Stan Hochman: Political Football Goes Way Back

Barack Obama, the president of the United States, has sent word to Michael Vick, the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. One word. Slide!

So what does Mitt Romney think? We're all about equal time here. Obama and Romney disagree on gays, on guns, on natural gas. A second opinion about Vick can't hurt.

Maybe Romney wants Vick to hurdle menacing tacklers? Or sprint out of bounds? Offer him a tax rebate? Who knows? And besides, as Joe Banner, or Michael Jordan, would have said, "Republicans buy Eagles gear, too."

Maybe you want the president of the United States to concentrate on jobs, on housing, on schools, on peace in the Middle East. Stop wasting his time picking the Final Four in hoops. Or urging Michael Vick to slide to avoid punishment that might put him on the sideline and the Eagles' season in the toilet.

Maybe you don't realize that Obama is not the first president to stick an oar into sports' swirling waters. Teddy Roosevelt saved college football, demanding changes in the rules that eliminated the brutality that marked the early years of the game.

William Howard Taft was first to throw out a first pitch. The Senators won, 3-0, one of the few games they won that year.

John F. Kennedy played touch football until back miseries put an end to that. Jimmy Carter kept us out of the 1980 Olympics because Russian tanks were rumbling through Afghanistan.

Ronald Reagan played George Gipp in a movie, called a Cubs game with Harry Caray, phoned Pete Rose when he became the hit king. Bill Clinton tried to mediate the major league baseball strike in '94. Had enough after one day.

George W. Bush owned a chunk of the Texas Rangers before moving into the White House. Turned the lawn into a ballfield for kids. And then there was Richard Nixon.

Nixon took presidential pestering to a new level, suggesting a play to the Redskins to use against the 49ers in 1971. It was an end-around and it got smeared for a 13-yard loss.

Years later, Billy Kilmer, who was the Washington quarterback that day, recalled the play bitterly. Second down, ball on the 8, the play came in from the sideline.

"When it came in," Kilmer recalled, "we thought, 'Damn, they really called it.'" It got snuffed, a fourth-down field goal was blocked and the Redskins lost.

Marv Levy, who was special teams coach that year, later revealed that the end-around was coach George Allen's idea. He planted it with Nixon, then asked the president to suggest it to Kilmer. "George gave the play to the president and then it didn't work," Levy chuckled.

Nixon didn't stop there. He called Miami's Don Shula and suggested a Bob Griese pass to Paul Warfield on a crossing pattern. That didn't work, either, and the Dolphins lost that game.

At a White House reception before an All-Star Game in Washington, Nixon told a gathering of media that if he hadn't gone into politics, he would have been a sports writer.

"You'd have had to take a cut in pay, Mr. President," yelped Maury Allen, of the New York Post.

Which reminds folks of the time Babe Ruth demanded a raise that would bring his salary to $80,000. Stunned writers reminded Ruth that the president, Herbert Hoover, earned only $75,000.

"Yeah," Ruth rasped, "but I had a better year than he did."

You can't overlook former governor, former mayor Ed Rendell's contributions. Who can forget his loud campaigning for Ricky Williams as the Eagles' first-round pick, the year they selected Donovan McNabb.

And one more ironic episode involving Nixon. An unbeaten Penn State football team whipped Missouri in the Orange Bowl. Nixon had attended the Texas-Arkansas game in early December and when the Longhorns won, he declared them the national champions.

Years later, Joe Paterno asked sarcastically, "How could he know so little about Watergate in 1973, and so much about college football in 1969?"