Sports vs. Dummies

 OK, so, I wasn't going to write about this. Hand to God.

I wasn't going to write about a certain senator from Missouri (Eric Schmitt, R-Nitwit) trying to  catch special prosecutor Jack Smith in a lie by claiming he was at an Atlanta Hawks home game on such-and-such a date. Oops! Turns out Smith was actually in Maryland at a Terps women's game against Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes.

Which is why Smith seemed honestly puzzled when Schmitt -- who was in full sanctimony mode, calling Smith a "dirtbag" who'd just been caught perjuring himself -- brought up the Hawks game. To put it more bluntly, he looked at Schmitt like he had two heads.

Both of them apparently empty.

(A brief aside: This all happened during the Republicans' attempt to paint President Donald John "I Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout Birthin' No Attempted Insurrections" Trump as the persecuted victim of a vindictive Smith and the Department of Justice vis-a-vis January 6. This apparently is part of a more general scheme to present Fearless Leader as a martyr to the cause, and to recast January 6 as just a small group of high-spirited lads getting a bit out of hand on a tour of the Capitol building.)

Anyway ...

Anyway, the whole Hawks/Hawkeyes thing has made a laughingstock of Sen. Schmitt on social media, and reminded the Blob of one of its basic principles: That politicians should be extremely skittish about entering Sportsball World, because it hardly ever ends well.

I wasn't going to write about this because I've written about it a dozen times. But since the Hawks/Hawkeyes memes refuse to die (and are frankly hilarious), here goes again. 

You know why politicians should be extremely skittish about entering Sportsball World?

Because most of them don't know jack doody about it.

Oh, there are exceptions, of course. Among presidents in particular, Richard Nixon was a devoted and informed follower of pro football. George W. Bush actually owned the Texas Rangers for a  it, so he knew baseball. Barack Obama knew his White Sox and his hoops, and even Fearless Leader seems to know his Knicks, although his advancing senility makes it increasingly difficult to determine what he knows about much of anything.

Those, however, are the exceptions.

The rule?

The rule is Hillary Clinton, a lifelong Cubs fan donning a New York Yankees cap while running for the Senate in New York. No true Cubs fan would ever be caught dead wearing a Yankees cap. You'd think Hillary would have known this, but, nah.

And how about John Kerry shouting "Go, Buckeyes!" in an Ohio-Michigan border town that was, um, resolutely Michigan Wolverines territory?

That went well.

Of course, it doesn't just stop with individual gaffes. Congress has decided to go Sportsball World meddling with such measures as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, an anti-transgender measure that addresses the virtually non-existent issue (i.e., fewer than 10 transgender athletes among 510,000 in NCAA sports) of  male transgenders competing in women's sports.

And then Congress' attempt to regulate college sports, which just passed the Senate with overwhelming support. Allegedly it's intended to regulate the currently lawless landscape of big-boy college sports, which ain't a bad idea. But in its present form it mostly seems to protect the  bidness of college sports by imposing almost its restrictions on the "student-athletes" while conferring antitrust protections on the schools and conferences. 

Oh, the kids will still get their NIL dough. But the measure currently headed to the House would put a cap on it, because the schools are adamant that something must be done to curtail their skyrocketing costs. Meanwhile, the proposed law would impose no such ceiling on coaches' salaries, so they'll still be paid like CEOs instead of the educators they purport to be. 

Speaking of, you know, curtailing skyrocketing costs.

(The Blob has addressed this issue, too, by the by. You want college sports to become college sports again? Fine. Pay Coach Slobberknocker like any other member of the faculty and require him to teach a history class. Restore freshmen ineligibility so your "student-athletes" can spend at least one year focused on their classes and not their NIL portfolios. And negotiate TV deals that put scheduling back in the university's hands and not ESPN's.)

But enough about that. We've strayed a bit off-topic here -- the topic being politicians consistently starring in episodes of "Sports vs. Dummies."

Eric Schmitt being only the latest example.