Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Alabama head coach Nick Saban have a friendship that goes back to the 1950s. Saban’s father and Manchin’s uncle were best friends back in the day, and the younger Saban and the future Senator were football players in West Virginia.
“Well, I just know how Joe is,” Saban once said of Manchin. “I know the foundation that he came from, the principles that his dad and my dad, we all grew up with. Not really a whole lot of compromise for not doing the right thing. Or try to do the right thing.”
Now, Saban and other prominent West Virginia sports figures are asking Manchin to do the right thing regarding the right to vote without obstruction. In a January 13 letter signed by Saban, basketball legend Jerry West, former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, former Bills, Falcons, and Vikings linebacker Darryl Talley, and former NFL quarterback and XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck (yes, that’s Andrew Luck’s father), Manchin was strongly encouraged to use his influence to help pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
