As some of you have no doubt noticed, the nation has turned its eyes toward Iowa, as it does once every four years (the rest of the time is spent averting our eyes from Iowa’s bulbous charm, but that’s neither here nor there). What is important is this: which presidential candidate is most athletic? Because seriously, this is something we want to know. Can our head of state take your head of state in a 100-meter dash? Check that, 100-yard dash. We play by American rules here. Keep your metric system away from our America. We’re going to keep this strictly athletic; originally, we thought about asking which candidate would dominate the RandBallympics, but we were worried that our current president might have had the best shot in such an event, thus tainting the sample. So let’s look at the candidates from a purely sporting standpoint:

Barack Obama: Not just a great orator and natural leader, but also a basketball star in his own right. He would dunk on Dennis Kucinich and D up Mitt Romney. A definite front-runner, even if if he is a White Sox fan.

John McCain: Earned two varsity letters in wrestling in high school and, let’s not forget, has the competitive intangibles that come from surviving more than 5 years in a POW camp.  Given that he’s now 71, he might have lost a step. But let’s not forget that he was in Wedding Crashers, which is awesome even if the movie was mediocre. Bonus points.

Hillary Clinton: Apparently played tennis and “other sports” in early life and has a tenacious streak that we imagine would translate into a never-say-die attitude on, say, a football field or rugby pitch. If she put on 100 pounds, we’d play her at H-back tomorrow. That said, her favorite activity these days is apparently speedwalking, which is like running for pansies or walking for nervous people. Lame.

Rudy Giuliani: Gained prominence during the post-9/11 time for being all about the Yankees, though recently he has switched allegiances to the Red Sox. Well, there goes the entire upper East Coast vote. Dumb. He seems more suited to be a coach than a player. He could take a group of misfit soccer players that went 8-15 a year ago and transform them into a possession squad that went 17-8 and nearly upset their arch-rivals in the district playoffs.

John Edwards: He has relative youth on his side. He was a smalltown football star growing up and looks comfortable throwing and catching the ball in this uncomfortably awkward and staged game of catch on a tour break last summer. Along with Obama, Edwards is the least likely of the candidates to be picked last in any random pick-up game that you could organize with your friends right now.

Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, I Heart Huckabee, Kucinich, et. al: Let’s be realistic. It doesn’t really matter.

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