Here are your completely uneventful and awfully boring Berman interviews with both Obama and McCain from last night. Nothing crazy happened, as expected, but keep your eyes and ears opened for a Barack Obama endorsement of a playoff system in College Football and McCain's, Chris Berman impression....

Yaaaaaay! Boring....now get out there and vote you crazy kids! New Hampshire....YOU'RE ON THE CLOCK!!!

After all of their appearances on the network over the past few months, you just knew that ESPN was going to have the two candidates on right before the election. That last time will be on Monday Night Football and of course the game on election eve is in DC. Not only that, but you'll never guess who they've tabbed to interview them. That's right! Christopher J. Berman....

On the eve of the presidential election, ESPN’s Monday Night Football game November 3 will originate from the nation’s capital when the Pittsburgh Steelers meet the Washington Redskins. Before the polls open the next day, ESPN’s audience will hear from the candidates when Chris Berman interviews both major party presidential nominees, Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama, during halftime of the MNF game.

The candidates will be on the campaign trail and have agreed to participate one-on-one, pending last-minute schedule changes, via satellite with Berman from the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn. The conversations will be taped earlier in the day and will air at approximately 10:15 p.m. ET. The Steelers-Redskins game will kickoff at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN and ESPN HD with the Spanish-language telecast on ESPN Deportes.

I guess in the end these are the only interviews that actually make perfect sense for everyone involved. Especially when you consider the magnitude of the game itself. Not only is the Skins-Steelers game an important one for both teams, but it will also be important for the candidates. You see the last Redskins home game before the election is a predictor of which party will make it into office on Election Tuesday. When the Redskins win, the party who last won the popular vote wins the presidency, and when the Redskins lose, the other party gets the nod. In fact this theory has hold true a perfect 100% (17 of 17) since people first came across it.

That means if the Skins win, it's John McCain. And if the Steelers win, it's Obama. Choose who you root for wisely!

Here is your first look at FOX's World Series intro, and when I first read that John McCain and Barack Obama were going to be involved, I rolled my eyes. After watching the clip though, I have to say that it's pretty darn good. Here's your first look....

Man, that gave me some goosebumps. Anytime you use music from the movie "Glory", and add some inspirational quotes, you've got a winner. I'll be around later tonight with an open thread, and hopefully some vids later on in the night. Enjoy Game One folks!

Didn't think I'd be going with back-to-back annoying commercials department, but you can add Barack Obama's name to the growing list. Obama has officially decided to use a 30-minute....not seconds, minutes!....spot before the start of the potential Game Six of the World Series. Of course you could just skip it, but according to CNN....it's actually pushing back the start of the game....

The Republican National Committee took aim at Barack Obama Wednesday over the Illinois senator's half-hour ad buy that will delay the start of a World Series game by 18 minutes.

"It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch," RNC spokesman Alex Conant said. "Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he’s putting it before our national pastime.”

Major League Baseball has agreed to a request from Fox to delay the start time of Game 6 of the World Series (if a Game 6 is necessary) so the network can air the 30-minute Obama spot, a Fox spokesman confirms to CNN. The Illinois senator has also bought similar time on CBS and NBC, set to begin at 8 p.m.

The potential Game Six would be on October 29th, and it's seemingly a smart move as far as timing of the election goes, it's just another instance of Politics creeping into Sport. I know we've had this discussion many times in the past few months, but I just really can't stand when they mix.

The last thing I want before a potential World Series clinching game is a 30-minute delay.

Obama takes heat for delaying World Series game (CNN)

(Thanks to SL for the tip)

Okay, this Politics thing with ESPN has gotten just a little too weird at this point. In August, Barack Obama sat down for an interview and the network's PR Department stated that it was trying to get a hold of John McCain for a sit down of his own. They followed that up with an interview at the beginning of this week with the Republican candidate and everything seemed to be over and done with in regards to Politics and the "Leader".

Well yesterday, MDS at Fanhouse put up an interesting post in regards to a potential ESPN "Pro-Obama" stance and how multiple employees have made contributions to the Democratic nominee....

A database search of donations to the campaigns of Obama and John McCain reveals that at least six ESPN editorial employees -- Desmond Howard, Scoop Jackson, Kelly Naqi, John Saunders, Bill Walton and Stephen A. Smith -- have given to Obama's campaign. No ESPN editorial employees are listed as donors to McCain's campaign in the records at OpenSecrets.org.

