US Vice President J.D. Vance ended the Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House on Monday by fumbling the team’s national championship trophy.
After laudatory speeches by US President Donald Trump, Buckeye coach Ryan Day and Vance on the South Lawn, the vice president — an Ohio State graduate — tried to hoist aloft the trophy.
He did not count on the trophy’s golden top being designed to separate from its black base.
Photo: AP
After some struggling, the vice president lost his grip on the two pieces. OSU running back TreVeyon Henderson, standing behind Vance, grabbed the football-shaped top of the trophy, but the base fell to the ground, forcing Vance to grasp around as it rolled a short distance.
Some of the players around the vice president winced. The US Marine Corps Band, which performs at presidential events, had to compete with audible gasps from the players and crowd as it played We Are the Champions.
Henderson and Day helped Vance reassemble the trophy, and the vice president later held just the top, cradling it in his arms while the players around him chuckled.
As pictures and videos of Vance’s fumble rocketed across the Internet, the vice president tried to explain away the gaffe with self-deprecation: “I didn’t want anyone after Ohio State to get the trophy so I decided to break it,” he wrote on X.
Trump credited the Ohio State team with winning last year’s college football championship despite “adversity,” including the team’s upset loss to unranked Michigan 13-10 at home in November last year.
Trump said he hesitated to mention OSU’s fourth consecutive defeat to “the team up north — we won’t talk about it.”
Before fumbling the trophy, Vance also used part of his speech to mention the Buckeyes’ biggest rival — singling out an audience member in a Michigan hat.
“I don’t know who let the guy over in the corner here, in a Michigan hat, into this celebration, but I’m about to tell the Secret Service, ‘You’ve got a dangerous weapon, sir,’” he said.
Japanese badminton star Chiharu Shida on Tuesday told Chinese fans to “stop stalking” her, adding that she was “very scared” by the unwanted attention. Shida, who won women’s doubles bronze at the Paris Olympics last year, has a strong following in China partly because of her engagement with the local culture. The 27-year-old, currently competing at the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo, China, has been dubbed the “Badminton Goddess” by fans and media. She hit out at some supporters on Tuesday, accusing them in an Instagram post of taking their fandom too far. “Every time we compete in China we always experience the harm
Two people died on Thursday after fans and police clashed outside the Estadio Monumental in Santiago ahead of a game in South America’s Copa Libertadores, Chilean authorities said. The fatalities happened shortly before the match between Chile’s Colo-Colo and Brazilian club Fortaleza, when police blocked about 100 fans when they attempted to enter the stadium. There were conflicting accounts of how the fatalities occurred, with local media reporting that one of the dead was a 13-year-old boy. The other victim was an 18-year-old woman, according to a relative at the hospital where she was treated. The fans died after being caught underneath a
A potential European league could be a gold mine for the NBA as the top-flight North American league looks to muscle its way into a deep pool of talent across the Atlantic Ocean. The NBA is exploring the launch of a European league with world basketball governing body FIBA as a partner, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last week, with an eye toward a 16-team format made up of 12 permanent clubs and four qualifiers. The continent’s longstanding Euroleague quickly signaled its readiness to enter into talks with the NBA, even as it has balked at the idea of another league in
Hans Niemann, the chess grand master at the heart of an alleged cheating scandal, has yet to provide an explanation on his late withdrawal from the Freestyle Grand Slam in Paris. Niemann, who was accused of cheating by world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in 2023 before the matter was settled outside court, received a wild card for the event, but informed organizers he was pulling out for “personal reasons” less than 48 hours before the start of the 12-player tournament. “I texted him on Friday at 7pm. I said: ‘Hans, we’re already here. Are you here as well?’ And he read the
RSS