Sen. Tommy Tuberville left college coaching years ago, but his Auburn paydays haven’t stopped.
Financial disclosures filed this month show Tuberville collected $47,071 in fiscal year 2024 from his Auburn pension—the same amount he’s reported in prior years. His only other earned, non-investment income was a $1,659 royalty payment from Warner Bros. for his cameo in The Blind Side (2009), in which he plays himself recruiting Michael Oher to the Tigers.
Tuberville coached Auburn from 1999 to 2008, resigning after a 5–7, bowl-less season. The school gave him a $5.08 million buyout despite no contractual obligation. He later coached at Texas Tech and Cincinnati. According to his financial disclosure, Tuberville is also eligible for a pension from the University of Miami, where he served as an assistant coach, and a 401(k) from Disney, stemming from his 2017 stint as an ESPN color commentator—though he reported no distributions for FY 2024. His reported assets, totaling in the millions, include up to $15,000 in Under Armour stock.
Meanwhile, Tuberville’s GOP colleague, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, reported his own football-related perks last fiscal year: a $450 Sugar Bowl ticket from Datamark CEO Bill Holmes for the Jan. 1, 2024, Texas-Washington matchup, plus a private flight from New Orleans to Texas the next day. Cruz and his wife later received $1,500 tickets each to the Texas–Texas A&M rivalry game from Houston investor Willie Langston, co-founder of Avalon Advisors. Cruz showed up in strikingly noncommittal fashion to the Aggies-Longhorns SEC clash this past November in College Station, Texas, sporting a shirt that declared, “Switzerland.”
Cruz, chair of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, and Tuberville have been active players in Congress’s ongoing push to regulate college athlete pay. Both have championed legislation that would set a national standard for college NIL rules and prohibit athletes from becoming employees of their universities.
