nolan Ryan was on the mound, too.) The appeal of a politician with roots in football is obvious to many Texans. The appeal of a Democrat, however, is not, and the Democratic Party is still trying to sort that out. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke lost to Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race by less than three percentage points after O’Rourke benefited from a surge in national attention (and the money that came with it). O’Rourke was a lanky, foul-mouthed progressive who became an overnight celebrity; Documentary cameras followed him everywhere. Allred is nothing like that. He is physically imposing but appears reserved. He’s not exactly press-shy, but he doesn’t call press conferences either. He prefers a small audience to O’Rourke’s barnstorming style. His main address is not aimed at young people who are involved in a grassroots movement, but at moderates. During his campaign, he boasted of his track record of fighting “extremists of both parties.”

And for months, the Democratic Party wrote off Texas; Allred was largely on his own, which might not have bothered him. Allred spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last August but also stayed away from the Harris campaign. When Politico asked him if he wanted Kamala Harris, Tim Walz or Joe Biden to come to Texas to campaign for him, Allred replied: “What I’ve always said is that if someone comes here and talks about current Topics you want to talk about.” You’re welcome as we confront the Texans and how we can resolve them. But I was never much of a substitute.”

This approach had helped Allred oust Sessions, and it could work again. Allred has clearly overtaken Cruz. And when it became clear that Allred had a real chance – and that changing the Texas seat would give Democrats a chance to stay in the Senate – the party invested several million dollars in his campaign. Earlier this month, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, Greg Casar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to Texas to campaign for him, presumably to drum up enthusiasm among younger voters. Not surprisingly, Allred himself wasn’t there.

Allred touts being named one of the most bipartisan members of Congress by the Common Ground Committee. He has gone against his party on several issues affecting his voters, particularly on border and oil and gas matters, but otherwise his record is pretty much in line with his party’s, and his campaign included protecting the… among other Democratic priorities Access to abortion is a priority. He was the first congressman to publicly take paternity leave.

Maybe it was easier to do something like that when you were captain of Baylor’s football team. No one dares to question your masculinity. Walz, another Democratic politician who relies heavily on his football resume, said that as a coach of a high school football team, he had the right profile to sponsor an LGBT group. “It really had to be the football coach who was a soldier, straight and married,” Walz said in a 2018 interview. Football doesn’t just offer Allred an easy way to weave in the usual clichés about toughness and teamwork – although it hits a little differently when Allred describes taking off his jacket to prepare for the challenge MAGA Looters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 while Cruz hid in a supply closet. His past as a football player strengthens his claim to non-partisanship. In an election cycle in which gender plays an increasingly important role in shaping party direction, it may be easier to speak convincingly about issues that matter most to women, such as reproductive rights, if you have a background that men tend to admire.

For much of its history, football had rather conservative associations. It is hierarchical, militaristic, played by men, and the games are preceded by bouts of nationalism. The U.S. flags that cover a football field weigh around a thousand pounds each. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan – all football players, all Republicans. (John F. Kennedy, who played on Harvard’s junior varsity team, is the only Democratic exception among presidents.) Almost all current and former congressmen and senators with ties to college and professional football – including Anthony Gonzalez, Jon Runyan and Steve Largent, Burgess Owens, Tommy Tuberville, Tom Osborne and JC Watts – are Republicans. (Besides Allred, I can think of Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback and congressman, and Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey who played football at Stanford.) And the NFL commissioner’s father, Roger Goodell, actually was , a Republican senator. Several NFL owners have donated money to Donald Trump, even though the NFL rejected him when he tried to own a team himself.

Not long ago, it seemed like the gap was only getting bigger. As more evidence emerged about the danger of concussions and rules were introduced to reduce the risk, many Republicans became upset that the game was becoming too “soft.” Meanwhile, the sons of liberal parents dropped out of the game in droves. Then came Colin Kaepernick and his decision in 2016 to kneel during the national anthem at games to protest police brutality against Black Americans — followed by the decision by every team in the league not to hire him after the season ended. Progressive activists celebrated Kaepernick and the other players, who then knelt in support. Meanwhile, Mike Pence, then the vice president, went to an Indianapolis Colts game, only to walk out after some players kneeled during the anthem. At the time of the George Floyd protests in 2020 – for example, when the league wrote: “END RACISM” in tiny letters on the end zones of every field, a move that satisfied no one – the NFL had become a political football. But sports were still Americans’ greatest commonality. 82 of the hundred most-watched television broadcasts in 2022 were NFL games. And that was before Taylor Swift came along.