ClayNation: Paid for by the Committee for Football Attack Ads

Politics and sports are often awkwardly wedded. Nothing has crystallized this more clearly in the 2006 midterm elections than www.stopshuler.com, which has bedeviled Heath Shuler's North Carolina Congressional campaign all fall.

Political attack ads are common. What isn't common yet is the wedding of political and sports ads to masterful and hilarious results, like those featured on stopshuler. I'm praying that we're going to see more of these in the future.

Already the Southeastern Conference has fired a shot across the bow of the Big East Conference and the Big East has responded in kind by attacking the SEC. Please watch these ads; they are part of what makes America great. Personally, I have to give the early edge to the SEC in terms of tone. While I liked the medley of photos used by the Big East, any truly great attack ad has to feature the uptight and indignant narrator. And the SEC guy is almost as good as the voice from the stopshuler ads. Now all we need is for the sports attack ad concept to spread.

After all, we already have the BCS, whose main ingredient (like attack ads) is BS, so why not just go ahead and allow rival teams to craft ads explaining why they deserve to play in the championship game instead of other teams? They should then let people vote on this. It can't be any less legitimate than allowing fat sportswriters and computer geeks who haven't had a date since 1991 to decide which is the best football team in the country. And it's much more fun.

Since we can't have a legitimate playoff in college football, what if we had an eight-team playoff based on attack ads? Whichever school could produce the winning ad would advance to take on another team. The last two surviving teams would then play for a shot at the BCS national championship. A team of neutral observers could vote on who should advance, like the writers behind The Office or Sacha Baron Cohen by himself (just as long as the people voting in the BCS competition are smarter than actual voters in political elections). This would guarantee the ads would actually be biting and funny instead of grainy and dumb. This method is no less absurd than arbitrarily decreeing which one-loss team is the best in the land. Plus, it would be hysterical.

Can't you just see these ads? For instance, if a one-loss Notre Dame team was arguing that it deserved to play in the championship game, a pro-Michigan group (after an inevitable loss to Ohio State) could break down the tape of this September's Michigan-Notre Dame game.

Ronald Reagan, with Serena and Venus Williams. (Getty Images)

In super-slow motion, we could see Brady Quinn being decked as he released a pass that was returned for an interception. Then in typical election-speak, we could hear a solemn announcer say, "Two months ago Notre Dame gave up 47 points to Michigan and lost by almost four touchdowns" -- "47" would flash on the screen from three or four different angles while Quinn continued to be driven into the turf. Incredulous and sarcastic announcer: "Now Charlie Weis says his Notre Dame team is deserving of a spot in the BCS national championship game." Cut to the most unflattering photo of Charlie Weis ever taken. Perhaps it is Weis eating a cheeseburger the size of Holland. Then the camera would zoom in on a typed statement of Weis' claim that Notre Dame deserves to play.

Finally, you'd close with an ominous and dismissive tone, "Notre Dame football: The cheeseburger put up a better fight against Charlie Weis than the team did against Michigan." Then a quick Micro-Machines announcer-esque: Paid for by the Committee to Elect Michigan to the BCS Championship.

I'm hoping this will happen in the near future.

(Editor's Note: Check out John Moore's mock political ad cartoon on the SPiN homepage).

But until then, the actual midterm elections are just six days away and we here at ClayNation have been suffused with legitimate political attack ads that awkwardly incorporate sports. Usually I watch these attack ads in fast-forward on my DVR, but occasionally I pause to watch and ridicule them. In Tennessee, Democrat Harold Ford Jr. and Republican Bob Corker have been waging a spirited campaign for what seems like the past nine years to replace retiring Sen. Bill Frist. Lately the campaign has become a referendum on whether or not Harold Ford Jr. did or did not attend a Playboy party held during Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville.

George Bush at the Superdome in New Orleans. (Getty Images)

Seriously, this is what the campaign has boiled down to. Not Iraq, Social Security, abortion or our looming federal deficits. A Playboy party. Welcome to Tennessee, where even though every man likes to look at naked women, it's important to pretend you don't. At least if you want to get elected to the Senate. At any moment I'm expecting for a new Pro-Burka party to form and call itself the Tennessee Taliban. Finally, Harold Ford Jr., who is single by the way, put the issue to rest with this quote, "I like football and I like girls and I don't have no apologies for that." For my money, this might be the best political quote of my lifetime.

Leaving aside the fact that there are probably lots of voters like my friend Chad, who said, "I'd be more likely to vote against him if he could have gone to the Playboy party at the Super Bowl and he chose not to," the looming question here is: What is it about sports and the intersection of politics that has particular relevance to voters?