Boys and girls, we have entered very strange air as of late. We’ve crossed that very fine line into George F. Will’s Sports Machine1 territory here: that rare and unsettling conflagration of politics and sport where Dennis Miller once lived, tugging his dick at Al Michaels and screaming about McCarthyism. This is the bizarre pocket of American history where Dick Nixon considered naming Vince Lombardi his running mate in 1968 until doing a background check and finding out he was a staunch Democrat2. It is where a young Ronald Reagan honed his ability to bullshit by broadcasting Chicago Cubs games over the airwaves without ever seeing a single play3. Only within the confines of Sports Machine territory could you see Pound-for-Pound Boxing Champion and Filipino Congressman Manny Pacquiao play a significant role in getting then US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid re-elected. This is not a place for timorous beasties whose faces turn to ash at the mention of George W. Bush in a cardigan, cheering on the Fighting Eli’s with a bullhorn. This is Gerald Ford country.
It is only out of necessity that I subject you to this horrific clash of pitch and podium, as the college bowl season and Republican Primaries unfold in synchronistic chaos. Thus, I have decided to view these bowl games as analogs for last night’s Iowa Caucuses. Hopefully, by melding the two I can dispense with my seething hate and contempt for them both and attempt to regain some much needed sanity for the months ahead. A few ground rules before we start: First, no presidential candidate can represent a university which they themselves would have been unable to get into. For example, Michelle Bachmann received her undergrad education at Winona State and received her J.D. from Oral Roberts, which would disqualify her from being represented by schools such as Stanford or the University of Michigan that have high academic standards. On the other hand, Newt Gingrich received a BA and MA from Emory, along with a PhD in Modern European History from Tulane before becoming a history professor himself at West Georgia College, so we can assume his scores would have gotten him in most places. Another rule is that the size of the campaign must reflect the size of the school athletic program that represents it. Mitt Romney’s behemoth campaign budget and Super PAC support makes it absurd to use a university like San Diego State to represent him. And the final rule is that Ron Paul’s representative school CANNOT belong to any BCS conference as it would violate his Libertarian views. Let’s roll…
1. Michelle Bachmann – Arizona State. More than anything, both of these “teams” didn’t deserve to be where they were. Arizona State was a .500 football team with an over-the-hill coach in Dennis Erikson who already knew he was out after the Las Vegas Bowl no matter what his team did. Team Bachmann peaked during the Ames Straw Poll in August and had been steadily crashing for the past six months until she needed a self-avowed “miracle” last night. In each case, they met up with an opposition that was better than they were in every facet of the game and who wiped the floor with their sorry asses. ASU got #7 Boise State, a 11-1 team that had just been jobbed out of a BCS bid for the third time in four years and who sported the winningest quarterback in NCAA history. Bachmann got a well oiled Romney juggernaut, a fanatic Ron Paul base and the flavor-of-the-week in Santorum to contend with, along with fellow outcasts Gingrich and Perry. To their credit, Arizona State made their contest closer than Bachmann’s racking up a few 2nd half touchdowns to cut Boise’s lead down to 32 at the final whistle, while Bachmann barely nabbed 5% of the votes and headed home with her satanic tail between her legs.
2. Rick Perry – Texas A&M. It just feels right to keep Perry in his home state of Texas and with a team that ended up winning the Texas Bowl over Northwestern at that. But, both campaigns ended with pyrrhic victories of one sort or another. All year, A&M seemed to accumulate halftime leads before inevitably squandering them in the 3rd and 4thquarters. In five of their six losses they led earlier in the game by a double-digit margin, a statistic that led directly to head coach Mike Sherman’s dismissal in early December. They clearly had the talent to compete for the a BCS berth and perhaps even a national title, but their follow-through in big games was so poor that they barely cracked .500. It was the same way for Perry, who was the front-runner in Iowa for the Republican nomination by as much as 10 percentage points back in late November. However, a series of public gaffes during the debates, interviews, and…there was a third one…I know there was a third one in there somewhere….oh, hell, he fucked up and now he’s probably making his last stand in South Carolina.
Now, I might vote for Chris Farley "playing" Newt Gingrich for President.
3. Newt Gingrich – Georgia. Good old Newtie went to school in the state of Georgia, taught in the state of Georgia and represented Georgia’s 6th congressional district for 20 years so it’s only fitting that we should send him back home. You see, both Newtie and the Georgia Bulldogs have incredibly inflated, unrealistic and misleading perceptions of themselves. The Bulldogs went 10-4 this year, losing the Outback Bowl in Triple OT to Michigan State. And yet, simply being in the SEC gave them a bravado and reputation that they didn’t deserve. Never mind that they lost to Boise State and South Carolina or that they were destroyed in the SEC Championship by LSU. Don’t think about how South Carolina was the only other ranked team in SEC East and that the power dynamic in the conference tilts mightily to the West. Likewise, you shouldn’t spend time on the fact that Gingrich is an egomaniacal sociopath who wants to create the world in his image and was all but kicked out of congress in 1999. You also shouldn’t bring up that, while Newtie was trying to get Slick Willie impeached for getting an adulterous blow job, Newt himself was having an affair behind the back of Wife #2 with the lucky lady who would become Wife #34. Pay no heed to the fact that Gingrich has no retort for any of his opponents attacks than, “well, you want to debate motherfucker? You, me, a microphone, Chris Wallace and some cameras! Let’s get it on you skank-ass bitch!”
