Newspapers will be filled with analyses of the presidential election for weeks to come. Pundits will endlessly blab about what Kerry and Co. did wrong, what Bush, Inc. did right, the religious right, the lack of message, and on and on.

But really, everyone should have seen the Bush victory coming long ago. It’s really pretty simple: football and baseball vs. soccer and hockey.

Case closed, election over, Republicans win, Democrats lose.

The young John Kerry competed in a variety of sports, but he was best at soccer and hockey, the two sports he enjoys the most. Neither sport is exactly a bastion of American patriotism. Neither sport sells out 60,000-seat stadiums on a regular basis, at least in this country.

Kerry, trying to show his youthful vigor and “I’m not a pansy liberal” manliness, played a couple of fundraising hockey games with former stars like Ray Bourque. He mentioned scoring a hat trick in a soccer game during his days at Yale as one of the highlights of his sporting life. Fumble, Team Kerry.

While Macalester students might pack the stands for weekend soccer games, we learned quite clearly on Tuesday that the rest of America has little to do with Macalester. To most Americans, soccer is summed up in the classic Simpsons quote, “Halfback passes to the center, back to the wing, back to the center, center holds it….holds it….holds it…” Soccer, like Kerry, is a nuanced/ flip-flopping sport (choose your own adjective). If you are going to play soccer properly, you must at times go sideways, backwards, and perhaps worst of all, “switch it.” Your team can play great and lose, play terribly and win, or, horror of horrors for Americans, tie.

Similarly, in Kerry’s other favorite sport, players often take their time to set up plays, passing back and forth, sending pucks down the ice, and (again) “switching it up.” All of this rubs most of America the wrong way. Hockey is too slow to develop. It’s too complicated. It’s low scoring. Hockey, like soccer, is just damn boring—and it’s how America saw John Kerry. Now let’s look at Bush’s favorite sports—baseball and football. One is “America’s pastime” and the other is currently the most popular sport in the U.S, by far. Two points Team Bush.

Bush partially owned and ran the Texas Rangers for a bit. While he didn’t do a great job (trading away future superstar Sammy Sosa at one point) he still owned a sports team—and that’s kick-ass. Bush also watches football nearly every Sunday (or at least he used to, pre-pretzel incident).

Baseball is wrapped up in our nation’s history. Bush throwing out the first pitch at the World Series post-Sept. 11th was not an accident of circumstance. It was a symbolic moment so wrapped up in patriotism and what Americans hold dear that you could almost taste the freedom. When you think of America, you think of moms, apple pie, and baseball. Like it or not, most Americans probably know more about their favorite team’s players than they did about either presidential candidate’s views on reforming social security.

Football sells out huge stadiums week after week across the country. More people tune into the Super Bowl than any other single event. The game is simple: forward is good, backwards it bad, sideways is okay, but only for a bit. There are two options—pass or run. The guys that don’t fit into this simple set-up (special teams) are mocked. Whoever hits harder, runs faster, and moves the ball farther is going to win. Your team is good, the other is evil.

Bush is the all-American man. When he plays a sport, he’s manly and tough; one can imagine him out in the field or in the locker room and not laugh. When Kerry tried to appeal to the everyman by toting a football everywhere he went he just came off as fake and ridiculous. The pictures of his long, gangly legs sticking out of a bike-racing suit hardly did him much better.

I don’t know for sure whether the candidates’ choice of sports affected their political outlooks, or if their political outlooks affected their choice of sports (although since sport always comes first, I’m willing to bet on the former). What I do know is that the sports they chose to emphasize explain the election far better than any analysis I’ve heard so far.

So what’s in store for 2008? Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) a millionaire, doctor, and runner, vs. John Edwards (D-NC) a millionaire, lawyer, and runner. Looks like it’s anybody’s game, and a nation divided once again.