Sports and Politics

I wasn’t so shocked to see that Monday Night Football has decided to run interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain during the broadcast on the night before the election. ESPN seems to have taken its place in pop culture as the sports channel that is also an “all around” news source. Many times I hear about current events that are not sports related on sports radio. Colin Cowherd talks a LOT about things that are not sports every day as does Dan Patrick. I guess they figure that some of us will never watch regular news so they should do this as a sort of PSA to keep the sports junkies informed about the rest of the world. I do keep up with mainstream news as I think we all should to an extent.

Sports figures and politics have a long history of cross pollination.

Duke Kahanamoku: Back in the early part of the last century, the Father of Surfing and Olympic swimming medalist was not only the sheriff of the city and county of Honolulu but very involved in much of the politics of Hawaii. He was the unofficial greeter and ambassador of the island chain to the world.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: The onetime bodybuilding star is now the Governor of California. Who would have thought?

Jesse Ventura: Bodybuilder/wrestler becomes governor of Minnesota.

Back in 2004, a Canadian source compiled a list of 10 athletes from the NFL, CFL, figure skating, and beyond that became politicians.

There are several politicians that played college sports and even a few more that were in the MLB. Oh, and don’t forget that a large majority of politicians play the game of golf. We know that Obama plays but I haven’t seen any video or info about McCain being a golfer. I've actually seen an article that says he hates golf but it was from a less-known source so I can't be certain of that. (I'd hate to make anything up about a politician after all!) What is an interesting factoid about the presidential candidates is that they are both left handed. In fact, Obama golfs lefty. This means that regardless of the outcome, the next president will be left handed. Bill Clinton and Papa George Bush were both left handed also. I guess that maybe lefties have a fast track to the White House in modern times? Does that mean I have a good shot of winning the presidency by that logic – a lefty and a golfer? Yeah, it is a stretch…

Watch out everyone, I’ll get Vin Scully to run as my VP and we’ll be on the ballot in 2012! Or not.