4. Ron Paul – Houston. Neither the University of Houston or Ron Paul was ever taken too seriously this year and with good reason. Now, I’m not applauding the mainstream media’s lackluster coverage of Paul’s campaign or Houston’s nearly undefeated season, but it’s safe to say that very few outside of the Paul and Cougar camps thought they could win it all. Case Keenum had a record-setting career at Houston, passing for more yards than any quarterback in NCAA history while his offense averaged over 50 points a game in 2011. But, languishing in the dim constellation of Conference USA, they went without facing a ranked team until their conference championship game. Before that championship loss against #24 Southern Mississippi, no one gave them a chance to crack the Top 5 in the BCS and that was certainly the case after tallying their first loss. Similarly, Paul had a difficult time shaking the label of party outsider and it was the common media narrative to paint him as too extremist in his Libertarian views to ever win the party nomination. And, while his 3rd place finish in Iowa with 21% of the vote isn’t too far removed from the top two spots, the loss is pretty much a fatal one for his nomination hopes. Exit polling showed Paul gaining a very substantial portion of his votes from independent and first time voters, a group that won’t be able to vote in any upcoming closed primaries that accept only Registered Republicans. So, even if he’s able to squeak out a state here and there like Houston finished their season off by beating Penn State in the TicketCity.Com Bowl, it won’t matter much in the end.
5. Rick Santorum – Notre Dame. Initially I was drawn to this comparison because of Santorum’s Conservative Catholicism, but now that I look at it, it is Notre Dame’s recent athletic history that most represents Santorum’s campaign. Much like Santorum’s surge in Iowa over the past few days, Notre Dame Football is consistently overrated and given more attention than it warrants. And much as Notre Dame lost to Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl, Santorum will continue to lose primaries with the possible exception of South Carolina’s backwater ass. Yet, one instant from last year’s season sticks out most in my mind. A 20 year old video assistant and Notre Dame student, Declan Sullivan, was instructed to film a football practice from the top of a hydraulic lift in extremely windy conditions. As he went up and began filming through extreme 50 mph winds he tweeted, “Holy f**k, holy f**k. This is terrifying.” Within an hour he was dead after the lift toppled over due to the extreme winds. No one was held accountable for this. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick and head coach Brian Kelly retained their jobs and the university continues to bill itself as an institution with integrity. The Catholic Church, Notre Dame and Rick Santorum: that’s quite a hypocritical Holy Trinity.
6. Mitt Romney – Oklahoma State. Ahhhhh…that sweet sweet cash just gets you so amped up doesn’t it? Delicious T. Boone Pickens’ oil monies to build new stadiums and new facilities, to get better equipment and better players. It’s just how Romney must feel this time around after 2008′s debacle. This election he’s got even more money and the backing of the Republican establishment and, oh snap! Did you hear John McCain’s senile old ass just endorsed him? So what if we only barely beat Santorum/lost to Iowa State. We’re going to win this year! We’re gonna fucking win! And then, what happens when you do eventually get the nomination in the middle of summer/after Oklahoma St. barely beat Stanford in overtime? Well, the best you’re ever going to do is second place. Mike Gundy may be a man and he may be forty, but nobody’s voting for his team because the winner of LSU-Alabama is the National Champion, no questions asked. For those of you playing at home, Obama is the LSU-Alabama winner and if Oklahoma State/Romney is the best shot the Republicans have at unseating him, then the next nine months are just a formality.
2Amazingly enough, Lombardi had been so good on the stump when Kennedy went through Wisconsin in 1960, Lombardi actually called the President up before the 1961 NFL Championship against the NY Giants and asked him to adjust star running back Paul Hornung’s Christmas Leave so that he could play in the game. Kennedy came through and granted the former West Point Asst. Coach his request, while Hornung led the Packers to victory. http://www.jsonline.com/packerinsider/lombardi-goes-to-top-131186848.html
4Stop for one second, and imagine an alternate reality where Bill Clinton, upon discovering that everyone in the free world knew he was getting buck-nasty with Monica Lewinsky, decided to leave office, divorce Hillary and then marry Monica. Now, envision Bill Clinton running for congress in 2012 and having Monica with him on the campaign trail. That’s exactly what Newt Gingrich just did! How is this not bigger news! Why didn’t Ron Paul run ads showing Gingrich’s ex-wives going into explicit detail about how much of a scum-sucking deer tick Newt is?
