Bad sportscaster-turned-vice president? Now that's scary

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin terrifies me as our next vice president, and not because of something as irrelevant as her teenage daughter's pregnancy or something as clumsy as her alleged attempt at having a state trooper fired because he was divorcing Palin's sister. And not because of her oppressive religious beliefs or her view of the United States' skirmish in Iraq as a holy war.

OK, the holy war thing scares me a little bit.

But Sarah Palin terrifies me as a vice presidential candidate because of her past as a sportscaster.

Sarah Palin's sports past gives Doyel some trepidation. (Getty Images)

And a bad sportscaster at that.

I mean, she was brutal. Here's a clip of Palin talking about sports in Alaska, and if this doesn't get you off your lazy ass and into a voting booth in November, nothing will.

Even if she'd been good as a sportscaster, she would have terrified me as a vice president. See, this isn't a partisan column, or a sexist column. Palin's gender isn't the point. Neither is her political slant. My problem is right there on her résumé. She was once a local sportscaster? One of them? That's a problem.

And think about this: Sarah Palin is damn close to becoming the next vice president of the United States not because she was good as a sportscaster, but because she was bad at it. That's like being bad at bingo, but she pulled it off. So she moved on. Found other things to do. Got into politics.

Next stop: Oval Office.

It's crazy. The White House goes from the dude who couldn't cut it in professional sports to the woman who couldn't cut it in local TV sports. And if you know anything about local TV sports, you know it's not a genre teeming with brilliant individuals. I said local, not national. Not the fine minds at CBS Sports, including Greg Gumbel, one of the nicest men on the planet; Len Elmore, one of the smartest; smooth Jim Nantz; and pioneering Lesley Visser. They are giants in the field.

Sarah Palin, as a sportscaster, was tiny. Minuscule. If she can't read the TelePrompTer in Anchorage without inspiring my confidence, I don't need her trying to read Putin.

And what is it with sports seeping over into the highest reaches of government, anyway? It goes way beyond former athletes J.C. Watts, Steve Largent, Jack Kemp, Jim Ryun, Jim Bunning and Bill Bradley working in Congress. Beyond Jesse Ventura as governor of the very funny voters of Minnesota.

This goes all the way to the top, to the jock sniffer we elected president in 2000, a guy who wanted so badly to be part of the clubhouse that he convinced his daddy's friends to buy him the Texas Rangers. Plus there's George Bush's freaking secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who was once known among Texas A&M fans as "ranger65," an anonymous poster on various Aggies message boards during breaks from his day job ... as president of the university.

Hey, the democrats aren't immune either. Presidential candidate Barack Obama is a basketball junkie who used his popularity earlier this year to get into a pick-up game with the North Carolina Tar Heels. And even with armed bodyguards to guard his back, Obama never once threw an elbow into Tyler Hansbrough's face, an oversight that could and even should cost him some Duke votes this fall.

Then again, Obama should do just fine in Durham. His personal assistant is none other than Reggie Love, the former Duke football and basketball player known by some people as being the undersized walk-on who filled in admirably for injured Duke center Carlos Boozer at the 2001 ACC Tournament. And known by some other people for being the guy who showed up at the wrong party in Chapel Hill and ended up with his picture all over the Internet after ... ahem. Google that one yourself. I'm not touching it.

When sports and politics get together, ugly just seems to happen. Something ugly like $111 million guard Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards, who grew up in housing projects in Miami and was later homeless for a short period in California, declaring on his blog that he's a Republican because "Obama is going to raise taxes on the upper class."

Or something ugly like Sarah Palin failing as a local sportscaster and embarking on a second career in politics and ending up within range of the White House. Vote for her at your own risk. Good grief, everyone knows sportscasters are a step below sportswriters in terms of intelligence and cunning.

Which means that if she can become vice president of the United States, anyone can be the president.

Even me.