Bite Off More Than He Can Chew: Candidate Craig James
By Kyle Kensing
As Friend Of The Blog Allen Kenney first reported at Crystal Ball Run, Craig James is leaving ESPN for a run at the United States Senate. James’s candidacy is shallow. His post-collegiate career paths were a short NFL stint and two decades in sports broadcasting, hardly the credentials for the most prestigious of Legislative branch positions. The Senate’s doing a perfectly fine job being a farce without unqualified additions, thank you very much.
Furthermore, the little bit of politicking James is known for has earned him more than enough rancor as it is. News of James throwing his hat in the ring was skewered viciously on the ESPN comments section. Now, vitriol on a website comments section is as much a fact of life as grass being green. The difference between this James-inspired negativity and your garden variety internet flaming is a majority of the comments pertain to James’s posturing to force out Mike Leach at Texas Tech. The page has been saved for posterity’s sake — it’s unlikely the Worldwide Leader lets such scorn against one of its own remain.
Click on the image for a full version
Since his hire at Washington State, Leach has made several media stops. He’s pulled no punches on the topic of James, most recently taking to Dan Patrick’s widely heard airwaves. Coincidentally, the DP Show was the first stop Leach ghost writer Bruce Feldman made after his disappearance from ESPN, and Feldman’s comments on James, while vague, spoke volumes. Feldman’s July removal from ESPN was a PR nightmare for ESPN, and furthered the confounding aura surrounding James. The Feldman situation threw a gasoline can on the already-stoked anti-James fire, and extended its reach beyond the blogosphere. #FireCraigJames has been a popular Twitter hash-tag, but the itty, bitty, tiniest fraction of the tip of the iceberg for what a political campaign entails.
The political arena’s level of mudslinging and name-calling is unprecedented, and James’s past will be probed from his time at SMU that led to its “death penalty,” to Leach’s firing and everything in between. All the scrutiny and second-guessing James has ever leveled from the press box will pale vastly in comparison to what’s in store. Hoo, boy.