A Study In Comparisons

This is one of the oddest things I have ever written, but it’s been a lot of fun to think about and now I have to share it with the world. What this is, for better or for worse, is a one-on-one comparison between the 2016 Presidential contenders (and a few others) and selected National Football League teams.

I told you it was odd.

The Democrats

Hillary Clinton reminds me of the New England Patriots, just a little bit. The Patriots, at heart, are an uneasy partnership between a talented, charming quarterback (Bill) and a shadowy mastermind in unfashionable clothes (Hillary). The Patriots, like the Clintons, have had the longest unbroken record of success in the game (with the glaring exception of the Patriots’ Super Bowl losses to the Giants / the 2008 loss to Obama, and more about him later). It’s already being whispered that Tom Brady might not come back for another season, and it’s entirely possible that Hillary may decide not to run. But there’s no way to count out the Patriots or Hillary at this point, and anyone trying to make it to the finals has to have a plan how to take them out. (And, of course, the ever-present question with both the Clintons and the Patriots is how far will either of them go to win?)

If Hillary Clinton represents the Patriots, Barack Obama therefore represents the New York Giants. Just as Obama has been the only one to upend the Clintons, the Giants have been the only team to upend the Patriots. And like the Giants, the Obama Administration has been playing very erratically the last couple of years. The Giants were 6-10 last year and never looked like contenders. But while other teams (the Falcons) can go 6-10 without anyone much noticing or caring, the Giants and Obama are always going to be relevant due to their star power, position, and geography. The Giants, of course, are Big Blue, and they have a very large inner-city fanbase that doesn’t translate well in flyover country. The main difference between the Giants and Obama is that the Giants have added an up-and-coming superstar in Odell Beckham, Jr, and the Obama Administration hasn’t been at all successful in bringing in new blood. The Giants may compete in 2015 and 2016, but Obama is only going to be on the field as a tackling dummy.

There probably isn’t, consistently, a bigger laughingstock in the NFL, year in and year out, than the Jets, which pairs them nicely with Joe Biden. Even when the Jets were good (behind Mark Sanchez, who led them to two AFC title games) they still managed to elicit derision–not so much for their playcalling but their antics. At this point, with a new coach and an erratic quarterback, there doesn’t seem to be a path for the Jets to make a move against the Patriots, and there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in the Biden camp to suggest that the Vice President is seriously going to make a run. Which is too bad, because Jets-Patriots games are a lot of fun. But the Patriots have another rival that could pose a bigger threat.

If I was only trying to make cheap American Indian jokes about the Elizabeth Warren campaign, I’d have paired her with the Washington NFL team. But there are some strong correlations between the two. The Chiefs have a defiantly red color scheme, and Warren is defiantly leftist. (The blue-for-Democrats color scheme imposed on society after the 2000 elections is simply wrong.) Like Warren, the Chiefs have a rabid fanbase that has been looking for a champion for a long time. And the Chiefs have been a regular-season thorn in the side of the Patriots, going so far as to take out Tom Brady with a knee injury. Quarterback Alex Smith has never distinguished himself in the playoffs, and there are doubts as to whether Warren is ready for prime time.

There isn’t a more discredited brand in the NFL than that of the Washington NFL franchise. There isn’t a more discredited brand in the Democratic Party than Scots-Irish Southern white males. Good luck, Jim Webb, because you’re going to need it.

I had to pick a team that had red as a primary color for Bernie Sanders, although the Cardinals have the type of strong defense that the socialist Senator from Vermont would disdain. Socialists, in general, have done about as well historically at the polls as the Cardinals have in the NFL. The main problem that the Cardinals have is their quarterback (or significant lack thereof) and I just don’t think that Sanders, personally, is the right person to lead this campaign. (He’s been much more effective as a social media presence, but do you think that Sanders himself is doing that? I don’t.)

I don’t know if Andrew Cuomo is a real contender or not, but like the Steelers, he has a long tradition behind him. And like the Steelers, it’s hard to determine exactly how they’ll perform in any given year. Last year, the Steelers scrapped their way to the division title, but were upended by the Ravens at home in the playoffs before they got a chance to test themselves against the Patriots. You have to think Cuomo would at least be able to slug it out with Hillary if he got that far, but there are real questions as to whether that happens or not.

The Republicans

I probably ought to leave poor Mitt Romney off this list, but (like the Broncos), he completely fell on his face the last time he made the final game, and (like the Broncos, assuming Peyton Manning retires) he is going to be sitting this one out. So there’s that.

Jeb Bush has not been relevant for the last seven years, and the Dolphins haven’t been relevant for longer than that. Other than that, I have nothing, other than the fact that Jeb actually lives in Miami and looks very odd in orange.

The Buffalo Bills are run by an unstable loudmouth and play their games in obscurity in a remote, snowy part of the country. They have lost every Super Bowl they’ve played in, and have a lengthy recent history of underachieving. And no one thinks they are a serious contender. This team’s for you, Sarah Palin.

I just happen to live in New Jersey, and I like Chris Christie, and I wish I could pair him with the Cowboys. But the only other place that gets worse PR than New Jersey is Cleveland, so there’s something of a link there. And the Cleveland owner is being investigated for corruption charges, and Christie has faced a lot of that recently. And the Browns (who were looking so good in the off-season) have a quarterback that’s in rehab from his hard-partying ways, and Christie has been catching a lot of flak lately for showing up in Jerry Jones’s luxury box and hanging out at Teterboro Airport bumming rides in private jets. So there’s that. The Browns went 7-9 last year, and there’s a chance that they could turn it around next year. Maybe there’s hope! (Although you always hear Cleveland fans saying there’s hope, and there never is.)

