🏈🏉0️⃣1️⃣5️⃣ Richard Tardits
Photo courtesy of Richard Tardits.
Meet Richard Tardits, a rugby player from Bayonne who, following a storied NCAA career with the University of Georgia, became the first French player in the National Football League (NFL).
Born on July 30, 1965, Richard Tardits fell in love with Basque country’s number one sport: rugby. By the time he was 19-years-old, he played for the junior national rugby team. Like many high-level athletes, Tardits wanted to become a physical education teacher so that he could devote himself to rugby. He planned to attend the University of Toulouse and signed with the Stade Toulousain, but a new path opened when his parents sent him to the United States to practice English for one month.
Richard’s Story
Tardits’ U.S. sporting career began when he arrived in Augusta, Georgia. His host family told him about the American university system, which allowed students to pursue their academics and play high-level sports simultaneously. It was a captivating concept, one vastly different from back home, and Tardits sought to obtain a scholarship.
The University of Georgia, barely 100 miles northwest of Augusta, held selection days for students aspiring to obtain an athletic scholarship. Although U.S. universities usually recruited players from high schools, they kept open the opportunity for potential talents that may have slipped through the cracks. After three days of tryouts, Tardits earned a scholarship, but was then presented with a very different sort of problem:
“To stay in the United States, I had to learn to play American football, a sport I had never seen. The only similarity that I found between the two sports [American football and rugby] was the shape of the ball.”
Photo courtesy of Richard Tardits.
Tardits learned the game and excelled with storied Georgia Bulldogs, who four years earlier won the national college football championship (a feat repeated in 2021). He became a sack specialist, notched up the school’s record for most career sacks (29), and earned the nickname “Le Sack.” He was also called “Le Tour de France” after his way of going around players to catch the quarterback rather than through them.
The young Frenchman had a crash course learning about the United States. At the time, “few people knew France and where it was located,” he recalled. “I really had to assimilate into the local culture.”
But it did come with perks.
“A lot of people felt sorry for me because they knew that I was very far from my family, from my country. I was a little bit of a darling [among the fans]. People brought me things to wear, something to eat during the week.”
Tardits was drafted in the fifth round by the National Football League (NFL)’s Arizona Cardinals in 1989 then traded to the New England Patriots. From 1990 until 1992, he played 27 NFL games, all of them with the Patriots organization.
After his NFL career, Tardits returned to rugby. He played for the U.S. rugby sevens at the 1997 World Cup in Hong Kong. Two years later, he played for the United States in the Rugby World Cup and ended his career that same year. Today he is the Delegate for Tourism, International Relations and Twinning at the Biarritz Town Hall.
Sports Diplomacy Connection
If as a Frenchman in the NCAA and NFL Tardits drew greater attention to France, since his return home he has helped translate American football (its techniques, culture, history) through his significant contributions to the sport’s diffusion. Thus, Tardits engaged in informal sports diplomacy through individual people-to-people cultural, technical, and knowledge exchanges. He once told SEC football media about running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. But for the most part, he acknowledged the difficulties talking about France to Americans and vice versa.
“It’s like living two lives, two distinct books. Once I left the United States, I closed this book to open the French book. We talked about football (soccer), rugby, things that the French understand and when I went back to America, I closed the French book and reopened the American book; I talked about American football, basketball, university.”
The two countries were so very different at the time, he said.
“I couldn’t try to speak in France about my experience [in the United States], and I couldn’t speak about my French experience in America because people don't understand, it's too far…so it was really living two lives in parallel.”
Tardits worked with the French Federation of American Football (FFFA) and the American football technical direction to develop the game. He helped translate the Super Bowl spectacle to his fellow citizens as a French television commentator for 25 years. Yet, it remains difficult to develop a sport not taught in French schools. “It is a sport that has never been able to grow,” he said, a situation he compares to rugby in the United States. “Today, I can say that I knew American football in France in the early 1990s, 30 years ago, and I can say that today it hasn’t evolved a bit, unfortunately.”
Photo courtesy of Richard Tardits.
These days, Tardits runs a rugby club, but assiduously follows every American Football match, a passion he now shares with his son. He continues to inspire French athletes, and several have similarly become student-athletes playing American football in the United States. Yet, French or foreign players still find it difficult to enter the NFL, he said. Even though there have been attempts to create a European American football league, U.S. recruiters still prefer players whose stats they have followed since high school and college, who have proven themselves against some of the best teams. But for those who dream of playing in the NFL, Tardits’ experience reminds them that dreams can come true.
Louise Gueydon is a PhD student at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD), SOAS University of London, where she focuses on sports diplomacy.
Mapping the Connection
From Bayonne, France to Athens, Georgia
Resources
[F] Richard Tardits, interview with the author, January 25, 2022.
[F] Arthur Pineau, “Super Bowl : Richard Tardits, le seul Français qui a joué en NFL,” Ouest-France, February 5, 2021.
[E] Hank Hersch, “Vive Le Sack!” Sports Illustrated, October 24, 1988.
How to Cite this Entry
Gueydon, Louise, “Voices: Richard Tardits,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/015-richard-tardits. (date of consultation).