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October 15, 2014 04:46 PM UTC

"Fantasy" Football; Cory Gardner Even Lies About High School Sports

  • 38 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #2: Deadspin's Dave McKenna follows up:

Gardner campaign spokesman Alex Siciliano sent the following, presented in its entirety, via email: "Cory Gardner played football from Junior High through Sophomore year in high school." Eli Stokols of FOX-31 in Denver is reporting the Gardner campaign told him, "Gardner played football through soph year of high school, never played varsity." Reached Wednesday night at his home, Chuck Pfalmer, longtime stats keeper for Gardner's alma mater, Yuma High School, and a primary source for the story, told me: "Cory did play football for three years" in high school, and that his records show that Gardner spent his junior year "on varsity." During a lengthy conversation about Yuma High football on Tuesday, Pfalmer repeatedly said Gardner had not played football at the school.

—–

UPDATE: The Denver Post's Lynn Bartels reports that the main source for Deadspin's story claims his comments have been "mischaracterized."

The main source for the story by the online site Deadspin — a former Yuma High School teacher who had Gardner as a student and kept football stats — says the report mischaracterized his comments. Gardner graduated from the Eastern Plains high school in 1993.

In fact, says Deadspin source Chuck Pfalmer, Gardner played football his freshman through junior years in high school.

"He was not a starter, but he played in those years," said Pfalmer, 77, who retired from the high school in 1997.

In response to Deadspin's story this afternoon, which spread widely via social media, Gardner's campaign released two photos of Gardner in his Yuma High School uniform. Those photos would also seem to refute the central claim of Deadspin's story. We'll update if and when Deadspin responds–there's a pretty big gap between the quote in their story and Bartels' report, and we'd like to see it fully explained.

Original post follows.

—–

Cory Gardner is even lying about playing high school football (image via Deadspin).
Cory Gardner is even lying about playing high school football (image via Deadspin).

We're wayyyy past the point of talking about politicians who stretch the truth here — this is weird. Like, borderline-psychotic weird. Cory Gardner will quite literally say anything if he thinks it will help him get elected. ANYTHING.

Check out this story from the popular sports website Deadspin about Congressman Cory Gardner apparently lying about having played football in high school. For crying out loud, is there any subject that Gardner won't try to tackle in order to make a political point?

The Washington Post ran a long story about the campaign this week. Reporter Karen Tumulty opened the piece with a riff that had Gardner talking about his days playing high school football, and how the current opposition's campaign strategy reminds him of that experience…

…Later in the Post piece, the 40-year-old Gardner circled back to schoolboy football and the single-wing metaphor to blast Udall's politics as coming from "a tired old playbook."

Alas, other than spelling and grammar, there's not a whole lot right about those grafs.

First: So, in high school, Gardner played both ways?

No way, says Chuck Pfalmer, a now-retired Yuma High School teacher: "Cory Gardner wasn't on the football team." [Pols emphasis]

Everybody around Yuma (pop. 3,524) knows everybody around Yuma. Even when Gardner was a kid, folks around town saw him as somebody who was going to run for political office someday. And for an even longer time, Pfalmer's been known as the go-to guy for football facts about Yuma High, Gardner's alma mater. He kept stats for the Yuma Indians varsity squad from 1971 to 2010, a streak of 394 consecutive games.

But Gardner, who graduated in 1993, never played in any of the Yuma games Pfalmer saw under the Friday night lights. Not at "fullback" or "middle linebacker" or anywhere else.

Cory Gardner's capacity for just straight up lying is getting downright creepy. He lies directly to multiple reporters about a Personhood bill that has his own name on it. He lies about immigration reform. He lies about birth control.

This really is an entirely new kind of character flaw being exposed. As Deadspin writes, politicians are known to lie and fib from time to time, but those lies are usually based on some nugget of truth. What Gardner is doing now is writing fictional stories about himself from Page 1. He is making up this "Cory Gardner" person as he goes along each day, adding new nonsense at every opportunity. The next thing you know, he'll be talking about the time he landed on Mars when he was an astronaut with NASA.

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38 thoughts on ““Fantasy” Football; Cory Gardner Even Lies About High School Sports”

    2. I'm guessing The Yuma Pioneer goes silent on this one.  I can guarantee you the Wray Gazette (the county seat) won't breathe a word. Look for a stinging guest commentary in both papers next week by our little watermelon sniper about Ebola, ISIS and end-of-the-world predictions including SB-252 (I feel like I'm missing a fake crisis) and god only knows what else to serve up a little deflection.

  2. Didn't his BFF falsely claim to run a sub-3 hr marathon AND conquer all of Colorado's 14-ers?  This is what happens to young, malleable minds when they are exposed to Ayn Rand…

    "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

  3. As opposed to the other candidate who claimed he was picked up for a joint and it turns out it was enough grass to infer intent to distribute and amphetamines which resulted in him forfeiting the vehicle used to transport the drugs. 

