Pigskin Preview

Last week, as I was taking my daily stroll around the high school campus where I was attending a teacher training institute, I had a moment of what could be described as clarity. This is to say that, for me, it felt like a revelation. I have decided to take some of my personal emphasis on the upcoming presidential election on the upcoming congressional races. My justification for this re-framing issued forth from that font of all important rationalizations in my world: Fantasy Football.
Having Peyton Manning on your team is a great way to get points, especially if he's having a good day. The downside is that he only gets points for a fraction of the total yards for which he throws the ball. If he's running for first downs as well, it can start to add up, but then you end up with a Tebow experience, and that's never fully satisfying. Instead, it's better to have two or three players, a running back and a couple of receivers who can score points in addition to the quarterback. If the metaphor has been totally lost at this point, I will redefine: In this model, the president equals the quarterback, and the legislative branch is where you find your tight ends and the like. Policy is established in the Executive branch, but it's the Congress where laws are made.
I don't want Missouri's Todd Akin on my team, for example. I choose not to draft a guy who has ideas like "legitimate rape" running through his head. I would probably put Kansas Representative Kevin Yoder on the waiver wire as well, after it was revealed that he went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee on a visit to Israel last summer. Just like I would have dropped Chad "Working On A New Nickname" Johnson after he was arrested for domestic violence. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no whining in football, and no skinny-dipping in Congress - legitimate or not. My over-arching concern now is to cut all of the pinheads.