What an action-packed and important day it's been for Barack Obama. He sat courtside at Duke-Georgetown (oh shush, all of you), told Clark Kellogg he was gunning for his job and his administration wants to finally pass reform that matters.
Obama brought all his non-hoops-playing buds — Biden! Axelrod! Gibbs! — with him to the Verizon Center to watch the hometown Hoyas thoroughly and utterly and embarrassingly dismantle Reggie Love's Blue Devils, although the Baller-in-Chief, who occasionally leafed through a Georgetown yearbook, didn't appear to take sides in the mismatch. Smart guy, he is. If he hollers for Duke — Jon Scheyer's from Chicago and Coach K is a Team USA guy, remember? — then every coffee-fetching intern will be "Hoya! Saxa!"ing in the West Wing come Monday. And if Obama were to join them — um, do I really have to explain why? — his body man would probably smash his super-high-tech BlackBerry and accidentally lose the codes to The Football or something. (Sports metaphors!) To be fair, though, if Obama were worried about his image, he wouldn't have caravaned away from the White House in the first place. I mean, watching a Duke-Georgetown game in a checkered Oxford under a sweater is pretty much the antithesis of: "Hey, I'm a man of the people!"
But it's all OK in the end, because during his stint in the booth, Obama told Kellogg, who must have had a producer in his ear advising him to guffaw every time Obama moved his lips, that he's going to take his job in either three or seven years. So we have that to look forward to.
Also, while we're talking about wonderful ideas, the Department of Justice is reportedly considering a review of the Bowl Championship Series' legality. (And yes, I'm fully aware that "reportedly considering" means about as much as "It's possible that if Durham weren't completely shut down because of a few snowflakes, I might think about potentially going for a walk and possibly not coming back until the college basketball season ends.") Here's some of what Ronald Weich, an assistant attorney general who's about to be a modern hero, wrote, echoing Obama's campaign promise to "throw my weight around a little bit" and give the people change they can believe in:
"The administration shares your belief that the current lack of a college football national championship playoff with respect to the highest division of college football ... raises important questions affecting millions of fans, colleges and universities, players and other interested parties.
...
"This seemingly discriminatory action with regard to revenues and access have raised questions regarding whether the BCS potentially runs afoul of the nation's antitrust laws."
If that's just a lot of indecipherable legal mumbo-jumbo, let me help translate: "Get fucked, Ari Fleischer."
Obama attends Duke-Georgetown game [AP]
Justice Department: Obama administration may take on BCS [AP]