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48
september
october 201 3
LOCAL POLITICS
think
George Korda
is a longtime newsmedia political
analyst and the president of KordaCommunications,
a public relations and communications consultingfˆØrm
based inKnoxville.
Illustration by
DANNY WILSON
The state of Tennessee’Äôs highest-paid
public employee is Butch Jones, UT’Äôs
head football coach. (Across the country,
the highest-paid public employee in
each state includes 27 football coaches,
13 basketball coaches, and one hockey
coach.) Jones is paid some $3 million
annually. The offensive and defensive
coordinators for UT’Äôs football team earn
$475,000. Riding drag is the strength
and conditioning coach, reportedly
earning $175,000. By comparison, Ten-
nessee Governor Bill Haslam’Äôs salary
(which he doesn’Äôt accept) is $170,340.
’ÄúWhere your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.’Äù [Matthew 6:21] Politicians
understand voters’Äô hearts are with the
team’Äîand politicians want voters to
know their hearts are beating orange
with them.
However, there’Äôs a line between
shared sentiment and encroaching on
the actual event.Whenever politicians
want an ego takedown they need only
allow themselves to be introduced at a
game. It won’Äôt be love they’Äôll be hearing
cascading from the stands.
Incumbent candidates essentially
want UT fans to believe they have a
shared devotion to the Vols and they
want voters in a good mood on Election
Day. That’Äôs why politicians sing a slightly
different last line of UT’Äôs signature song:
’ÄúGood ol’Äô Rocky Top, Rocky Top win for
me, Rocky Top win for me.’Äù
happy voting public going into the elec-
tion. A UT loss makes for a grumpy com-
munity. People don’Äôt go out to dinner.
They don’Äôt buy as many UT shirts or seat
cushions. After a loss they just might
take out their frustration on a candidate
by voting against him, or, worse, not
bothering to vote at all’Äîwhich matters
most to incumbent candidates ahead in
the polls.
Tennessee won the game, I was re-
lieved, and Ashe won with 72 percent of
the vote. UT’Äôs football victory certainly
didn’Äôt hurt’Äîand might have helped
with Ashe’Äôs margin of victory.
Believe it or not, there is research to
support this thesis. A November 3, 2012,
article in
USA Today
said, in part, ’ÄúIn 2010,
a team of political scientists and econo-
mists looked at college football scores
over 42 years and compared them to
county-level election results. They found
that wins by the old alma mater in the
10 days before an election can boost the
incumbent party’Äôs vote by a little over 1
percent in the surrounding county.’Äù
Neil Malhotra, a Stanford University
professor of political economics and a
co-author of the study, said, ’ÄúThe theory
is that people are analyzing economic
data and they’Äôre deciding whether to
hire or fire the incumbent based on that
analysis. But the other theory is that
there’Äôs an emotional component.’Äù
In short, the article reported, ’ÄúVoters
may just be in a bad mood, and take
those frustrations out at the ballot box.’Äù
Another way to judge the importance
of collegiate sports to voters is to follow
the money.
By George Korda
Rocky Top
Win for Me!
The most popular
people in ancient Rome
weren’Äôt emperors or
generals, politicians or actors.
They were chariot race drivers.
Even emperors wanted to be associ-
ated with drivers and the teams for
which they drove.Why? Because people
all across the Roman Empire loved
chariot races and chariot race drivers.
For the emperors, it was all about prox-
imity to the stars.
A quick quiz: who is the current
governor of Alabama?Who is the head
football coach at the University of
Alabama? Most of us are forced to the
internet to identify Robert J. Bentley
as Alabama’Äôs governor. University of
Alabama football coach Nick Saban may
need bodyguards just to eat an uninter-
rupted restaurant meal.
Which brings us to University of Ten-
nessee sports’Äîand football.
Politicians in this area drape them-
selves in Big Volunteer Orange for two
reasons:
1.
They’Äôre fans themselves.
2.
Theywant to relate to voters
whoseworlds stop during a doz-
en fall Saturdays annually (not
counting bowl games’Äîshould
they ever occur).
Election season is generally football
season. And before every election there
are incumbent politicians cheering for
the fightin’Äô Big Orange. Their cheer is
along the lines of, ’ÄúHelp me win, keep
me in! Score, boys, score!’Äù
In 1991, just before the mayoral elec-
tion in which I was working for then-
incumbent Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe,
I watched with some anxiety the UT
football game just before the election.
Though the polls showed Ashe
substantially ahead, I was hoping for a