Bob McCarty Writes

As a college football fan and political junkie, I see similarities in the seemingly-disparate activities which lead me to believe John McCain can succeed by waging a fourth-quarter comeback over Barack Obama.

Twice this year, college gridiron fans have seen three or more Top 10 teams fall during a single weekend to squads that were either not ranked or ranked much lower in polls reflecting the opinions of coaches, sports writers and fans.

In the lead paragraph of his college football GameDay Final report yesterday, ESPN’s Ivan Maisel described Week 7, the most recent upset weekend, this way:

“It’s one of those Sundays when you feel as if you spent all of Saturday watching a foreign film without subtitles,” Maisel wrote.

He went on to describe how three of the top five teams — including my #1 Oklahoma Sooners — had lost and given up an average of more than 41 points per game while losing.

Two weekends earlier, four teams among the Top 10 lost games and a total of six ranked teams lost to unranked teams (click here for details).

One of them was top-ranked USC, a team many experts had already pegged as an entrant in the BCS Championship.  The team was “unbeatable” in much the same way as the Democratic Party presidential nominee has been anointed by many in the mainstream news media as “The One.”  Still, the Oregon State Beavers found a way to defeat the Trojans, 27-21.

Though major public opinion polls showing Obama leading his Republican opponent by margins of four, five, six and seven points as of this posting, I remain convinced that the senator from Arizona can win by making two adjustments to his political game plan as we enter the “fourth quarter” of the 2008 presidential race:

• The first adjustment involves hitting Obama hard — and, in the words of the junior senator from Illinois, “…say it to my face” — during the third and final presidential debate which takes place Wednesday at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.; and

• The second adjustment involves hitting Obama hard on the campaign trail during the final 21 days and a wakeup of this campaign season.

Meanwhile, McCain fans supporters should make a lot of noise to ensure the truth about Obama is heard by those who want to vote the right way.

Not unlike the comeback he managed after that memorable day when he was seen carrying his own bags while walking through Cleveland Hopkins Airport during the primaries in July 2007, McCain can mount another.  He simply has to want to win and show that desire — through his words and his actions — to the American people.

When he does, perhaps we’ll hear political pundits using words similar to others Maisel used in his article to describe this weekend of football upsets:

“You think you figured out what happened, but you’re not sure you understood all of it.”