There has always been an intersection of politics and sports. With Barack Obama in the White House that intersection was more like a free flowing round about. The former political under-dog transformed his administration to a super team via his connection to sporting culture.
The former basketball star at Punahou High School in Hawaii is not just the first African-American to hold the office. The 44th President was also the first to embrace the power of athletics in public and policy.
His love for consuming and participating in sports is well documented.
Obama played more golf than any president since Dwight Eisenhower.
One of the first orders of business at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was converting the White House tennis court into a basketball court. His pickup games are so legendary GQ chronicled them with investigative reporting.
Topps made trading cards of him from his basketball-playing days, and his annual Barack-etology special—when he filled out a bracket for each the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments—became almost as big a March tradition as the Madness itself.
Sports aren’t just in his blood—they’re in his family. His brother in law, Craig Robinson, was drafted in the fourth round of the 1983 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers before coaching collegiately. His daughters, Malia and Sasha, also play basketball. During his presidency he even served as coach on Sasha’s hoops team.
Throughout his eight years in the presidency, Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom—considered the greatest civilian honour—to 12 athletes, more than any of his predecessors. The recipients included Stan Musial, Pat Summitt, Vin Scully, Billie Jean King and most recently Michael Jordan.
Obama used other encounters to bring athletes into important causes, enlisting golf partner Steph Curry to be a part of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative for at-risk youth and getting LeBron James on board with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to find childhood obesity.
Obama also employed his sports fluency as an icebreaker on official visits. Like the time he mimiced Curry with the impromptu three-point on a trip to visit troops in Kuwait.
Or when he made headlines when he made a historic visit to Cuba and attended an exhibition game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays flanked by Raul Castro.
He even played ping pong before talking business with former British Prime Minister David Cameron during a visit to the U.K.
Incoming President Donald Trump also has a connection to sports. He has spoken of his prowess in basketball and baseball. He’s friends with Robert Kraft and Dan Gilbert. He owned a USFL team and was close to purchasing the Buffalo Bills.
But he will have a hard time unseating Obama as the first president of sports.
Part of his relatability for many was that Obama was truly a fan. His hometown teams were near and dear to his heart. Authentically a Chicago Bulls booster, Obama lobbied for Jimmy Butler’s extension on Twitter.
As a south sider, he made sure his speech writers included no jokes about his beloved White Sox in the various title winners’ ceremonies in the Rose Garden.
With his presidency coming to a close in recent days, sports stayed at the forefront. One of his final executive acts included pardoning San Francisco Giants great Willie McCovey, who plead guilty to tax evasion in 1995.
And as for why he made sports such a big part of his presidency, his priorities were never in doubt.
“Sometimes people wonder, ‘Well, why are you spending time on sports? There’s other stuff going on’ — throughout our history, sports has had this power to bring us together, even when the country is divided,” Obama said. “Sports has changed attitudes and culture in ways that seem subtle but that ultimately made us think differently about ourselves and who we were. It is a game, and it is celebration, but there’s a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here.”
Just this past week Obama offered a final note of reflection on the subject.
“I was in my home town of Chicago on Tuesday for my farewell address, and I said, ‘Sometimes, it’s not enough just to change laws. You’ve got to change hearts.’ And sports has a way, sometimes, of changing hearts in a way that politics or business doesn’t. And sometimes it’s just a matter of us being able to escape and relax from the difficulties of our days, but sometimes it also speaks to something better in us.”
Richard Lingard famously said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” We discovered lots about Obama and effective leadership in his two terms of play. At the best of times, sports can be a powerful force for good. The fact Barack Obama fully understood that is a large part of his legacy.