I asked ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz what ESPN's policy is on political donations, and he told me:

"For ESPN in general, decisions on political donations are made by employees entirely on their own. For specifically folks with editorial roles, we discourage public participation in matters of political advocacy or controversy."

While the post was an interesting thought, I really don't think that someone exercising their constitutional right to support and vote for whomever they please is an issue. I think that point was made in the quote from Josh Krulewitz, but an interesting thing happened today potentially in response to the situation above .

Without any press releases on the matter, and without warning, John McCain showed up via telephone for an interview on Mike and Mike in the morning. With the way that ESPN promoted both Sports Center interview this was a very odd, but it got even weirder as Greenberg and Golic were hyping the Senator's appearance before he came on. Every time they brought up McCain they made a specific point of saying that they were not being biased and Greenberg even said, "And yes democrats, we are working to bring Barack Obama on the show hopefully as soon as next week," at one point. That's an odd choice of words if you ask me and the way Greenie it put it made it seem almost defensive in nature.

You can hear that and see the interview in the video below, but this whole confusion, skepticism and random appearances are the reason they should have never gone done this road in the first place. Whether they were trying for an angle or not, alliances and conspiracy theories are always going to come into play when Politics are involved. I think the lesson learned is to just keep Sports and the White House separate from here on out....

Update: According to ESPN it was an item in a Mid Week update that ESPN emails out each Wednesday. Not exactly the same as the first go around though and it was a bit buried in that release, after a bunch of NFL items.

Does ESPN Have a Pro-Obama Bias? (Fanhouse)
Video: John McCain's Interview On ESPN (Awful Announcing)
Video: Obama's Sit-Down With Stuart Scott (Awful Announcing)

ESPN's Bob Ley sat down with John McCain on Sunday during a NASCAR race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and here is the full interview that aired on Sports Center this morning....

It seemed to go a lot longer than the Obama-Scott interview, but pretty much the same line of questioning. Softballs all-around and a few Sports questions thrown in. Again, I'm against Politics being involved in Sports, and I'm not quite sure why ESPN finally decided to go forward with them, but in the end....no harm, no foul.

Oh and tricky move by ESPN to release that the interview was going to be on the 9am Sports Center and actually airing it at the very end of the three-hour block.

John McCain Gets His Turn On ESPN (Awful Announcing)
Video: Obama's Sit-Down With Stuart Scott (Awful Announcing)

Back near the end of August, Stu Scott played a little one-on-one with Barack Obama, and after that you knew it was just a matter of time before John McCain got his turn on the network. According to MDS at Fanhouse, Bob Ley sat down with the Republican Presidential candidate and the interview will more than likely air sometime this week....

ESPN's Bob Ley interviewed Republican presidential candidate John McCain today at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, as the Worldwide Leader attempts to give equal time to both candidates after Stuart Scott interviewed Barack Obama last month.

The problem, though, is that Scott gave Obama a puff piece, complete with a game of one-on-one that ended with a hug. Somehow I can't see Ley and McCain hugging it out at the NASCAR track.

ESPN tells me they don't know yet when the interview will air, but I'm betting that when it does air, we'll see that Ley asked tough questions, because he's a good journalist. And I'm sure the McCain campaign will use Ley asking McCain tough questions and Scott asking Obama softball questions to bolster their claims that the media is biased against Republicans, because that's been one of the key McCain talking points in the last couple of weeks.

It is really odd that ESPN decided to use a different interviewer for each candidate when you think about it. If Ley does grill McCain it will obviously come across like ESPN set it up that way (whether they did or didn't), and about six months back that's the reason they originally said they weren't even going to bother with interviews. I'm not sure what changed their mind but one thing is for sure. They really should have thought this out a heck of a lot more.

On a side note, I'm also wondering who picked the locations. If it was McCain's choice, picking a NASCAR race is a pretty transparent move. We couldn't have just conducted both in Bristol? Guess not.

ESPN's Bob Ley Interviews John McCain, How Will It Compare to Scott-Obama Puff Piece? (Fanhouse)
Video: Obama's Sit-Down With Stuart Scott (Awful Announcing)