Only 43 men in the history of the United States can relate to sending Seal Team Six to take out bin Laden, but a vast majority of us can relate to saving two strokes with a birdie on eleven. We've never vetoed a bill, but we've volleyed a ball. We've never faced a full press corps, but we've faced a full court press. The politics, in the end, are subjective. Sports are objective.
In our never-ending quest to quantify, qualify, list and rank everything in the known universe, our best and brightest stat geeks have thus far ignored the athletic accomplishments of our commanders-in-chief. This despite an enormous interest in our presidents' grasp of popular sports.
Whether ESPN is airing a special about President Obama's pick-up basketball games, or photographers are camping out in front of the White House to catch Dwight Eisenhower practicing his short irons on the South Lawn, or we're subjected to another grainy home video of the Kennedy family tossing around a football, the American public has proven to consistently find our Air Force One occupant's athletic lives fascinating.
Which president saved 77 lives as a lifeguard? Which one's lucky handball is still sitting in the Smithsonian over a century after he last played with it? Which president invented a sport? Or practiced jiu-jitsu three afternoons a week while in office? Or was an NCAA champion? The answers to these questions (in order: Reagan, Lincoln, Hoover, T. Roosevelt, Ford) don't even scratch the surface of the athletic information available on our presidents, which is why it's time to harness the power of statistics and the spirit of sabermetrics to create a system to properly crown one of our presidents king of the athletic arena.
To maintain consistency with other ranking systems, and to compete with the likes of ERA, WAR, VORP and all the others, this ranking metric is called PAS., short for President Athlete Score. In conversation, it could be used something like, "Dude, no way Woodrow Wilson was a better athlete than Ronald Reagan, have you seen their P.A.S. rankings? It's not even close!"
The components of the P.A.S. ranking are as follows, with each president receiving either a 1 (worst) or a 5 (best) in a particular category. The highest possible score is a 25. The lowest, 5. Only one president scored a 25. The lowest got a 6 (sorry, Grover Cleveland):
Executive Power: Ranks a president's physical strength.
Running Ability: Ranks a president's physical fitness and cardio.
Weighs and Means: Ranks how fit a president stayed once in office.
Executive Experience: Ranks the athletic accomplishments of a president.
Mettle of Honor: Ranks a president's athletic toughness and endurance.