U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, son of a Longhorn, took a swipe at the beleaguered University of Texas football team — and junior high female athletes — during a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday.
At an event in Sioux City, he took a sheepish demeanor when an audience member taunted the team.
“I was with [U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa] physically, not too far away, when y’all whipped the Longhorns, and I didn’t even have anything to defend myself,” he joked. "I think they canceled their football program and they brought in a girls' junior high team instead."
Video of the comment almost immediately surfaced online.
The Republican presidential hopeful, a Princeton graduate but a Texas fan, is on a campaign blitz through Iowa this weekend.
The senator whom Cruz succeeded was unamused.
“The Princeton graduate has credibility in many areas, but football may not be one of them,” former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison fired back, via The Dallas Morning News.
Hutchison is a former president of the Texas Exes alumni association and was a Texas cheerleader during her undergraduate years.
But a Cruz aide stressed to The Texas Tribune that he was only kidding around.
"It was a joke," said Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier, herself a University of Texas graduate.
The Longhorns, a historical football powerhouse, are in an uphill climb to qualify for a bowl game this year.
But they still beat Oklahoma.
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report from Sioux City, Iowa.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.
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