Alongside the main scoreboard at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia, Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker’s name is enshrined in big, bold letters for 90,000 American football fans to see every time they check the score.

It’s not a political advertisement, but a decades-old honorarium by the University of Georgia to one of its greatest college football players, whose success or failure in the November 8 midterm elections will help determine who controls the US senate and the legislative agenda of the most powerful nation in the world.