Fall Classic

A while ago, I wrote a post comparing all of the presidential candidates to NFL athletes. In the wake of Barack Obama's historic win, the last thing I want to do is trivialize his accomplishment, but as I watched history in the making on Tuesday night, the sports-politics connection occurred to me again.

I'm certainly not the first to suggest that there are various ways in which sports and politics are similar, but what I noticed on Tuesday night was slightly different--not just that sports and politics can be related, but as a fan experience, they're almost indistinguishable. From a fan perspective, the difference between the two isn't qualitative, it's quantitative--watching politics involves the same processes as watching sports, just on a much larger and more important scale.

This all became clear to me on Tuesday night. I rushed home at around 7 and immediately turned on the TV so I wouldn't miss any of the preliminary action, just as I had recently done throughout the MLB playoffs. As tense as can be, I sat exclusively on the front third of my seat, something I hadn't done while watching TV since the Rays won Game 7. I kept no fewer than eight tabs open as I watched, refreshing various electoral maps and political blogs anxiously. A few weeks earlier, I had done the exact same thing with Matt Garza's pitch count.

Despite being so excruciatingly nervous (or perhaps because of it), I was still able to laugh at CNN's ridiculous practice of beaming their reporters into their studio via hologram. As I enjoyed the unintentional comic relief, I recalled a similar moment from years before, when FOX would interrupt Sox-Yankees to have Scooter the Talking Baseball explain to us what a curveball was. Political coverage can be as intense as sports coverage, but it can also be just as over-the-top ridiculous.

Finally, there was the way the night ended. For the 65 million-plus who voted for Barack Obama (or, alternatively, for those who voted for Bush in 2004), watching your guy win felt not too far removed from seeing your team win the Super Bowl. For me, there were the celebratory text messages to friends, the traditional phone calls to my entire family in which I can't say anything coherent, followed by news footage of late-night rallies and partying in the streets. The stakes may have been higher, but it was the same exact process from every championship my teams ever won.

As I said before, it's important to remember that politics, especially when it involves such a huge racial milestone, matters more than sports ever will. Looking back, that makes the fact that I compared Barack Obama to Adrian Peterson seem a little ridiculous. On Tuesday night, it felt a lot more like I was watching Jackie Robinson.