Power Players in Politics and Sports with Chris Calizza

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Have you ever wondered how the game of football shapes the American presidency? Today, we delve into the fascinating intersection of sports and politics with author Chris Calizza, whose book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, & the American Presidency, explores the surprising connections between the gridiron and the Oval Office.

Chris Calizza joins us to unpack the ways presidents have used sports to connect with voters, build their image, and even find inspiration for leadership. We'll discuss iconic sports figures who have interacted with presidents, the evolution of sports fandom in American politics, and the lasting impact athletes can have on the national conversation.

Whether you're a sports fanatic, a political junkie, or simply curious about the unexpected links between these two seemingly disparate worlds, this episode promises a captivating conversation. So, grab your favorite jersey (or political hat!), settle in, and get ready to explore the fascinating world of Power Players with Chris Calizza!

-Transcript of Power Players Interview with Chris Calizza

Darin Hayes
Sports history friends, this is Darin Hayes of the Sports Jersey Dispatch Podcast. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to all things great in sports history. And welcome to another edition where we are going to bring on a very interesting author of a recent book that he has released. He is a person who has been a lot in journalism and politics and is now writing a little bit of books on sports. His name is Chris Calizza, and he has written a book, Power Players, Sports Politics and the American Presidency. Chris, welcome to the Pigpen.

Chris Calizza
Thank you for having me.

Darin Hayes
Now, Chris, you have a very well -known career, you've worked for CNN, the Washington Post, and we know how you've reported on politics and things like that, and what brings you into crossing over a little bit into the sports world?

Chris Calizza
Totally. Great question. Well, so I would say that once I gave up my dreams of being in the NBA at about 13 or 14, I had to look for another career. And what always interested me was journalism. Honestly, sports journalism was what interested me most; I wound up going into politics, and I got jobs in college that were sort of in political journalism, and I wound up going into that space. But I always sort of kept my interest in and love of sports there. So when my editor and the publishing house came to me and said, Hey, you want to write another book, I knew that that was the space I wanted to be in because I've always been so passionate about sports and politics. Now, the question was, how do we get into a space where we touch both of those fan bases? You know, how do you write about sports and politics smartly? And honestly, it took a long time to sort the seed to germinate and think of the right way to do it. And you know, we eventually came up with this idea that what we would do is we would look at the sports that presidents played both as kids, and then also as they age, sports, they love sports, they watched on television or listened to on the radio, and what that could tell us about who they are and how they governed when in office. Now, that was the idea. And I think anytime you launch a book, you're like, here, here's my idea. Let's do some research, editing, and writing and see if that bears itself out. If it doesn't, we'll scrap it and try something else. Lucky for me, that first idea came true, and it worked in a way that made me really happy with the final product.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I mean, it's really very clever that you married the two. These are, you know, the things that you see on the headlines of the front page of newspapers, you know, anything that the President does, anything big in sports that happens, you combine the two into one, uh, segment and put it in this book, it's just very interesting, and I guess it almost models what you did in the book with the presidents to your enjoyment. You, you, love politics. You combine sports in it and, uh, sort of marries up very well.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, no, it was entirely a selfish idea on my part because I wanted to write I wanted to write something I was interested in. I mean, I think the best books, in my experience, and the best journalism, generally speaking, come from a place of people who are passionate about it. I always say that if you're not passionate about what you're writing about, it's hard to get somebody to pay, you know, whatever $25 for a hardcover copy of a book. So, I really wanted to make sure it was a topic I felt passionate about and that I could bring that passion to the writing. So yes, no question. This was a reflection of my own interests, and then thinking hard about, you know, are there enough people who have those two similar interests? And then what can we say that is interesting about sports and politics? I just didn't want to write a book that was like, there's sports, and there's politics; I wanted to say something interesting about the connection between the two. That was the focus and the goal.

Darin Hayes
Well, you did very well at both of those. And I think just to give the listeners a little idea about the general dynamic of the book, you're covering the last 12 or 13 presidents. I think you have them all included, from Ike all the way to Joe Biden.

Chris Calizza
13 presidents. There are great stories about presidents before the modern era, basically since World War II. George Washington has great stories about how he bent an iron bar in half. He threw a ball over the Potomac River. There's some really good stuff in there, but ultimately, I thought I wanted to have something that was not a thousand pages long. That was my one thing. I don't think I could, and I didn't want to write a book that was that long. I wanted it to feel manageable. I wanted it to feel like, even though some people, I'm 47, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower's time in office, it was like post-World War II was a manageable and digestible group of presidents, 13 presidents, all of whom had some connection or other two sports that we could tell those stories about.

