If the politicians vying for the White House were members of the active 2011 rosters, who would they be?

During the last Republican presidential debate, Rick Santorum, standing at the far end of the stage and struggling for screen time, made a football analogy about the candidates' spatial arrangement. "The wide receivers here on the ends here have seven children each," he observed, speaking of his own family and the children of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, and who was placed at the far opposite end of the podium line-up from the former Pennsylvania senator.

Which got me thinking: What if the presidential candidates were NFL players?

Santorum's analogy made sense given the number of candidates on stage -- enough for the eight players who typically abut the line of scrimmage, in a two-running-back set -- and it worked as a loose metaphor for the candidates' personalities and politics.

In Santorum's offensive scheme, we would have:

Wide Receiver (WR) - former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa): A longshot candidate, he catches social questions in stride, carries them into the end zone, and tosses them earnestly back to the ref.

Tight End (TE) - former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.): Utilizes an aggressive, physical game. Tries to score touchdowns but also throws vicious crackback blocks on unsuspecting debate moderators (see: Wallace, Chris and Harris, John). These blocks are illegal if Gingrich moves upfield while making them. Moderators can't see him coming, and, all of a sudden, Gingrich is ramming his helmet into their earholes.