Bowtie askew, the man stewed at the bar. It was a nice enough wedding, sure, but Miami was playing Florida State in a matchup of the second and third best college football teams in America. It was 1992 so it wasn't like he could follow the game on a smartphone, which is too bad because the game would soon be known as Wide Right II after Florida State kicker Dan Mowrey missed a game-tying 39-yard field as time expired. The Seminoles wouldn't lose another game for the rest of the season, whereas Miami's only loss would come in a de facto national title game against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
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Not that the man at the wedding would know that, he was just pissed that he was missing the Hurricanes and Seminoles."Thanks, Obama," he muttered under his breath.Republicans often complain that President Obama was not properly vetted before he was elected. I think we found out a lot about him seeing as how they wouldn't shut up about Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Saul Alinksy. They must have been complaining about how nobody brought up the fact that he got married during football season. Thus, out of an abundance of caution, let's rank the 2016 presidential candidates based on the sporting events that their guests ended up missing.First off, the whites Republicans. The Republican race is wide open, with a cornucopia of mark-ass tricks and trick-ass marks.
Scott Walker might have made his guests go all the way to Wisconsin in February, but at least he didn't make them miss any sports. The wedding was concurrent with the NHL All-Star Game, but the 16-6 romp by the Prince of Wales Conference was probably best avoided. February is an odd time to have a wedding; Walker probably rushed to the altar so his wife wouldn't have to testify at any future criminal trials.
Back in 1974 the NBA and NHL playoffs ended in mid-May so the future weight loss scam pitch-man picked an ideal time to get married. Guests did, however, miss Rodrigo Valdez knocking out Bennie Briscoe in 7 rounds to take the WBC middleweight title. Valdez had actually been arrested before his boxing career for fishing with dynamite, the exact type of nanny state liberalism that Huckabee seeks to ban. Huckabee 2016: blasting caps in every garage and exploded fish parts in every pot.
Lucky George W. Bush—he got to toot cocaine in the bathroom at his brother's wedding without any worries about missing a major sporting event. There were only a few scattered NBA and ABA games that night, the best of which featured the division-leading Capital Bullets blowing a fourth quarter lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were as worthless then as they are now.
You'd expect a friendless sociopath like Cruz to schedule his wedding during the Super Bowl. But he was actually a pretty considerate groom. He got married during Memorial Day weekend so his friends didn't have to miss work to travel, and the only major sporting event they missed was Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals, a 111-82 Lakers blowout of the Spurs. Guests from Houston might have been miffed to miss a 5-4 Astros loss to the Dodgers in extra innings, but nothing spectacular happened in baseball that day. Thus concludes the only positive thing you can say about Ted Cruz.
Kasich was Ohio State's congressman when he got married so you'd figure he'd do a better job of avoiding a conflict with college sports. Kasich's Buckeyes missed the NCAA Tournament that year, but he still got married as Kentucky was beating Utah 72-59 to make the Final Four. His guests also missed an 80-72 Minnesota victory over UCLA but the Golden Gophers were forced to vacate the win because of NCAA violations. Thus, Kasich can take solace in the fact that the game never occurred.*This was Kasich's second marriage. As a politician, he has little incentive to post the date of his first wedding online so I couldn't find out what it was. For all I know the 1975 nuptials were during the Carlton Fisk home run but they have escaped evaluation.
New Jersey's favorite governor/lasagna-crazed feline was in law school at Seton Hall when he got married, so you'd figure he wouldn't schedule his wedding at the same time as the Big East Tournament final. Sure, Seton Hall had a lousy season, but St. John's beat Syracuse in a 70-69 thriller on a last-second Walter Berry block. Christie's guests also missed one of the Celtics' few losses in their dominant 1985-1986 campaign, a 110-108 OT squeaker against the Bullets.
Perry gets points for scheduling his nuptials after baseball season and during Texas A&M's bye week, mitigating some of the damage of a football season wedding. There were some good games that weekend though, as No. 5 Arkansas was upset by Baylor and Washington handed UCLA its only loss of the year in a 10-7 defensive struggle. But you always run the risk of having your guests miss a huge upset when you get married during football season, which is exactly what happened during Perry's wedding as No. 1 Pitt (led by some guy named Dan Marino) fell to unranked Notre Dame 31-16.
The Santorums (Santorii?) lucked out that the NBA Western Conference Finals was clinched by Portland in 6 games; otherwise they would have forced their guests to miss Game 7 of a pretty good series. But why would their wedding rank so low if all that their guests missed was a regular season baseball game between two teams with losing records? Well, that game just so happened to be Randy Johnson's first career no-hitter. That's the risk you run when you get married during baseball season, which must be why Santorum wants to restrict who can get married so badly. This might be his Rosebud (?).
Rubio got married during Game 1 of the World Series, but the 1998 affair was essentially a coronation for the historically dominant Yankees. But Rubio's guests missed plenty of great college football games, as No. 2 UCLA edged No. 11 Oregon in overtime at the Rose Bowl (Cade McNown, y'all) and a Temple team that'd finish 2-9 upset the 14th-ranked Hokies of Virginia Tech. But the game of the day was No. 25 Georgia Tech coming back from a 38-17 third quarter deficit against No. 7 UVA for an improbable 41-38 win. You'd expect a cheerleader's husband to know better.
It's hard to pick the biggest game that Rand Paul's wedding guests missed. In college football, No. 5 Auburn beat No. 7 Florida State and unranked Alabama beat third-ranked Tennessee on a last-second field goal. Also, No. 6 Notre Dame beat No. 2 Miami by a relatively close 29-20 near the height of their Catholics vs. Convicts rivalry. But those are still overridden by the clinching Game 4 of the World Series, wherein the Reds faced a 1-0 deficit heading into the 8th inning only to score two runs off of ALCS MVP Dave Stewart for a 2-1 victory. Considering that Paul got married a 4-hour drive from Cincinnati, this was an egregious oversight by the eye doctor.
The Big 12 Championship was the only major event during Ryan's wedding, but it was a matchup of No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 8 Kansas State with a spot in the BCS Championship Game on the line. And Oklahoma won a 27-24 thriller, kicking their longest field goal of the year to go up 10 with 1:25 left only to see Kansas State storm down the field for a touchdown. The game was only clinched when the Wildcats failed to convert the ensuing onside kick.But what really makes Ryan's scheduling egregious is that his lovely wife is from Oklahoma and they got married in Oklahoma City. You can only imagine the scores of peeved Sooner fans forced to go to an Ayn Rand-themed wedding during the big game. I hope they had an open bar.
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And now, the Democrats. We only have two real contenders here and, as you'll see, it's not much of a contest.
Biden's first wife died in a car accident, so he had two bites at the wedding apple. And Biden picked excellent dates for each wedding, as both occurred after basketball had ended but before football had started. Guests to the Philadelphia fan's first wedding missed the Reds break the Phillies' hearts in the ninth inning, but the Phils had 161 other chances to break their fans' hearts that year. Well struck, Mr. Vice President. On the day of the second wedding, Catfish Hunter and Bill "Spaceman" Lee both got chased early in an eventual 9-4 Sox win at Fenway.
Sure, in 1992 MTV asked President Clinton whether he wore boxers or briefs. But why didn't they ask him why he got married during football season? Thankfully his beloved Razorbacks only had a romp over Baylor on the schedule, but the Longhorns handed Barry Switzer his first loss ever (he'd gone undefeated in 1973 and 1974) in a 24-17 game that Switzer called "one of the great classics that has been played." It was so good that Game 1 of the World Series (a 6-0 Red Sox win over the Reds, not the Carlton Fisk game) is a mere footnote.Biden 2016.
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