Darin Hayes
You get into some details. Uh, you know, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower, other than the history books myself, but I, I'm a little bit older. I can remember Nixon, uh, being present. That's sort of the first one I have, but you touch base and, uh, their connection to sports, whether they were a great fan or participated in, uh, some amateur activity or maybe played major college football as some of the presidents did. And I found that really very entertaining.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, you know, one thing that was cool about doing the research and that encouraged me was, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, all of the other presidents played or spectated or loved sports in some way, shape, or form. So, you know, Eisenhower loved golf. He played more golf than any president before Orson. Nixon loved to bowl, which is a little bit weird, but that was Nixon. He was a little bit of a loner. You know, one of my favorite stories is Nixon told the White House press corps that when he felt stressed out, he would often at night go and bowl at ten o ''o'clock or not at night go and bowl that he had lanes put in the White House and he would bowl between seven and 12 games a night, which is remarkable. This idea of the President of the United States just kind of rolling frame after frame after frame. I found it pretty compelling, particularly because I think it's revealing about who Nixon was. Nixon was a little bit of a loner. He was socially awkward. He was not good at small talk. And this idea of him bowling literally alone, I thought, was a powerful image.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it wasn't speaking of image. You have an image of Nixon bowling a game. And when you said, you know, he's bowling like a dozen games. And I have family that owns bowling lanes here in Western Pennsylvania. So I do quite a bit of bowling. And I know how tiring it is after three games where you're bowling in a league. It's not ball after ball after ball. And you have an image of Nixon wearing a white button-down shirt with a tie all the way hooked up. And I'm like, my goodness gracious, that's that's quite a workout.

Chris Calizza
He was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was always sort of formal, I think Nixon. And yeah, you know, one thing that's interesting is he, as kind of makes sense, he actually got pretty good at bowling, uh, over time, uh, he bolded 229 at one point, seven strikes, including four in a row. That was his best game ever. But I mean, that's pretty good for an amateur. He's not a professional bowler, right? But for an amateur bowler, that's not bad. But again, he bolded a lot.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he definitely got a lot of practice with us. So, can you talk to me and mention a little bit about what you have? We have quite a few of these 13 presidents who love to golf. You know, you talked about Ike, who is probably one of the better golfers. You talked about some guys that maybe weren't so good but still enjoyed the support. I guess, um, you know, no, having the knowledge that you have of these guys golfing and sharing that with the audience, if you had to pick up three guys to be in a foursome, you know, these presidents that they're all in your prime and could golf, who would be the three presidents that you would want to golf with from this group?

Chris Calizza
definitely, Eisenhower, not because he was particularly good. He was fine, you know, he played a lot, but the reason I would want Eisenhower is that he was a member in Augusta, and I would. I'm not getting on Augusta otherwise, so that's what gets me on Augusta. We're playing a foursome in Augusta, and you have a place to stay.

Darin Hayes
There, too, with the cabin built for him

Chris Calizza
how we're having them build it for him. And there's a bunch of that in the book, too, about how that came about. But yes. And then I think Trump would probably be interesting to play with. He's quite a good golfer. He's not as good as he says he is, but he's probably a five or six handicap. I mean, for someone his age, he's pretty good. The last one, I would say, is John Kennedy. John Kennedy is probably the best natural golfer of the 13 I looked at. He really downplayed how much golf he played and how good he was at it because he was concerned that this sort of idea of golf is an elitist sport. He already had that image of his father, being from a wealthy family and sort of patrician and blue blood. He didn't want to play into that, but he was quite a good golfer. So I would like to see Kennedy. I think that would also be hilarious for some of the military heroes, the guy from Camelot and the pro wrestling President, Donald Trump.

Darin Hayes
have indeed been very interesting. And I found that you know, you're, what you did with Dwight Eisenhower, you know, I knew about the Eisenhower tree, at least the basic story, but you did tell you went on about that and about the cabin, Augusta building it because he attended so much and like the played house.

Chris Calizza
all the time. Yeah, he was literally there all the time. So they built the house for him. I mean, it's nice. And it was, interestingly, made to look like a replica of the White House. He painted there pretty regularly. I mean, he sort of made, in a lot of ways, Augusta Augusta, right? The way that we think of it now is that it is probably the most exclusive golf club in the world, right? But you know, back in the 50s, it was a little bit actually 40s; it was a little bit different than that. Eisenhower brought a sort of fame to it and a level of attention to it that it didn't already have. And I think Augusta recognizes that that's why they built him the Eisenhower cabin, right? They loved having a president or a former president and a former military hero on the grounds, playing and talking about Augusta and being a member.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And, you know, Eisenhower was a much deeper athlete than just golf in his older years. You know, we know from our website, Pigskin Dispatch, and you've mentioned in the book quite a bit that he was quite the football player back in his days at the Academy.

