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Nearly every press account of Rubio’s college years has described him as being recruited to play football at Tarkio College and offered a full scholarship to do so. But what Rubio didn’t know as a high school senior was that century-old college was teetering on the brink of default, and indeed would close a year after Rubio dropped out and returned to Florida. A few years before Rubio entered, the school was desperate to stave off a financial collapse brought on by declining enrollment numbers. The board brought on a shady school administrator named Dennis C. Spellman who set up illegitimate off-campus programs, enrolled ill-prepared (and often homeless or drug-addled) students for them and collecting federal grants and loans in the process. The school was later described by one administrator as little more than “a front.” The student loan default rate was 79 percent, more than 10 times the national average. As he presided over Tarkio’s demise, Spellman was the executive vice-president of seven colleges simultaneously, using similar schemes for each. He was described by one newspaper account as “Higher Ed’s worst nightmare,” and compared himself to Wyatt Earp.

In order to stave off the inevitable, the college invested heavily in student recruitment. “There was a tremendous effort to reach out to immigrant families, particularly Latino families” recalled Robert Hughes, who was on the board at the time. The school admitted all who applied, which was a good thing for Rubio, who by his own admission carried a 2.1 grade point average his final year in high school. The school didn’t grant athletic scholarships, but provided grant-in-aid to all who couldn’t afford to go.

Rubio was a 5-foot-10 defensive back who was a role player at South Miami High School, one of the most highly regarded high school teams in the nation. It is unlikely that the coaches at Tarkio ever saw game film of him, much less saw him play an actual down. Local press accounts include stories about other high school recruits, including some from Rubio’s Miami, deciding to sign with Tarkio, but there is no public mention of Rubio, a sign that his athletic future was not even on the radar of high school sports reporters. The school hadn’t posted a winning record in two decades, but Rubio thought it would give him the chance to switch over to wide receiver, a position he believed he was better suited for.

But it was not to be.

“I don’t know where this whole playing football thing of Rubio’s came from,” recalled one teammate who lived on the same freshman hall as the future senator. “I know he showed up to play football, and I remember him suiting up for the team picture, but that is about it.”

The group and the rest of the dorm engaged in epic games of Tecmo Bowl, a rudimentary video game in which pro football teams would square off against each other. To a person, everyone contacted for this article recalls Rubio being far more successful at the 8-bit version of football than the real one, squirreling away for hours in his dorm room.

“He was far more competitive about that than he was about real football,” recalled Tim Kirkpatrick, a wide receiver on the team.

Dorm-mates recall Rubio developing elaborate theories about how the game worked and how to execute trick plays with the controls.

“You could see in just the way he talked about Tecmo Bowl,” recalled Cocci. “It was like he was debating Donald Trump or something.”