Sweet Pic, Lame Article

I'm loving the picture that is on the ESPN homepage right now. Unfortunately, the article to go along with it isn't as good. Ivan Maisel's article, Hitting the 2008 campaign trail, talks about politics and college football. He lists a bunch of random coincidences.

Honestly, I couldn't even finish it. Portions of it read like an email forward and left me wondering if I needed to check the facts on Snopes. Here's an example.

In 13 of 18 general elections dating to the first Associated Press college football poll in 1936, a plurality of voters from the home state of the team that would finish ranked No. 1 cast their ballots for the eventual president. The most recent exception? Four years ago, when 55 percent of the voters in California, the home of the No. 1 USC Trojans, cast their ballots for John Kerry.

Obviously Maisel failed to realize that this cosmic trend can only predict the popular vote and not the electoral college. At any rate, I'm sure Georgia fans will love this.

As we embark on this most sacred of civic journeys, let us come together on the striped fields of battle, where eight months of training will be combined with ferocity and tempered by sportsmanship -- unless Georgia coach Mark Richt says, "To heck with it. Team, go celebrate!"

Maybe Maisel has been hanging out with Jim Rome lately.