(left to right) South Rowan's Joe Guiterez, East Rowan's Ben Decelle, North Rowan's Lathan Charleston, West Rowan's Brantley Horton, Carson High School's Daniel Gates. Salisbury High School's A.J. Ford. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

As you can tell from the cover, it's an election year, an occasion that allows Americans to combine two fall passions — choosing a president and watching prep football.

Picking from a long list of candidates, coaches selected six seniors — West's Brantley Horton, East's Ben DeCelle, North's Lathan Charleston, South's Joe Gutierrez, Carson's Daniel Yates and Salisbury's A.J. Ford — to represent their programs.

While there's never been a President Horton, DeCelle, Charleston, Gutierrez or Yates, there has been a President Ford.

That would be Gerald R. Ford, who helped Michigan go undefeated in 1932 as a center/linebacker and had to be the best football player of all the U.S. presidents.

Ford was never elected by voters — he was appointed vice president before assuming the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned — but he still did lots of cool stuff.

For one thing, he tackled Chicago's Jay Berwanger, who in 1935 was awarded a trophy from Manhattan's Downtown Athletic Club that we now know as the Heisman.

Ford carried an ugly scar that always proved he brought down Berwanger, and he also knocked in a hole-in-one one day in Memphis.

Most of us would much rather make an ace or tackle a Heisman hotshot than deal with the problems that come along with the Oval Office.

Nixon felt the same way. He often said his hole-in-one at Bel-Air Country Club in 1961 was a far bigger thrill than being elected president.

Nixon, who was probably headed for enshrinement as one of the top presidents until that unfortunate fumble at Watergate, once said if he had it to do over again he'd have become a sportswriter instead of a politician.

Then again, "Tricky Dick" probably never saw a sportswriter's paycheck.

As a rule, election banners have coincided with banner years for Rowan football.

In 1932, while Ford was tackling people — Democrats still insist he should have worn his helmet more often — Gordon Kirkland was coaching Boyden High to a 9-0 regular season and Rowan citizens were voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt, a landslide winner over Herbert Hoover.

You can't talk election years without a nod to the J.C. Price Red Devils, who banged heads in their greatest season of segregated football in 1940. Roosevelt was elected to his third term, and legendary coach S.W. Lancaster's Red Devils whipped opponents as easily as FDR whipped Wendell Wilkie. The Red Devils outscored foes 336-0 and won a state title.

Nixon was first elected in 1968, the same autumn East Rowan, with sophomores C.M. Yates and Johnny Yarbrough, went 9-2 and won its first league championship.

South Rowan's best election year was 1980, when an SPC championship coincided with Ronald Reagan's romp over Jimmy Carter in the presidential race. Reagan went on to win a lot of big ones, including the Cold War.

Reagan, who played Notre Dame football star George Gipp on the silver screen, earned the eternal nickname the "Gipper" for his dramatic delivery of perhaps the corniest line in cinema history. It went, "Sometimes when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper."

Reagan was equally eloquent in real life. It wasn't the Gettysburg Address, but "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" got right to the point.

North Rowan made the deepest playoff run in school history in an election year. That was 1992, when Bill Clinton won at the polls. North, which was playing at the 3A level, won against A.L. Brown in a third-round playoff classic and finished second in the state.

Not saying he wasn't a fantastic president, but Clinton's most memorable utterance had to be, "I did not inhale."

Next to the Thomas Jefferson line, "One man with courage is a majority," Clinton comes up a bit short of a first down.

In 2000, the year of Florida's hanging chads and the odd election in which George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore but won the White House in OT, West Rowan finally surged to its first conference championship in football in only its 42nd try.

Talk about never giving up.

Bush and Scott Young's Falcons repeated in 2004. That same season, Joe Pinyan's Salisbury Hornets tied a school record with 12 victories.

This is Carson's first presidential election, and the Cougars can make it forever memorable by recording their first victory. It should happen long before folks head to the polls on Nov. 4 to choose a new president.

Coach Mark Woody sounds confident, and that's a good thing. As Dwight Eisenhower, who handled D-Day before he was elected president, once said, "I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle."

When they win, it's a sure thing the Cougars will show more emotion than quiet Calvin Coolidge, the toughest interview of all the presidents.

When a woman seated next to Coolidge at a dinner party informed him she'd made a bet she could get at least three words out of him, Coolidge stuck his fork in his salad and responded, "You lose."

Fortunately, local coaches and athletes have more to say than Silent Cal, and the Post looks forward to another banner season.

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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com.

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