Pittsburgh Steelers beat Washington Redskins in the NFL on Monday night for a dominant victory that Barack Obama will see as a good omen.
For all but one of the last 17 presidential ballots, since 1937, a Redskins victory has signaled a win for the party currently in power.
Pittsburgh held Redskins runner Clinton Portis and sacked quarterback Jason Campbell seven times for a 23-6 win.
Interviews with Obama and rival John McCain aired on US TV at half-time.
Democrat candidate Obama – a senator from Illinois, home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears – mixed American football and basketball analogies into his interview.
“At this point, not to use sports metaphors, but you’ve left everything on the field, and now you just gotta see how it turns out,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a great shot, but you don’t know until the buzzer sounds.”
Obama was pictured last week at a rally with a Steelers jersey bearing his name, given to him by team owner Dan Rooney.
His Republican rival McCain, from Arizona, has had the backing of former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.
In his 1999 memoir, Faith of My Fathers, he described being under interrogation pressure while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron,” he wrote.
In Monday’s recorded interview McCain suggested the formation of a union to protect the interests of professional boxers.
“These are for individuals who usually come from the lowest rung on our economic ladder, their careers are not very long, and I think that there’s been too many cases of exploitation by… unsavoury individuals,” McCain said.
At the first game hosted by the Redskins on the eve of a presidential election since 1984, election fever was in the air.
One fan alternately waved a white towel with Barack Obama’s image in the left hand and an all-burgundy Redskins towel in the right hand.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger scored on a one-yard run at the end of the first half but a right shoulder injury knocked him out of the game.
Willie Parker added a one-yard touchdown run before Byron Leftwich, Roethlisberger’s replacement, connected with Santonio Holmes to boost Pittsburgh’s victory margin.
The “Redskin Rule” has held true for 71 years, since the team moved from Boston to the US capital.
There was a caveat in 2004, when a Green Bay win should have signalled defeat for George W Bush, but some rule-backers note that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, so his re-election was not a true repeat.
–BBC