With Election Day just weeks away, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney finally found some common ground on an explosive subject on the minds of everyone in Washington.
Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III. @@http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/14875/robert-griffin-iii@@
“He’s a great young man, and a heck of a lot of fun to watch,” Obama said on Fox’s weekly NFL pregame show. “And I wish him all the luck in the world, except when he plays the Bears … Robert, you’re welcome at my house for a pickup game any time.”
His competitor had similar thoughts.
“RGIII hasn’t been in Washington very long, but he’s already created change,” Romney said. “RGIII has really struck a chord with sports fans – uniting Democrats and Republicans.”
While Griffin’s play has transcended the sport and recharged a franchise on life support, the bigger issue is the candidate’s vested interest in sports. Their decisions to opine, smartly calculated by both campaigns, are more important than the words alone.
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Sports has long been welcomed in the White House. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt saved college football — no, really — commanders-in-chief have never been afraid to show their love of the game. Nixon drew up a play for the Redskins in the ’70s @@http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/9424/presidential-orders@@, and Ford was a college gridiron stud. Reagan, Bush, Clinton — none of them shied away from using sports to extend their message.
During the Games, Rafalca, a horse co-owned by Romney’s wife, Ann, competed in the expensive, high-society sport of dressage. Although Rafalca didn’t factor in the final standings, the enormous media boost given to the sport — and the questioning of Romney’s commonalities with the average American — was inescapable. @@http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/ann-romneys-horse-rafalca-fails-to-advance-olympics-dressage/story?id=16945587@@
In the waning days of the election, both will use sports to convey last-minute messages to the country. On the eve of the 2008 election, ESPN interviewed Obama and fellow candidate Sen. John McCain during halftime of Monday Night Football. The questions were soft — if you could change one thing about sports what would it be? (Obama favored a college football playoff, for what it’s worth.) Yet, the medium was sterling. Just last Monday, during the last of the presidential debates, more adult Americans tuned into Bears-Lions than Obama-Romney.
Not surprisingly, both campaigns have lobbied ESPN for airtime on the eve of this year’s debate as well.
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The Welsh politician Aneurin Bevan@@http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bevan_aneurin.shtml@@ once said politics is a blood sport. The hunt for the presidency is a race filled with jabs, blocks and steals; defense, home runs, slam dunks. It’s a language everyone can understand, and sports’ primal contrast of winners and losers, heroes and villains, lends itself to the political landscape.
Sports reflects this election more than ever before — who’s it going to be? The everyman’s hard-court hard worker or the financially minded front-office wizard? At this point, it’s anyone’s game.
