[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. If you have suggestions or feedback on how I can earn your paid subscription, shoot me an email: [email protected]. And if this is too big of a commitment, I’m always thankful for a simple cup of coffee.]

[NOTE: THIS IS A SATIRE PIECE WHICH I REALIZED MANY FOLKS WHO DON’T FOLLOW SPORTS TOOK QUITE SERIOUSLY AND EXPRESSED THEIR CONCERNS — I GUARANTEE YOU I WON’T MIX SPORTS, POLITICS, AND SATIRE AGAIN BUT FOR THOSE GET IT, DO ENJOY THE PIECE]Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has made a big deal about coaching high school football. The Harris-Walz campaign has boasted numerous times about his prominent role in leading the Mankato West High School football team to a state title in 1999.

This part of his public narrative has been so central to the campaign’s roll-out of his selection as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate that supposed former members of the team he claims to have coached were featured onstage at the Democratic National Convention last week.

Yet records show that not only did Gov. Walz never coach a football team at Mankato West—let alone win a state title with said squad—but there is no proof of any football team at Mankato West prior to 2006, according to a very quick Google search done right before publication of this reporting.

But first, some background for our readers.

The sport of football in its current form was invented in the 8th century on an island just west of the European continent that is now called Great Britain.

For many centuries, the game shifted sloppily into various offshoots with inconsistent playing frameworks until 1863, when a nine player committee representing a number of English boarding schools introduced a new set of regulations, now known as the Cambridge rules.

This coincided with the founding of The Football Association (FA), the world’s first national governing body for the sport, which still oversees the professional and amateur game in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man to this day.

According to the FA, the first sanctioned match under these rules took place on December 19th of that year between “Barnes and Richmond at Limes Field in Barnes,” which resulted in a scoreless tie, showing that even then the European sporting mindset was averse to outright victory.

Over time, the game spread beyond the borders of the island into other countries, which created their own regulatory bodies, and in 1904, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was established in Paris as the global authority for the sport, though England would not become a member until the following year.

Today, football is considered the world’s most popular sport, with billions of fans and established governing bodies in nearly every country. Every four years, in an offset schedule, the World Cup and the Men’s World Cup are played in a selected host nation and attract billions of viewers.

There is no record of Gov. Walz having ever been involved in football at any level, let alone coached a team in this sport to a championship, and repeated requests via phone and email to the Harris-Walz campaign for comment went unanswered.

When asked for comment or any documentation establishing the spurious claims made by Gov. Walz, the receptionist at Mankato West High School appeared to be confused by the request and then hung up.

We attempted to reach out to the supposed former players coached by Gov. Walz, but they were said to still be recovering from afterparties at the DNC and unavailable for comment.

A source close to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump offered that maybe Gov. Walz lied about his supposed coaching past because he hates America, which we duly report here to offer both sides an equal perspective on the matter.

We would like to directly ask Vice President Harris why her running mate blatantly lied to the public about his sporting achievements, but she refuses to hold a press conference, her campaign instead engaging with social media influencers on topics like national security, housing expansion, abortion rights, health care, and gun reform.

The next presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 10th at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where we hope moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News will address Gov. Walz’s fabricated coaching record.

More on this story as it develops.

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