The voters staged a savage attack on the athletically gifted on Tuesday, with one notable exception, if you call him gifted. Former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler, a Democrat, beat the stuffing out of 11th District Republican incumbent Charles Taylor in the North Carolina House race that Shuler had been expected by some to lose. And those of you who had money on Shuler using a sports analogy in his victory speech? Well, you collect.

"They talk about these sports analogies that I use, but let me tell you what. It is about teamwork."

Despite his political web site claiming that the candidate "has great vision," which is clearly not the case, Shuler led on Tuesday by a large enough margin to claim victory. It may have been the first time that Shuler has heard people chanting "Heath, Heath, Heath" without "must die!" at the end.

Swann Loses Bid To Be Pennsylvania Governor [MSNBC]
Heath Shuler For Congress

(Stop Shuler is trying to make sense of all this, as you'd probably guess.)

He takes the ball without question and we walk to the table. He then says, "Just throw it in the cup?" I agree with him and give him a little advice because the wind was kicking up at this fine day. ... He makes a few arm motions warming up a bit, eyes the red cup at the other end of the table filled slightly with IC Light, takes a breath and lets it fly. The crowd that surrounded the table was at least 30 deep by now with Steeler fans cheering for him like he was back on the field again. Cameras flashing, video camera's rolling, his bodyguards and marketing team thinking about the damage this might do to his campaign and then...

SPLASH DOWN....

The crowd erupts with cheers as the ball lands inside the cup. He turns to me and gives me a high 5 before fleeing the scene and probably having his marketing team erase all video of this ever happening but it doesn't get much better than this.

Boy, do you not want to hear about our beer pong with Mark Foley that one time.

Future Governor Lynn Swann Plays Beer Pong [Mondesi's House]

• A Curious Guy-esque conversation with Kim Jong-Il. [Manute's Webb]

• Oooooh. The NFL is considering making some out-of-market games available live on the Internet next year. [Washington Post]

• Bill Walton thinks Kobe Bryant is going to score 100 points in a game... sometime within the next month. Of course, he'd have probably said the same thing if someone asked him if Kobe could score 1,000. [The Sports Frog]

• "The rich white guy in this campain is Lynn Swann." That's... well, you just can't say that. [The Wizard of Odds]

• The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are slightly modifying their name. Sadly, the "Anaheim Ducks of Los Angeles and Surrounding Southern California Trendy Spots" was rejected. [World Chumps]

Keith: It's very difficult to be the smartest person in this room right now.
Keith's Other Voice: I know. It is our curse

But we very much enjoyed this clip from "The Dan Patrick Show," where Olbermann surprises gubernatorial "candidate" Lynn Swann with some, you know, actual questions. A reader sums it up for us.

Around 2:20 p.m. ET last Friday, Patrick introduces Swann on the show. Patrick said (in a humorous tone) that, in light of the Swann's prior work with ABC and Disney, he was going to have OIbermann ask Swann questions. Swann seemed to think that this was going to be lightweight question theater (he joked to Patrick that he didn't know he'd changed to a news show). Olbermann's first question was on the current dispute between McCain/Warner/Graham and the Bush administration on the administration appearing to disregard an act of Congress: What did Swann think about the split within the Republican party, and which side was he on? Swann spouted a non-answer and ended the answer with the statement that it wasn't a state issue, so it didn't really matter to the Swann campaign.

Olbermann, in one of the sweetest comebacks I've heard in a long time, responded that if Swann wanted a state question, he had one: Senator Rick Santorum is talking smack about going after federal funding for New Jersey if they won't agree to dredge the Delaware River. What does Swann think about that? Swann was silent for four beats, then said that he had been on a bus, and he hadn't seen the papers (even though it's been a contentious issue for close to a month), and he really didn't know anything about the issue Olbermann was talking about. Olbermann, very quietly and with as much polite snark as he could possibly get away with, suggested that Swann may want to make a note of that one, and threw it back to Patrick with the question, "Are you glad you wanted to do that now?"

To be fair, political questions are really hard.

You're Doing A Heckuva Job, Swanny [Deadspin]

• Swann attended the same high school (Junipero Serra in San Mateo, Calif.) as Barry Bonds and Tom Brady. The school is located in San Mateo County, one of the most left-leaning counties in the nation.
• Rendell is a part-time sports analyst for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia — covering the Philadelphia Eagles.
• Announcing the news on his KTVU-TV San Francisco sportscast recently, commentator Mark Ibanez said brightly: "Coming up in sports, Lynn Swann to run for mayor of Pennsylvania!"

What are Swann's actual qualifications for high office? We went to his Web site to find out.

Our findings:
• 1. "Since 1980, Lynn Swann has been the National Spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America."
• 2. "Lynn has used his celebrity status to raise money to provide scholarships for the Pittsburgh Ballet."

Among those endorsing him: Mel Blount, Sen. John Pippy. Conspicuously absent from his site: Any trace of this photo.

Lynn Swann Is Running [The United American]
Lynn Swann For Governor [Official Site]

Now, far be it from us to tell Lynn Swann how to run his political business, and we're certainly not experts, but of all the times to be photographed with a smiling President Bush, we dunno ... this just seems like a bad one. We'll just say this: Just to the right of that photo on ESPN's page is this ABC News headline: "Bush Takes Blame For Blunders." Sometimes corporate synergy can get ugly.

At the very least, though, we now have definitive proof that President Bush cares about black people.

Inexperienced Swann Has Celebrity On His Side [ESPN]