Sparty and Truman.jpg

Sparty and President Harry Truman.

(MLive.com file photo and U.S. Government.)

For President's Day, the college football superblog "Every Day Should Be Saturday" matched the personalities of our past Presidents to college football teams. Example: Michigan State is Harry Truman, who "cussed a lot, won close contests," and "had the occasional disaster."

What follows is the same idea, but applied to the prospects of some 2016 Presidential contestants.

The Michigan Wolverines are the sort of traditional power in a traditional position that should always be considered a contender to play for it all. Instead, a clumsy series of self-inflicted wounds has left everyone laughing at them rather than taking them seriously. (i.e: Joe Biden)

The Alabama Crimson Tide are currently the leading prospect from a Southeastern Conference family of teams famous for putting forth national title contenders. This SEC family has enemies and doesn't always live up to the hype, but don't ever count them out. (Jeb Bush.)

The Texas Longhorns had tradition, boatloads of money, talent, and nearly everything going for them, yet have collapsed into mediocrity as if they arrived on the big stage and then forgot what to say. (Rick Perry.)

The Baylor Bears are offensive with a capital "O," and this has propelled them ahead of their state's traditional football superpowers, such as the aforementioned Texas. But it ends badly: Baylor has lost two straight big bowl games because the other team was even more offensive. (Ted Cruz.)

The Oregon Ducks have been threatening to run away with the national title for the last five years. But each time we take them seriously, they have a big stumble, such as losing this year's national championship by three touchdowns. (Chris Christie.)

Kansas State Wildcats' coach Bill Snyder is 75 years old. He has also quietly won 66 percent of his football games since 1989. This program has never won a national championship, but it's the sort of underrated competent threat that might cause a big surprise. (Scott Walker.)

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons have just three winning seasons out of the last dozen, but lightning struck in 2006. With the Atlantic Coast Conference in disarray, they managed to win only the second conference championship in team history, and the first one in 36 years. Instead of appreciating this incident as the perfect storm accident it really was, some of their deluded fans think they can do it again. (Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.)

Playing in second tier conference, but in front of a ferociously loyal fanbase, the Boise State Broncos won't likely play for the national title. But they'll continue to cause a pile of trouble in big games against higher ranked contenders. (Rand Paul.)

The Miami Hurricanes have won multiple national championships since seemingly coming out of nowhere in the 1980s to upset the traditional order of college football. They're fantastically corrupt, having been in and out of scandals and sanctions the whole time since. But their fans seemingly turn a blind eye to the mounds of muck because there's always the prospect of churning out another championship. (Hillary Clinton.)

The Miami Redhawks football program from Ohio is considered the "cradle of coaches," with both Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes having been head coaches there. U.S. News and World Report currently ranks the school itself second in the nation for undergraduate teaching, right behind Princeton. And, exemplars of racial sensitivity, they ditched their "Redskins" nickname in the 1990s for the innocuous "Redhawks."

They're everything the South Florida Miami isn't. But they play in a second tier conference with limited resources and will likely never get selected to play for the national championship. (Elizabeth Warren.)

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here, on Facebook, or Twitter ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.