We knew Tommy Tuberville was incompetent, but insulting leader of the Marines is galling

Tommy Tuberville’s incompetence would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. And, now, offensive.

Not content with hamstringing the military by holding up promotions, the Republican senator from Alabama has stooped to insulting high-ranking officers, too, having the audacity to liken the stress a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff faces with what he endured as a college football coach.

You read that right. Tuberville thinks working 18 hours a day drawing up defensive schemes and mucking up his offensive coordinator’s game plan is comparable to the 18-plus hours a day Gen. Eric Smith was working to protect the United States, our allies and, most importantly, the young men and women who serve.

Smith, who is both the No. 1 and No. 2 person at the U.S. Marine Corps because of Tuberville’s performative antics, was hospitalized Sunday after an apparent heart attack.

“He’s got 2,000 people who work for him, OK? And somebody said he’s working 18 hours a day. Jack Reed blamed me for his heart attack,” Tuberville said Thursday, referring to the Rhode Island senator who, unlike Tuberville, knows a little about the demands of military service after being a platoon leader, company commander and battalion officer during eight years of active duty in the U.S. Army.

“Come on, give me a break,” Tuberville continued. “This guy’s going to work 18, 20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. You know, I did that for years because you’ve got to get the job done.”

Ah yes. The life-and-death decisions Smith has to make are exactly the same as what Tuberville faced when he had third-and-eight in the red zone and was trailing by five. Or needed to hire a new running backs coach.

Yep. Exactly the same.

Tuberville’s arrogance in comparing his former job to that of Smith’s doesn’t come as a surprise, sadly. This is someone who had the hubris to think he was up to the task of being a U.S. Senator despite no previous record of public service. And no, being a football coach at a public university doesn’t count, even in SEC country.

It was obvious Tuberville neither understood the gravity of his new position nor cared to try when, shortly after he was elected, he described the three branches of government as “the House, the Senate and the executive.” They are, as any third-grader can tell you, the legislative, judicial and executive.

Had Tuberville simply cast the occasional vote and collected his $174,000 salary — “every dime” of which he once promised to donate to veterans, mind you, but apparently has not — his presence in the Senate still would have been an embarrassment. But it wouldn’t have been catastrophic.

Which is what it’s become.

Since February, Tuberville has blocked almost all officer promotions to protest the Pentagon’s policy of allowing service members to receive reimbursement if they travel out-of-state for abortion care. Aside from his “pro-life” status being a farce — he’s on-record as being against Medicare for all and supporting the death penalty, among other things — Tuberville’s histrionics are the equivalent of using a blowtorch to light a campfire.

The officers he is blocking are not the authors of this policy, the White House is. If Tuberville has a problem with it, he should take it up with the Biden Administration.

But that wouldn’t get him the headlines and MAGA adulation he craves.

"I cannot simply sit idly by while the Biden Administration injects politics in our military,” Tuberville said Wednesday night, the irony of his statement apparently lost on him.

OPINION:Tommy Tuberville is no longer just a football coach. Now, he's a danger to the country.

By blocking appointments, both as a group and individually, the man who likes to claim "there is no one more military" is actively undermining the readiness of our armed forces at a time when wars are raging in both Ukraine and Israel. 

Don’t take my word for it. In an op-ed in the Washington Post in September, the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force said the United States’ traditional military superiority was being “actively eroded” by Tuberville’s stunt.

“It is putting our national security at risk,” the secretaries wrote.

“These jobs — and dozens of others across the force — are being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States’ military edge,” they added.

Even Tuberville’s fellow GOP senators are fed up with his clown show.

In stunning condemnations on the Senate floor on Wednesday night, Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, blasted Tuberville and his holds, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was damaging the military.

“Again my colleague, ‘Oh, no readiness problem.’ That’s such baloney. Baloney. And everybody knows it. You spend one day in the military, you know it,” said Sullivan, who has been on either active or reserve duty with the U.S. Marine Corps since 1993.

As a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, Sullivan is one of those “2,000 people” who works for Smith, the Marine Corps Commandant. Seems he would know better than Tuberville how difficult, and important, these jobs are.

“We are going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” Sullivan said.

That's what you get, though, when you elect someone who doesn't understand the military and respects it even less. That's what you get when you elect a football coach to do a Senator's job.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.