Today, I am loving this story that unites my two favorite fall pastimes: politics and football! I'm sure this wasn't what the Romney-Ryan ticket had in mind in trying to chum up to Ohio voters by hanging out with the Cleveland Browns:
From Marc Sessler on NFL.com:
Paul Ryan, the boyish GOP vice presidential candidate, would have done well to study the Cleveland Browns' roster before dropping in for a visit with the team Wednesday.
Mitt Romney's running mate spoke to a gathering of Browns players after practice and went on a pleasant soliloquy about watching rookie quarterback Brandon Weeden's heroics at Oklahoma State.
One small issue: Ryan was pointing to backup Colt McCoy, the former Texas passer and Browns starter.
Ryan back-pedaled faster than Joe Haden in an attempt to undo his gaffe. "You always had your helmet on," Ryan told Weeden, according to The Plain Dealer.
Weeden seemed nonplussed, later telling The Associated Press: "I think he saw the red (practice) jerseys and got us mixed up. But he's got more important things on his mind right now than me and Colt. It was a good laugh."
It's been a streaky week for Ryan. His signal-caller mixup comes on the heels of reports the Romney campaign "ramrodded their way" into a Youngstown, Ohio, soup kitchen to generate photos of Ryan washing dishes. Clean dishes.
These are beautiful times.
On it's face, Paul Ryan's mistaking Cleveland starting QB Brandon Weeden for his back-up Colt McCoy might seem like a fluff story, nothing more than a Monday morning chuckle. But Cleveland fans are pretty hard-core despite their team's woes in recent years, and this story will probably have long legs in Ohio media markets.
As a Wisconsinite and die-hard Packer fan, I recognize that there is little chance anyone could ever mistake Aaron Rodgers for Graham Harrell, but if some outside pol came in trying to suck up to our team to win votes and proved himself anything but genuine.....it wouldn't be pretty.
And he also brought Condoleezza Rice with him, y'know, as part of the attempt to distance the Romney-Ryan ticket from the Bush adminstration going into the foreign policy debate....oh wait...
Well, maybe he was just trying to make the black members of the team feel more comfortable.
