‘I’m definitely old school’ – Mark Cuban on his love for rugby

The billionaire NBA owner and political power player regrets starting out a second row forward. Forgiving such blasphemy, I asked him about his long-term love for the game

Jul 04, 2025

Mark Cuban, third from left, front row, Indiana University RFC, 1979.

One day in May 2018, somewhere towards the back of a Bolt Bus, somewhere between New York and Washington, I dozed against the window.

The trip was for a Guardian interview with HR McMaster, which ended up scooping the New Yorker, sort of, in that HR talked to me about rugby after spending months refusing to talk to them about his time as Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

There on the godforsaken Bolt Bus, my phone woke me up. Dopey, I didn’t recognize the Texas number. The caller tried again. I answered. It was Mark Cuban.

The billionaire — then a star of Shark Tank and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, now still with the Mavs but also an advocate for affordable medicine — was known to love rugby with a passion undimmed since his college days. I’d been trying to reach him for a piece about famous Americans who played. I collected my wits, and we talked.

In journalism, most of the string — quotes — you collect, you don’t ultimately use. Cuban’s remarks about the camaraderie of rugby made my final piece, of course, illustrating the appeal of the game in the days before scholarships and varsity status. I used them again in my book. What follows is the full transcript of our short conversation:

How did you find rugby?

I started playing when I was 18 at Indiana University and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I love the sport, I have lifelong friends in my team-mates. I played after college for the Pittsburgh Harlequins, the Dallas Harlequins and then the Dallas Reds. I played Old Boys up until I got my hips replaced a few years back. It’s in my blood. It was a little bit tough. I was worried my hip would pop out. I actually played one half after I got my first hip replacement and it was nerve-racking, kinda, so I gave it up there.

Tell me more about playing at college.

One of my friends, Dike Drummond, had spent a lot of time over in the UK, then he came back to college in Indiana and lived in the same dorm as me and I was looking for something to do. So he said, ‘Come on, play rugby,’ and I did. Just went down to practice and played. I started off as second row, unfortunately. [Blasphemer! – Ed.] But I gave that up after the first year and then I played wing forward and No8 man.

Why would anyone quit playing second row?

I just got tired of getting kicked in the face and having to duck all the time and having scrums collapse on me.

How did you move into the club game?

Back then, this was the 80s, so it was open club rugby really. When I played for the [Dallas] Harlequins we won the quote-unquote national championship, but I played for the B team. When I played for Pittsburgh I played A and B team, that was my best run as a rugby player. We had a really good team. When I played for the Pittsburgh Harlequins and for the Dallas Harlequins, it was as high a level of rugby as you can get. When I stopped playing regularly I was like 33 or 34, so … 1993-94. Definitely pre-professionalism. The rules were different, there wasn’t lifting in the line-out. I’m definitely old school.

What did rugby teach you?

It taught me not to take myself too seriously, it taught me that you can beat the hell out of each other and then drink together afterwards, it taught me that a good rugby song and a party makes you lifelong friends no matter what. It taught me the value of fitness. There’s so many things. The beauty of rugby is that it’s so irreverent that you learn not to take yourself or anyone else too seriously. You learn to accept other people for who they are. We had doctors, lawyers, day labourers, jobless, homeless, even, you know? There was always someone who slept on each others’ couch. They’re still my best friends to this day. We all get together every couple of years.

Do you keep in touch with the game?

Now that it’s on TV more and they have it on NBC, I watch it. I watch the All Blacks when I can, Six Nations when I can, I went to the CRCs [Collegiate Rugby Championships, the sevens event then held in Philadelphia, now in Maryland.] I give a lot of money to my university team [most recently $6m over three years, announced last December]. Indiana is a top program. I try to stay absolutely connected.
Major League Rugby, no. Every time there’s anything related to rugby in the US, I get emails. From USA Rugby to every professional attempt. Lots of effort there [but] it’s a tough sell in the USA. Put it that way. You know what they say about rugby in the USA – there’s a ton of potential and there always will be.
People are concerned about concussions and everything and rugby’s safer than football, a little bit, from that perspective. Basically because no one’s dumb enough to use their head as a weapon. Or you try not to. Unlike football.
Actually, I’ve exchanged a few emails with HR McMaster, talking about rugby. Just about the basics. I love the sport, you know. If I have to choose watching an NBA game over rugby I would, but if I had a choice between rugby and non-NBA basketball or any other sport, I’d watch rugby.
If I could physically, I’d still play old boys all the time. It’s just in my blood, I love the sport, I love the people. I don’t think people realise how connecting it is. Perhaps more so than any other sport.

‘A rugby pitch somewhere’

Time passed. McMaster ended up writing a moving introduction to Brotherhood. Last year, I interviewed Cuban about his work as a campaign surrogate for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Mark Cuban in action, 1993. Photo: Screengrab.

During the election before that one, reports surfaced (as they often will) about Cuban considering a run of his own. I threw him a text, pitching my own rugby loving paper as the place for an interview if he did jump in. He answered:

“If I do, it’s on. From a rugby pitch somewhere.”

Could happen. And as it happens, footage exists online of Cuban on a rugby pitch somewhere, playing with his mates in Indiana more than 30 years ago.

According to the camera, which adds to the soundtrack a sort of submarine hiss entirely suitable to scenes seen in shifting focus, as if underwater, it is Oct. 9, 1993. The game appears to be Indiana Old Boys against Indiana. During the warm-up, Cuban speaks to the camera.

“The fuck am I doing here? Tell me, what am I doing here? I came 500 miles to have these little guys, these young guys, kick the shit out of me.
“Or so they think…”

The game starts. Cuban seems to be packing down at six or eight. Not second row.

More than 20 years later, at the CRCs, Cuban spoke to NBC.

“Once you’re on a rugby team,” he said, “these guys are my lifelong friends. We played years ago but we still get together, we still play Old Boys. Once a rugby player, always a rugby player.”

The interviewer asked: “Is that what you love most about the sport, the camaraderie?”

Cuban laughed, and said: “No, I love hitting and getting hit.”

On the video from 1993, play shifts around the muddy field. At one maul, Cuban wrestles the ball loose then lurches into touch, grinning with delight.

Cut to the post-game. A bar. One man seems to be wearing a surgical collar. There is singing. The lyrics do not bear repeating. This is rugby — old school.

The National Maul

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