THESE DAYS, one cannot go anywhere without seeing some sort of news about our upcoming presidential election--poll numbers, registration drives, Obamamania and the Straight Talk Express. Sports and politics often intersect, too, with the steroid hearings in baseball and the Spygate hearings in football as prime examples.
I often wonder why sports and politics converge so often. Maybe it's because many of our presidents were top athletes in their younger days. Take these examples:
Dwight D. Eisenhower, our 34th president, initially had aspirations of becoming "a real major league baseball player, like Honus Wagner," as he told one of his childhood friends.
Unfortunately, he was crushed after being cut from the baseball team at the U.S. Military Academy and decided to play football instead. In 1912, he was Army's starting running back and linebacker, back when everyone played on both sides of the ball. He even tackled Jim Thorpe, considered by many to have been the Babe Ruth of football. But his playing career ended abruptly after he was tackled near the ankles, blowing out his knees. He would later serve as a football coach for what is now St. Mary's University while stationed in Fort Sam Houston.
Perhaps our most athletic president was Gerald R. Ford. As an undergrad at the University of Michigan, Ford starred on the football team, playing center and linebacker for the Wolverines and leading them to undefeated seasons in 1932 and 1933. In his senior year, 1934, the team collapsed, winning only a single game. His level of play did not decline, however, and he was selected to the 1935 Collegiate All-Star Football Team.
Ford also loved to golf, shooting a hole-in-one at a tournament held in conjunction with the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club in Cordova, Tenn. In 1985, he was honored with the Old Tom Morris Award by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, a lifetime achievement award for golfers.
While Ronald Reagan wasn't much of an athlete, he did play one in the movies, scoring a career-defining performance with his portrayal of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film "Knute Rockne: All-American."
Gipp was Notre Dame's second consensus All-American and is the subject of Rockne's famous "Win one for the Gipper" speech.
We all know our current president, George W. Bush, always makes time to keep in shape, running regularly since becoming president in 2001. He also played baseball, basketball and football at the prestigious Phillips Academy in high school and distinguished himself as head cheerleader (don't laugh--I know some male cheerleaders who could deck me), as well as commissioner of an intramural stickball (a simplified form of baseball) league.
In his later life, 1989 to 1998, Bush was a part owner of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers franchise.
The two parties' presumptive nominees for 2008 also have rich sports backgrounds. John McCain excelled at wrestling at Episcopal High School, a private boarding school in Alexandria.
Barack Obama played high school basketball at the Punahou School in Hawaii, but mostly sat on the bench. He still plays pickup games on the campaign trail, though, including an episode in which he hammered Sports Illustrated writer S.L. Price in two pickup games following the Iowa Caucus. The best moment from that game came when Obama was up 3-2 in the second game, and Price coyly flipped him the ball and said, "This one's for the presidency."
Obama drilled the next shot, and, when asked if he'd heard Price, responded, "Why do you think I hit it?"
J.P. Stroman is a student at the University of Virginia.