Chris Calizza
He was, and you know, it's so funny you think of it. I always think of this in relation to Bo Jackson, who was not a president of the United States, but like Bo Jackson had, Bo Jackson injured himself. Bo Jackson was a hero of my, you know, I'm 47. So right in my wheelhouse, you know, with the Raiders and the Royals. And if Bo Jackson had injured himself the way he injured himself and basically ended his career now, you know, he's probably out for a year, and then he comes back, you know, medical technology being what it is. Well, go back another 35 or 40 years; Eisenhower hurt his knee playing football, and that's it. I mean, he no longer plays football, even though that was sort of one of the reasons he was at the Naval Academy in the first place. So it's, you know, talking about being blessed to live at certain times. I always tell my kids that they're lucky to be living right now, as opposed to 100 years ago, and that is the perfect example of that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, absolutely. He wasn't the only football player who had some success at the collegiate level. You had another president that had quite a career in college.

Chris Calizza
Yes, so I would say, you know, people always ask me when they find out you've written a book about sports and presidents. Well, who is the best athlete of all the presidents? That's one of the first questions people usually ask. And I always say the answer to that's pretty clear, and I think inarguable, and it's Gerald Ford. So Gerald Ford played offensive line and a little bit of defense at the University of Michigan. He was an All-American. When he graduated, he had offers from both the Bears and the Lions to play professionally; he turned those offers down to go to law school, which, by the way, talks about how things were different back then. It very rarely, I think, would you see a college athlete have an offer to play professional sports and turn it down to go to law school, at least immediately. But that's what Ford did. One thing that's really interesting about Ford is, without question, our best athlete as President; at the same time, he didn't like to talk about his athletic accomplishments during his political career because he was afraid of being categorized as just a dumb job. So Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, often referred to Ford; when he referred to Ford, he said, oh, Gerald Ford, he got tackled one man too many times without a helmet on. So, he would play into the idea that Ford was just an athlete. And I think Ford really overcompensated in a lot of ways and didn't talk about his significant athletic achievements. I mean, without question, the most athletically accomplished President that we've ever had, Ford, and that is the reason that he wanted not to be typecast. He wanted to be more than just an all-American football player at the University of Michigan.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's definitely true. And you know, many people are aware that he played, but I don't think they realize how good he was and being the captain of that team.

Chris Calizza
I mean, he was, I always wonder, I mean, you know, these debates, I think, are fascinating, like, could Gerald Ford play on the University of Michigan offensive line now? No, probably not, given what his build was and what his stature was. But at the time, he was a standout.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, most definitely. Now, you know, staying on the football theme, I think maybe the biggest surprise to me by reading this book is, you know, Joe Biden in his football career. I never realized that you know, he had been successful as an athlete at the high school level, but maybe you could talk about it.

Chris Calizza
Yes. Absolutely. He goes to Archmere Academy, a private school in Delaware, and his senior year, he's a wide receiver, and his senior year, they're very, very good. They go undefeated. He goes, at least in part, to the University of Delaware to play football. His freshman year, and I think a lot of people who have either been kids or have kids can relate to this. During his freshman year, his grades were pretty poor. It's my freshman year of college. So, excuse me, his parents say, you're not playing football. But by the summer after his sophomore year, he's played spring football, and he's sort of set to be on the team the following year; what happens? Well, he goes on spring break that summer spring of his sophomore year, and he meets a woman named a girl at the time; she's 19, I think, named Nellie. Now, people who are familiar with Joe Biden's background will know that his first wife was Nellie. So he met his first wife on spring break, the summer of the spring of his sophomore year. So he's forced with a choice. She goes to Syracuse University. He wants to play football at the University of Delaware. If he plays football, he doesn't have his weekends free to go visit her. If he goes and visits her, he can't play football; he chooses her as a good choice. They got married. But yeah, Biden was a pretty good wideout from everything I could read about was written about him when he was in high school. He's actually a pretty good golfer, as well. He's not a bad overall athlete. He doesn't play nearly as much golf as Obama or Trump is, you know, his predecessors in office. But he is a pretty natural, good athlete. Overall, though, you know, at this point, we're talking about his age, you know, he's 80. We're probably not talking about Joe Biden going out and, you know, playing football anymore. But at one time, he was a pretty good athlete.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that really, really surprised me. Now, another part of the book that I really loved was the aspect where you sort of sneak up and surprise me. I would get in the rhythm of the reading on it. And all of a sudden, there's a pop culture reference, you know, like a Ron Burgundy quote, or, you know, I try. It was great. It was very entertaining. And I love being kept up a little bit pertinent to the story. So, what was your strategy when you were writing the book? You want to have a little bit of that pop culture come in.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's sort of how I write generally, you know, is I've always written, I've written mostly, I should say, for the internet my whole life, whether it's at CNN or the Washington Post, most of my stuff has appeared online first. And yeah, I wanted it; I think what I didn't want is for the book to feel like required reading, that it was something that, you know, well, I better read this book. I wanted people to be excited about reading it and have fun while they were reading it. So I tried to make the writing, the anecdotes, and the stories there as fun as possible. One thing that I was really lucky with with the book was that there was so much raw material. Honestly, I was surprised by this; not that much has been written about it. So, there have been books written about presidents in golf. Rick Riley wrote a famous book, Commander in Cheat, about Donald Trump, and he always cheats at golf. But there hasn't really been a broad look at the sports the presidents played, what they loved, and what it tells us about them. And so I was mining a lot of ground that hadn't really been mined before. So, it made for fun research and a fun writing process. And I hope it makes for a fun read.

