Opinion: World champ Giants to open NFL season vs John McCain

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But since this is a political blog we don’t really care about sports, except as a metaphor.

The real impact of the National Football League’s newly announced decision to launch the 2008 season on Thursday night, Sept. 4 is....

That’s the same night as the climax of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul when Sen. John McCain is to be the highlight with his crucial acceptance speech that traditionally sets the tone for a candidate’s campaign before a national audience.

Let’s see, who’d win that TV ratings scrimmage, a New York team playing the very first game of a fresh NFL football season or the second major political acceptance speech on national TV in a week?

Plus we’d miss all the colorful balloons falling from the convention center ceiling on cue.

As a reluctant concession to the process of picking the nation’s next commander in chief and the leader of the free world except on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights and sometimes Thursday nights too, the league decided to start the Giants-Redskins game 90 minutes early.

But there better not be overtime or McCain’ll get stomped on Sept. 4 instead of on Nov. 4.

--Andrew Malcolm

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