Obama: an example of sport revealing character

If you’re like me, you’ve been consumed by this year’s election. I just can’t seem to get enough of it.

As one of your sports columnists, I’ve probably done my readers a disservice during the bulk of this semester as the majority of the TV I’ve been watching has consisted of campaign news.

And if I do watch anything else, it’s via DVR.

I honestly haven’t even watched much football.

In honoring my duties as a sports columnist, I began to ponder the connection between sports and politics. How do the two complement each other? Should a politician even care about sports? Should they care about forms of physical fitness?

Yes, they should.

Throughout the years, many presidents have been advocates of physical fitness. Most recently, President Bush is known for enjoying rides on his mountain bike when he’s not jogging or pumping iron. It’s said that he can bench press more than 200 pounds.

President Kennedy played touch football on the White House lawn. And perhaps the best athlete ever to enter the White House, Gerald Ford, was an MVP center for the University of Michigan before rejecting offers to play in the NFL to go to law school at Yale.

And now, certainly part of Sen. Barack Obama’s appeal is he is physically fit and loves basketball.

“I can’t imagine more fun than having a good pick-up basketball game,” he has said to the press before.

He played at Hawaii’s Punahou High School, where he helped his team win a state championship as a senior. Today, he still likes to make his presence known on the court.

The man graces the November cover of the Men’s Health 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. In the article, he says he wishes he had time to get 90-minute workouts in every day.

But instead, during this year’s campaign, he has settled for 45-minute workouts, six days a week to go along with some occasional pick-up games along the way.

The fact that a potential president finds basketball more fun than potentially running the country is intriguing. As an athlete, I truly appreciate him expressing such feelings for something that isn’t his first, and most important, job.

In life, we all need something different that takes us away from the everyday grind of whatever it is we do. Whether it be school, football, teaching, etc., it keeps us healthy and alert as people.

I can recall being simply a football player and a student and feeling there was something missing. I felt like I needed something else.

You might think football is my escape from school, and it is, but when you’ve been doing the same things for 17 years, you might need something else.

That something else for me was writing. It keeps me grounded, busy and refreshes me for the other things I have to do. That’s what basketball is for Obama.

Who knows? He might not have been such a good senator or presidential candidate if he didn’t have basketball.

Another thing a sport does is demonstrate a person’s character and integrity. From watching Obama play basketball via YouTube and TV, I can see he takes the court with the same trademark composure and poise as he does the debate podium which has gained him praise from his supporters.

Sure, much of that quality most likely comes from his upbringing, but his experience as a basketball player must have played a part in his demeanor.

The Associated Press reported that Obama’s wife, Michelle, had her brother Craig Robinson, now head basketball coach at Oregon State, observe him during a pick-up basketball game because, the Robinson family said, you could tell a man’s personality by how he plays basketball. Barack Obama’s demeanor on the court would be the telling factor of whether or not Michelle Obama would date him.

You see, basketball – or any sport – might not predict foreign policy or how a politician will handle an economic situation. But it does provide an escape that reveals character. For some, it might not be basketball. They might have more than one escape and character-building activity, like me. But whatever it is, realize it is important to who you are, and it may just make you even better at everything.