NBA great Michael Jordan was the surprise name offered up as a potential Team USA vice-captain for the next Ryder Cup after Keegan Bradley was officially named as skipper for 2025.
The 38-year-old received the honor after widely-assumed frontrunner Tiger Woods confirmed that he would be eschewing the chance to take the reins at Bethpage. Previous United States helmsman Zach Johnson failed to pick the six-time PGA Tour event victor Bradley for last year’s tournament in Rome.
However, his surprise appointment does come after he represented America at two previous Ryder Cups in 2012 and 2014. Now, the conversation has turned to who could be installed as the new captain’s second in command. In a surprise suggestion, basketball icon Jordan and legendary ex-NFL coach Nick Saban have now been offered up as unlikely candidates for the role.
During a conversation on PGA TOUR Radio, host Jason Sobel and Michael Collins mooted some unorthodox opitions for the gig, with the latter positing: “I think if we’re going outside the box, give me a college coach that’s not a golf coach or give me it from a different sport. Like back in the day would it have been cool to have Phil Jackson in the room. Would it be cool to have [Michael] Jordan?”
After forwarding the case for the Chicago Bulls hero, he then also mentioned long-serving ex-Alabama head coach Saban as another name he would consider. In agreement over the Crimson Tide legend, Sobel responded: “I have no problem with a guy like that being in the team room whether in an official assistant captain capacity or unofficially.”
‘Michael Jordan I would assume – Keegan and MJ play a lot of golf together – you’ll see some presence from MJ,” he continued. “I’ve got no issue with that, I don’t know about giving him the full captaincy but look, we’re going outside the box. The box has been broken, we’ve crushed the box. There is no box anymore.”
In the case of Jordan, he has been a regular attendee at Ryder Cup events in the past and was present at Marco Simone last year as the USA fell to a damaging defeat. Previous to this, the six-time NBA champion was also on hand to give a motivational speech to his countrymen during the tournament at Le Golf National bac in 2018.
Describing the scene which ensued involving the basketball legend, Brooks Koepka said: “Michael was talking about how he would always play on the road against tough opponents or crowds that were always against him. ‘It’s just funny hearing a different athlete’s point of view or the way they would go about it, and then you can kind of take what you want from there.
“He talked about how he didn’t hear the crowd. I took it as he couldn’t wait to shut them up, and the second he would go off … the quieter they are [and] you’re kind of laughing inside [and] you’ve done what you wanted to do. I thought that was pretty cool.’
Rickie Fowler also reflected that Jordan spoke to those present “about some of the teams that were the toughest to play, the guys that he faced and who he thought were the toughest”, alongside “how he kind of went about home games versus away games” during the encounter.