Rick Perry is a much bigger Aggies fan than he is a Cowboys fan, so it’s kind of unfair to assign him the Cowboys, but Perry is best known for “Oops” and the Cowboys have been the NFL’s masters of “Oops” for years. Like Tony Romo, Perry has dropped the ball on the national stage — and like Romo, he’s recovered from back surgery. Perry is enjoying a modest surge, just as the Cowboys did this year. But Perry and the Cowboys both have to prove themselves to a skeptical public, and not make any big mistakes. (Full disclosure: I worked on Perry’s Texas staff from 2000-2001.)

If I remember right, Ted Cruz is a fellow Cowboys fan. I am only assigning him the Texans here because, on average, it takes about fifteen seconds from the time that the Texans start sucking it up that your Texans fan starts to pull his Cowboys gear out of the closet. Cruz does have a solid Texas fanbase, but there is a lot of overlap between him and Perry, and all it would take would be one pick-six at the wrong time for Cruz’s support to fall to Perry.

The Philadelphia Eagles have a unique philosophy that no one in the league shares. That sounds a little like Rand Paul. They have a rabid fanbase that is maybe the most self-loathing in the league. That sounds a little like Rand Paul. The Eagles haven’t won anything since 1960. That doesn’t sound good for Rand Paul, at all. I hate the Eagles, and I sort of like Rand Paul (we’re both Baylor grads). So there’s that. The Eagles are a lot of fun to watch, and I think it would be a lot of fun to watch Rand Paul go mano-a-mano with Hillary Clinton, but I also don’t want to see him vomiting on the field the way Donovan McNabb did against the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

I see Bobby Jindal as a political version of Andrew Luck of the Colts–nice guy, smart, has all the talent, but hasn’t proven himself on the national stage. And the Colts got creamed by tbe Patriots last year. I suppose that means that Jindal should develop a strong supporting cast, but other than that I got nothing.

I am sure that Rick Santorum would take objection to being paired with the Bengals over his hometown Steelers. Sorry about that. But the knock on the Bengals in recent years has been “one and done,” because they haven’t proven that they can win a playoff game. Although Santorum did better than anyone thought in the 2012 campaign, he wasn’t able to pull off the upset against Romney and it is very doubtful that he would have been able to topple Obama in the final game. The Bengals need to prove themselves with a playoff win, and Santorum would need to prove himself with some decisive primary wins.

The Panthers are about as good as Cam Newton, who was a #1 pick in the draft and was widely touted as the next big thing. Marco Rubio has been touted as the next big thing in the Senate, but he hasn’t delivered in a big way, and has alienated a lot of people with his support for immigration reform. I have no idea how Cam Newton feels about immigration reform, but he did take a big step up and win a playoff game this year. Can Rubio do the same?

Mike Huckabee is a proud resident of flyover country, but you get the feeling that he also likes the spotlight. The St. Louis Rams are stuck in flyover country, and are trying to get back to Los Angeles and the Hollywood spotlight. Outside of their relocation plans, the Rams are a supremely uninteresting team, showing only a bare amount of competence. I don’t think Huckabee is coming up with anything interesting anytime soon, either, and his competence as a candidate is questionable. (He’s not really running against Beyonce, is he? Really?)

The one of these parallels I had a hard time drawing up was of Ben Carson because I don’t know much about Ben Carson other than he was supposedly rude to President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast one year, and that he has about as much chance of being President of the United States in 2017 as Orville Redenbacher, and Orville Redenbacher has been dead since 1995. So I guess that correlates to the Jacksonville Jaguars somehow. I don’t know. I told you this was odd.

Former Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina is from California, so she gets the Chargers, mostly by default. I have not one clue as to who Carly Fiorina really is or what she stands for, but I have owned several Hewlett Packard printers and spent many useless wasted hours on hold for HP technical support and I would not vote for her for dogcatcher.

The Saints surprised a lot of people last year by falling apart and not taking the NFC South in a very bad year for the NFC South. They did have one magical run not too long ago, and all the pieces are still in place for them to do that again, but it will take a little more work and maybe some infusion of fresh talent. I think that sounds a little tiny bit like John Kasich, especially as the Saints need to put their Bountygate scandals behind them, and the Ohio Republican party apparatus has been more than usually scandal-ridden itself. It’s not a perfect parallel; none of these are.

I am putting Scott Walker last on this list because I struggled a lot with how to pair him. Ideally, I think you would pair him with the Green Bay Packers – that’s his hometown team and he’s a fan, and they’ve both been winners lately. But I think the parallels are a bit closer between Walker and Baltimore QB Joe Flacco than they are between Walker and Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers. Walker doesn’t (yet) have the national name recognition of Rodgers, or the charisma and flair. He seems to be much more like the workaday unibrow Flacco, who doesn’t get a lot of respect and who is at the center of an ongoing conversation as to whether he’s “elite” or not. This is not to disrespect either Walker or Flacco; Walker has survived a huge political storm in Wisconsin, and Flacco has proven that he can beat the Patriots or at least play them tough every time.

So that’s it. This has been a silly exercise and I’m glad it’s done, and no, I don’t have partners for the Seahawks or the Buccaneers or the Raiders. If you liked this piece, tell a friend or buy my book or something.