I’ve never been a particularly big fan of football. Now, before you petition to have my Texas citizenship revoked, humor me for a while.

Growing up, I was atrocious at almost any sport that involved moving a ball from one point of a field to another. In fact, of the entire three years of my childhood that I played soccer the only time I ever scored a goal was on the wrong team. I spent a lot of time on the football field in high school, but instead of wearing pads and a helmet I wore a plume and bass drum while standing in formation with the rest of my school’s marching band. An athlete I certainly was not.

Having never gotten actively involved with the sport, I remained largely apathetic to football, and my indifference extended to the sidelines as well. I wouldn’t have even known Tony Romo was still the Cowboys’ quarterback if my facebook feed didn’t fill up with derogatory comments about him every Sunday night.

Maybe disliking football makes me a snob. My friends have jokingly called me a “commie” on many occasions when I illustrate my illiteracy of the sport. However, it doesn’t seem to matter so much now because I recently had an epiphany of astounding proportions: I might be one of the biggest football fans there is.

Allow me to explain. Although my first major is English, political science is still something I’m passionately interested in. Even since before I could vote I’ve followed the world of American electoral politics closely. Every week pundits have a new comment to make about America’s political situation, and I’m always there to follow it. How will McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate affect his odds? What does Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts portend for the Democrats? Who will pick up Anthony Weiner’s seat after he resigns? I remember all of these questions and more as I’ve faithfully and regularly tuned into CNN or pulled up The New York Times on my laptop.

Then, I noticed something while I was reading an NPR news piece about Michele Bachmann. According to the report, “Bachmann had scored points when she tore into Perry at the CNN debate on Monday” in regards to Perry’s executive order requiring Texas girls to be vaccinated against HPV. “Scored points?” If these primaries are about racking up a score, then where’s the scoreboard?

And then it hit me: American politics is probably the biggest game of football there is. Rick Perry entering the race causes an upset after Michele Bachmann’s “win” in Iowa. Tim Pawlenty endorsing Mitt Romney is like a 20-yard pass. Herman Cain’s presence in the race is much akin to the Detroit Lions: they still play, but no one’s quite sure why at this point. President Obama’s decision to subsidize Solyndra in spite of the company’s atrocious business model is a fumble of epic proportions, but the death of Osama bin Laden under his auspices was a touchdown that will keep him in the game well until the election next year.

Indeed, though it might become increasingly frightening to watch our political landscape (especially over the course of the past few years), just like a rousing game of Sunday Night Football it makes for great TV. Watch a typical evening broadcast on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC and just count the number of times they make reference to someone “getting ahead,” “scoring points,” “getting into the game” or anything else that can be construed as a sports reference and you’ll see what I mean.

Is it bad that this is what politics has become? Not entirely. In some ways, I think it’s inevitable, and the growth of this similarity is not a completely new phenomenon. Politics, after all, is a game in some ways. We watch candidates debate, we consider all the alternatives, we go to the ballot box to cast a vote, and we wait for the results. And in the end, just like in all sports, someone wins and someone else loses. Then we watch how the newly elected legislators act and repeat the exercise again a couple years later. Politics has to be a game sometimes; if we didn’t force politicians to compete against each other to continue leading we’d border on the line of autocracy.

But the problem is that games like football are part of an entertainment industry; politics, on the other hand isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be). In the end, whether or not the Cowboys win the Super Bowl is not going to greatly affect the course our country takes over the next few years; the outcome of the presidential election will. The primary debates happening right now aren’t just a part of some game, and their results will have dramatic consequences that we need to be cognizant of.

With that in mind, I hope (though don’t naively expect) that our politicians will remember who ultimately holds them accountable: not the media outlets that ostensibly determine their reputations, but the American electorate.

Brandon Bub is a sophomore majoring in English and edits The Daily Campus opinion column. He can be reached for comment at [email protected]