During his commencement speech at West Point on Saturday, President Biden repeated his claim that he turned down an offer to attend the Naval Academy because he planned to play football.
Biden, 81, told the graduates that he was “one of 10” appointed to the Naval Academy by Delaware Republican Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, years before he defeated Boggs to become a U.S. senator in the 1972 election.
“When I was 29, my opponent nominated me to the Naval Academy. I was one of 10. I wanted to play football,” Biden said. He said in his remarks:.
“Then I found out two days ago that they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach and a halfback named Joe Bellino, so I said, ‘I’m not going there.’ I went to Delaware. I’m not kidding,” the president said.
Biden previously told the same story to the graduating class of 2022, saying he was accepted to the military academy in 1965 but declined to attend.
He did not give a date in Saturday’s version of the story.
Bellino and Staubach are the only Navy football players to win the Heisman Trophy. Staubach, an NFL Hall of Famer, played his first game for Navy in 1962 and graduated in 1964. Bellino played his final game in January 1961, four years before considering enrolling at the Naval Academy.
Biden was a standout high school football player at Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware, graduating from the school in 1961. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965, reportedly playing football as a freshman but not completing the season.
RNC Research, an X-account run by the Republican National Committee’s emergency response team, denounced Biden’s dubious story.
“He has repeated this lie many times before and there is still no record of it actually happening,” the Republican National Committee posted.
Biden’s 2008 autobiography, “Promises to Keep,” makes no mention of the Naval Academy.
