Despite everything else he has done, and all that we now know about him from his 18 years in the Senate, the ability to shoot hoops is still Bradley's trump card in a presidential campaign which would otherwise seem quixotic and doomed to honourable failure. It is hard not to see his sports stardom as at least part of the reason for his success. Yet they and others have all rallied around the 6ft 5in-tall ex senator, who says he is 'at the top of his game'. Sport matters in American politics, and Bradley is not the first man to put it to the test. Bob Dole's Republican running-mate in the 1996 presidential elections, Jack Kemp, remains today at least as celebrated in the US for his achievements as a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and as NFL player of the year in 1965, as for his prodigious political career later on.
Most American footballers tend to be on the political right.
In the current United States Congress, two of the most promising Republicans of the next generation have taken this journey. One is Steve Largent, an Oklahoma congressman who went from being a wide receiver with the Seattle Seahawks to becoming one of the most telegenic and deeply conservative figures in the house of representatives. More interesting than Largent, and more successful too, is his fellow Oklahoma Republican JC Watts. Like Largent, he had a successful football career, quarterbacking the University of Oklahoma to national championships in the 1980s and going on to play professionally in the Canadian leagues. However, unlike Largent and unlike every other member of the Republican Party in the US Congress, Watts is a black man.