Hillary Clinton repeated a disputed claim about her father’s collegiate experience while campaigning at the University of South Florida on Tuesday.
Clinton told the college crowd her father said he couldn’t tell her much about earning a higher education because he was a student athlete.
“My father went to college on a football scholarship. I knew I wasn’t goin’ to college on a football scholarship,” Clinton said. “My mother had a really difficult childhood, she never got to go to college. So my dad couldn’t really tell me much about going to college because he basically played football for four years and loved it.”
But Clinton’s father may have never earned a football scholarship. As BuzzFeed first reported, Clinton’s father did play football but “was not on a football scholarship.” An associate athletic director at the school that Clinton’s father attended told BuzzFeed that Clinton’s dad never earned a scholarship.
Clinton continued to explain on Tuesday that she heeded the advice of her mother, over her father, to stay in school and ultimately grew to enjoy her college experience.
The Democratic nominee is campaigning in Tampa, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will stump in Orlando on Wednesday.
