Votes on the Sports Pages...

I am a very big believer that there are a large number of votes that are gained or lost on the Sports Pages of American papers, TV broadcasts and on-line. Read On and See www.terrylyons.com/

How much did hoops help Obama?
John Jeansonne
10:47 AM EST, January 21, 2009
In our sports-venerated culture, who has more street cred? Barack Obama, for having a brother-in-law who was twice the Ivy League's basketball player of the year and now is head coach at Oregon State? Or Craig Robinson, for having a brother-in-law who is President of the United States (and who, by the way, can hold his own in a game of pick-up hoops)? When a soon-to-be First Lady Michelle Obama, during a recent appearance on "The View," offered a quick "Go Beavers!" in support of her brother's team, a Portland Web site noted that "you can't buy that kind of publicity for Oregon State basketball."

"It hasn't gotten me any players yet," Robinson said during the fall campaign, "but I'm hoping it will help."

At 46, he was hired by Oregon State after two years at Brown University, where his first head-coaching experience resulted in a school-record 19 wins last season and a second-place league finish (11-3). But what really enhanced his profile on the West Coast was his relationship to Obama, candidate-turned president-elect and now Commander in Chief.

Oregon State had just come off a disastrous season, losing 25 of 31 games and going winless in 18 Pac-10 Conference games, but there immediately was conjecture that its new coach might suddenly have a recruiting edge. This season, the team already has experienced Change -- 6-10, including an upset victory over Southern Cal -- and Robinson, with a four-day break in the schedule, could be seen yesterday wearing Oregon State's colors (an orange-and-black scarf) on the podium during the inauguration ceremonies.

Meanwhile Obama is on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated, the subject of "The Audacity of Hoops" feature that quotes Robinson saying that basketball is why Obama "is sitting where he's sitting." (Robinson, it often has been reported, was the man who originally vetted Obama's worthiness as Michelle's boyfriend by playing pickup basketball with him and determining that he was "confident, team-oriented, very unselfish" and "fit in.")

Duke University cultural anthropologist Orin Starn, a keen observer of sports in society, is fully accepting of the credibility link between sports and the presidency. "American presidents have all wanted to prove they're real guys, red-blooded Americans, regular Joes," Starn said. "Whether it was Kennedy with touch football games or Clinton slipping off for a round of golf, taking Mulligans and possibly cheating along the way.

"I think sports really was important to Obama in the campaign, to show that, 'See, I'm not a crazy Muslim terrorist. I'm one of the guys; I know how to do the guy culture.'

"All those photo ops of Obama playing basketball helped, and that comment he made about supporting the college football playoff system also helped ingratiate him with the rotisserie set."

Certainly, the all-night camp-out by thousands of people on the National Mall, eagerly awaiting the inauguration, was reminiscent of the passionate Dukies, those Duke basketball fans who camp outside the team's arena overnight before big games. That, Starn said, is because "politics and sports are both games. They both have a beginning and an end, they have rules, certain outcomes, a winner and a loser. The political rally and the big football or basketball game are quite similar: You're rooting for your guy and are ecstatic when your team or your guy wins."

What seems different about the Obama-Robinson calculus, though, is how athletes suddenly appear interested in cozying up to a political star; usually, it's the other way around.

"The case in recent years," Starn said, "is that politicians want to hang around jocks. They want the celebrity and the credibility it gives them. But it hasn't gone the other direction, where jocks wanted to be hanging around with politicians or to take a political stand.

"The Michael Jordan model" -- Jordan famously said that "Republicans buy sneakers, too" when criticized for refusing to endorse a black Democratic candidate against right-wing Jesse Helms -- "has been the dominating one for pro athletes for 10 or 20 years. Those sports stars become global brands and don't want to hurt the brand by being controversial in any way."

But in this election cycle, that changed, illustrated by the appearance of Tiger Woods -- who previously had hewed close to the Jordan model -- during Sunday's pre-inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Starn said he was "struck by the fact that it was the first time I've ever seen Tiger Woods look nervous. For an athlete to be plucked out of the familiar pond of the golf course or arena is a challenge.

"Most athletes are bright guys and gals, but they have lived in a bubble most of their lives. The way sports are now, to be a top athlete demands a total commitment to your sport from an early age so that, in general, athletes are not well-rounded. They don't know about art or the latest trends in architecture or world politics."

He reasoned that this new street cred for Craig Robinson, to have a sister and brother-in-law in the White House, is "probably not because we're seeing a different kind of athlete or of athletes showing a different side of themselves. It's probably just the momentum and the enthusiasm of the Obama phenomenon that swept up athletes with everybody else."

Either way, the next 100 days are worth watching. (That will take us through, among other events, March Madness. And Oregon State's recruiting season.)

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