No wonder I hate football, the overwhelming majority of coaches are Republicans, at both college and professional ranks.
During the 2008 campaign cycle, college and NFL head coaches (and their wives) contributed a total of $13,286 to John McCain and the Republican National Committee. From that same group, Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee received just $4,600—half of it from Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears and the other half from San Jose State’s Dick Tomey.
In all, 20 coaches active in the 2008 season gave to Republican candidates seeking federal office. Three donated to Democrats. This disparity is even more striking given that, among the individual donors in the ’08 campaign cycle, Mr. Obama outraised Mr. McCain by more than a 5-to-1 margin.
Some coaches display their largely conservative instincts in non-financial ways. Jack Del Rio of the NFL’s Jaguars led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance at a Sarah Palin rally in Jacksonville last fall. Longtime Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs addressed last summer’s Republican National Convention. Lou Holtz fired up congressional Republicans with a pep talk in 2007 and recently flirted with running for Congress in Florida. Ralph Friedgen, the portly University of Maryland coach, good-naturedly called one of his Canadian players a socialist last fall.
There’s no evidence that coaches with a conservative bent are better coaches or more likely to get jobs. Football coaches aren’t the most diverse group, which may help explain their political similarities.
[Click to continue reading Why Your Coach Votes Republican – WSJ.com]
The reasons the Wall Street Journal opines as to why Republicans are pretty ridiculous1: more marketing for the Republican brand, in my opinion, but you can make up your own mind whether Republican virtues translate onto the grid iron.
- discipline, self-reliance, loyalty to core values – yeah, the Republicans I know and read about don’t fit any of these parameters [↩]