  4. This is the type of "silly little story" which, in the right hands, can really start drawing some serious political blood. It goes straight to the heart of a lying candidate's basic credibility, and undermines any facade said liar may have constructed about being a "straight shooter" with "small-town, American values."

    Unless they're already on it, this needs to be brought to the attention of Team Udall, STAT.

    1. He'll get a pass from the neo-cons.  This is nothing new – they know he's lying about Personhood.  A couple of (wink)(winks) and all is fine – they know how he'll vote if they can just get him through the doors of the Senate Chambers.

      1. Now that he is posting pictures of himself in a football uniform, an original source would be the relevant school year books.  But I think you are right.  People will still vote for him.

  5. True, but as we know, small-town Friday-night football is a BIG DEAL in much of rural America, and I doubt folks in these areas wil take kindly to being lied to so brazenly about something so meaningful to them.

    Among the more urban parts of the state, it simply reinforces and amplifies the "Gardner is a craven liar" meme in a very basic, tangible way, and hardens opposition to him further.

    I'd love to see Senator Udall (or one of the moderators) sucker-punch Con Man in a debate with a very pointed question about this.

  6. Aaaaaaaand now the backpedaling, parsing ("what's the actual definition of 'played'?") and obfuscation begin.

    Looks like Cory's boys read the riot act to ol' Coach Pfalmer.

    I knew this story had potential legs; that's why they're moving with such haste to squelch it.

  8. And some pretty big talk for a bench-warmer at best:

    "Cory Gardner figures that what he needs to know about big-league politics he learned as a fullback and middle linebacker for an eastern Colorado high school so small that the guys had to play both offense and defense.

    " 'I used to play against a high school football team that always used to run the single wing."

    Uh, NO, congressman — YOU DIDN'T

      1. At the very least, Gardner has been caught vastly inflating his gridiron prowess; at worst, he is lying shamelessly yet again.

        And either way, this dust-up is that it reanimates and reinvigorates the entire, absolutely correct "Gardner can't be trusted — he lies about everything" meme among CO voters and the press, while distracting the Gardner cabal from one more day's precious news cycle.
         

  10. There's nothing funnier or more pathetically ironic than some random Fox News fat head hypocrite pissing, moaning and whining about somebody else allegedly telling "lies."

    LMFAO!

  12. So he signed up for the team, but, just kind of sucked at it.  If you can't make the Yuma HS team as a starter, I'm guessing you really suck at it.

  13. Ok, so he suited up. What was his position: bench-rider? Also, it wasn't even JV. So,  to borrow from Politico, I rate his story Mostly True, at best.

    1.  

      What this really deserves is a huge belly laugh. Gardner can lie about his support of personhood, his support for alternative energy, climate change, his personal insurance coverage, and damn near anything else with impunity — and be called out for it, and respond with a smile and a "ho hum."

      But challenge his on his junior high school glory days embellishments, and he suffers the utter sting of true GOPer Victimhood.  "Take it back, take it back, it burns!!"

       

       

      1. So a not-yet-ready-for prime time politician quits the sport half-way through the four-years and never gets beyond JV.  Yet struts around as if the winner of the Heisman trophy and talks smack about things that never happened. 

        No I'm not referring to Sarah Palin.

          1. He can also see this from Yuma: the wind turbine owned by Wray School District RD-2, providing 100% of the power to the P-12 education complex in Wray – and the excess providing approximately 25% of the City of Wray's electric load. 

            In the shadows of the city from which the man hails – who denies mans role in climate change and has opposed every renewable mandate since 2004 (although it is his own Congressional District that has benefited from the $6 billion in wind investments).  Ladies and gentlemen, a glimpse of 'the future of energy': distributed generation….

            1. Aren't you even a little concerned that these things are avian Cuisinart?

              They destroy local bat populations and because of how they operate, have a horrible kill rate on raptor's, the most sensitive of the birds.

              2. PS: you don't really believe that the Congressman, a  wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch, Inc., a group committed to rolling back the Clean Air Act, maintaining oil and gas' exemption from the Clean Water Act, seizing federal lands via state legislatures, funding climate denial nationwide and gutting the Endangered Species Act really gives a rats ass about a few Raptors or bats, do you?

        2. The story is bogus.  Apparently he played for three years–two JV, one varsity.

          It would have been a great story, and would have, in grand fashion, reinforced the emerging narrative of Gardner as an out-and-out liar.  But, alas, it ain't true.  Time to move on and keep pounding Gardner on real issues and his actual dissemblances.

          And yeah, the whole "single wing" thing is really stupid–Akron has been using the single wing offense to great effect for decades, so Gardner gets that completely wrong.

          And I said "Buzzfeed" but of course it's Deadspin that broke this.

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