On any election night, sports and politics are similar and the same as they violently collide.  Politics is a winner takes all, loser go home affair, and so are sports, especially the “big” championship games.

On this historic election night, football’s ground game is an appropriate equivalent to politics and winning on the ground.  You can’t drive through an election line; you must walk in line and wait in line, and you are literally on the ground floor of something really big.

For me, more than any other year, voting today was an honor. As I walked through the line waiting my turn to vote, I was delighted to join hundreds of other citizens at Triangle Elementary School and millions of other Americans across the Country in casting my vote. To be a part of selecting and electing the next president of the United States and the next leader of the free world was a thrill. It really was. It really was a thrill that sent a chill down my spine. (And as I waited in line in the cold outside of my polling place at 5:55 am this morning, I was more than chilled – I was cold! 

But getting up and getting out early to vote was worth it. It was absolutely worth it. Because winning is more than casting your vote and hoping that  your candidate wins. Winning is being a part of a process that has stood the test of time. Other countries have coups and controversies and wonder if their political process really works. In America, in these Unites States, we can say  that the process indeed does work. And the process will be tested yet again tonight. And, since our currency says “In God we Trust,” we trust that the process will work yet again.

Whoever wins, the winner will have been duly elected by the people. And we all will win if we rally around the winner. Because together we stand, and divided we fall. Because winning is the only thing.