Game 26: Theodore Roosevelt vs. Super Bowl XXVI

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.

Scene 1: Circa 1883. Theodore Roosevelt is in a field with a rifle, killing buffalo.

Scene 2: Super Bowl 26, in 1992. Washington is on the field, killing Buffalo.

Scene 3: September 5, 1901. William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, is in Buffalo, N.Y., attending an exposition. There's a man with a gun over there! McKinley is shot and killed. Vice president Theodore Roosevelt is rushed to Buffalo, where he is sworn in as U.S. President number 26. Then he goes to Washington.

Stranger things have happened in America than this bizarre and somewhat macabre confluence of Buffalo-linked events. But not many. We're still putting the pieces together. We do know that at one point, after he got to Washington, President Roosevelt threatened to ban football. At the time, people said it was because he believed the sport too violent. But maybe, just maybe he had a sense something bigger was in the air. Maybe he heard distant echoes of a future warp in time, and he tried to yell Stop! Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down!

Super Bowl XXVI was a Buffalo slaughter, a disaster for the Bills. The Redskins were up 17-0 at halftime and 24-0 before the Bills even got on the scoreboard. Only two meaningless Buffalo touchdowns in the last quarter, putting the final tally at 37-24, made the game even seem close. Or were they meaningless?

Teddy Roosevelt's achievements in office from 1901 to 1909 have been well documented by the authorities. He was wildly popular and used his "bully pulpit" to advocate strong action and get results. He took on big business monopolies and busted those trusts. He conserved 150 million acres of national forest and the wildlife living in it. He initiated construction of the Panama Canal and won a Nobel Peace Prize for arbitrating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. At least for our purposes here, there is no mystery. Send this case to the X-Files, but put it in the winner's column for the Presidents.

Score after this match: Presidents 14, Super Bowls 12

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