This is an opinion column.

Professional politicians run from Tommy Tuberville like he’s Godzilla or something.

Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth will head for the hills rather than face that atomic breath. AG Steve Marshall just wants to slide behind Tubs to take whatever’s left.

Of the Senate.

Democrats ran screaming – at each other, mostly – long ago.

So we’re left in a crazy moment in which Tommy Tuberville is unbeatable as governor in a state he may or may not live in.

You may have questions. How can a football coach who beat Alabama six times in a row be so popular in … Alabama? How can an Auburn coach who beat Alabama so many times get paid $5 million by Auburn … to quit? How is this man’s failure to understand basic civics, and his patience with white nationalists considered a feature rather than a flaw? Oh, Alabama.

Yet he is unbeatable. By mortals, anyway. But everywhere I go people ask for a hero, a legend, a chance. Not a role model, exactly, but a champion.

“Can anybody beat him,” a woman asked last week.

I shook my head.

“What about Charles Barkley? He owes us that,” she went on. “He promised. He said he would.”

But Charles Barkley has said a lot of things. He first floated the idea of running for governor 31 years ago, a week after learning he would not be charged with punching a vitamin salesman in a bar.

He’s been a ball fake in elections ever since – whether he wanted to be or not. You gotta wonder if he’ll ever shoot. Or pass.

I sent Barkley a note to ask him, and to make Alabama’s case, if only for the entertainment value. But if he got the message he was atypically mum.

But these, Sir Charles, are the top 10 reasons you should run for governor.

10: It’s not that hard. The absolute best thing that could happen to Alabama politics is … nothing. Time out. No bills signed, no damage done. Just box out and Alabama wins every time.

9. You don’t have to live here. If Tuberville has proven anything, it’s that all you need to win Alabama is a mailing address and some nutty ideas. Shoot, make your own ID card, like the head of the Alabama GOP.

8. The bar is low. You were once asked why you thought yourself qualified to be governor. You pointed to Amway salesman Guy Hunt, who’d just been tossed out of the governor’s job. “Well the other guy is in jail,” you said. Now the other guy is Tommy Tuberville.

7. Indifference. You’re in the Hall of Fame. You got famous as a role model by telling people you’re not a role model. You don’t have to kiss babies or the back forties of Big Mules. You don’t have to care whether you get elected because you have nothing to prove. That’s real power.

6. You already beat Godzilla, in a Nike ad, and then made friends with him. King Kong couldn’t even do that.

5. Go big. “I don’t want to be a senator or mayor of a small town,” you said in 1993. “If I’m going to screw up, I might as well do it big.’’ Or go home.

4. Unanswered questions. You were once asked to name the last politician to tell the truth. “I don’t know,” you said. “I haven’t been elected yet.”

3. Duty. “Successful people should help the less fortunate,” you once said. Alabama, at the moment, is less fortunate.

2. A wakeup call? Alabama politicians have had nightmares about your candidacy for three decades now. It’s time to reprise your classic line from Space Jam: “It wasn’t a dream, it really happened!”

And the No. 1 reason you should run for governor? You’re not Tommy Tuberville.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner.