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Sports and the Ballot Box

Aside from the historic nature of last night's election, and that is not something that is easily forgotten or should be something easily set aside, there were several former athletes on ballots across the nation. Most fared well. The most prominent was probably Kevin Johnson, the former All Star point guard of the Phoenix Suns, won election as Sacramento's first African-American mayor by defeating two-term incumbent Heather Fargo in a run-off election. Also elected mayor was Mufi Hannemann, a 6-foot-7-inch former Harvard basketball player, who won re-election as mayor of Honolulu.

In Hawaii, Michael Victorino, the father of Shane, the outfielder of the World Series champion Phillies won election to the Maui county council, unopposed. Other relatives of athletes winning yesterday included George Unseld, Wes' brother and a former basketball player and coach himself, was re-elected to the Metro Council in Louisville, Ky and Connie Mack, the grandson of the great manager of the A's was re-elected to Congress from Florida.

Speaking of Congress, freshman Congressman Heath Shuler, formerly of the Washington Redskins, won re-election in North Carolina. Two former college athletes won re-election to Congress: Baron Hill, a Indiana University basketball player, and Norm Dicks, a University of Washington football player. Heading to Congress for the first time will be Jason Chaffetz, a former BYU kicker.

Perhaps the biggest winner of the night, however, was the Oregon State University basketball program, which gained the best recruiting advantage any college athletics ever had. You see, the Beavers coach is Craig Robinson, who played at Princeton and was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year. He later served as an assistant coach at Northwestern University on the staff of former Princeton coach Bill Carmody. None of that however explains the special recruiting advantage Robinson possesses for that you must look at his family - his sister is none other than our next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Now, how are Pac-10 coaches going to compete with that?

Full post as published by Sports Biz on November 05, 2008 (boomark / email).