“Root, root, root, for the home team
If they don’t win it’s a shame…”
Before I begin, when I heard Mitt Romney was moving back to Utah to run for the open senate seat I first thought the US Senate is better off with a true constitutional conservative and a state as conservative as Utah is a place that could elect one, such as another Mike Lee. I still feel that way.
But I like basketball, so here’s my defense of Romney from the current silliness he is facing.
Last night the former presidential candidate sat courtside at the Utah Jazz playoff game. He wore a Jazz jersey that had his name on the back and the number 5. The jersey was given to him by the Mike Maughan, the co-founder of 5 For The Fight, which is an organization created to fight cancer (their website is linked here). This group has been working directly with the Jazz and their patch has been worn on all the players’ jerseys all season. Romney is very wealthy, so of course he had courtside seats. In basketball, you want courtside seats; just ask Spike Lee or Jack Nicholson.
The silliness is that the internet trolls, bless their hearts, are calling Romney a phony over this. C’mon.
Romney is a real deal sports fan. He served as the chairman of the Olympic committee for the Salt Lake City games in 2002. When he was in Massachusetts he cheered for the Boston teams. Romney is from Michigan so when the Detroit Tigers made the World Series he cheered for them. And Romney knows basketball well enough that he appropriately taunted Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook when Westbrook picked-up his fourth foul in the first half (six fouls and you are disqualified, so four in the first half for the opponent’s superstar is a big deal).
This is not fake. This is called rooting for the home team and there is nothing wrong with that. Rooting for the home team is just easier to do as they are all over the local media while out of market teams are tougher to follow simply because you really have to make an effort and spend more money and time watching and following them.
Contrast Romney behaving like a fan last night with some other clear phonies, which may bring this into its proper context. Take Hillary Clinton for example, the Golden Calf of the Democrat Party. In 1999 she said, “The fact is I’ve always been a Yankees fan.” Katie Couric, of all people, pushed back with, “I thought you were a Cubs fan.” Remember Clinton is from Illinois but she was running for US Senate in New York at the time, so she must have felt the need to be as phony as she always is. Her response was, “I needed an American League team… so as a young girl I became very interested and enamored of the Yankees.” Haha. Now that’s funny! Keep in mind Clinton only moved to New York to run for the senate. I’m not sure if she had finished unpacking at the time she made this confession of secretly rooting for the Yankees her whole life. Romney, conversely, had been a Massachusetts resident for years before his run for public office there and he has deep ties to Utah.
It’s not just limited to Clinton, of course. Ted Cruz tried to sound like a basketball fan when he was campaigning in Indiana in 2016 and it didn’t work. At the local level, I’ve seen candidates try to muster up being a fan for the area team only to sound uninformed. It happens and to a larger point it shines a light on how honest a person is.
In any event, honesty is the best policy. If a candidate shows up as a fan for the local team here and then for the local team there, then something is wrong. But Mitt Romney cheering for the Utah Jazz to the point that he taunts the opponent’s superstar is right in every way.
Again, this post is not an endorsement or a statement of support for Romney’s candidacy. It’s only meant to be an honest defense of candidates at sporting events. Go team!
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