Darin Hayes
Well, it most definitely does. Okay, now I shared with you what I found to be the most surprising element as a reader. What was the most surprising thing to you during your research that you wrote in a book?

Chris Calizza
Well, you know, I spent the last five years at CNN covering Donald Trump every single day, writing about him most days. I did not think that going into the book, the thing I would have been surprised to learn would be something about Donald Trump. I thought maybe it'd be about Eisenhower or Ford or, you know, someone from a time past when I was less familiar with it, but it wound up being Trump, and I'll tell you what it was. So, Donald Trump actually played sports in college. It wasn't baseball. It wasn't golf. It was squash. So he played squash for one year at Fordham. And I talked to his biographer, a guy named, well, a guy at the Washington Post who was wonderful and a former colleague of mine. He told me a great story about Trump as a squash player. And he essentially said Trump wasn't a great squash player, not because he wasn't athletic, but because he didn't have the patience to sort of pound out points. He would get frustrated and just wail the ball as hard as he could. And, you know, that often would lead to an error, and he would lose the point. One other fun story about Trump and squash. He didn't like to take the team bus to and from games. So he would drive his sports car with his friends from the team with it. Now, the coach gave him transportation money for that, but he also charged his friends tolls and gas. So he pocketed that money, too. On one trip, they had just lost at the Naval Academy in Maryland. On the way back, Trump pulls into a department store. I think it was a Montgomery Wards. This will date him a little bit, but generally, in the department store, he emerges from the department store with a brand-new set of golf clubs, teas, and balls. They proceed to drive to this bluff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. He and his friends just blast ball after ball into the water until they get bored, leave the golf clubs by brand-new golf clubs by the side of the road, and drive off back to Fordham. So I felt that I just, I didn't know that about him. I love that anecdote, and Mark Fisher is sorry; it is the name of the Washington Post reporter whom I talked to about this. I love the idea of Trump not being patient enough to succeed at squash despite his athletic ability. I think it's an interesting metaphor for how he approached politics, too.

Darin Hayes
Uh, yeah, I think a lot of maybe some of his business dealings, too. He sort of has television programs, which seems to be part of his personality. So yeah, very, very interesting. Well, Chris, why don't we take this opportunity to give the listeners, let's once again, the name of the book and where folks may get a copy of it?

Chris Calizza
So it's called Power Players Sports Politics in the American Presidency. If you type Power Players, you should be able to find it. It is on Amazon. It is on Barnes and Noble. It's on bookshop .org. There's an audiobook that I read. So, if you like my voice, buy the audiobook because it's me reading it. It's on Kindle. You also can go to, in real life, brick-and-mortar stores, any brick-and-mortar store that sells books; it should be there by now. If not, ask for it, and it will be there within a few days.

Darin Hayes
Well, Chris, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing the stories from this book and, and sharing this book for the world to, you know, not only capture, uh, you know, sports history but capture American history and world history in the process. And I love the mix of all the elements: the entertainment of pop culture, the history of the presidents, and, of course, sports. So it was a great book, and I highly recommend it. Thank you, sir, for joining us today.

Chris Calizza
Thanks for the kind words. It was really fun to write. I hope it's as fun.