Jelisa Castrodale

This is it.  Today is the payoff for what feels like several solid years of campaigning, of antagonistic bumper stickers and special interest billboards, of commercials with solemn baritone narration and stacks of of wire-and-cardboard signs at every roadside intersection. After debates and deconstruction and memes involving bayonets and binders, Election Day is finally here.

I made the mistake of checking Facebook a few minutes ago, temporarily forgetting how intolerable it has been since, like, Inauguration Day 2009.  What used to be a harmless collection of pictures of other people's café latte froth and former co-workers with their misshapen babies has become all election-related screeching,  all the time. My timeline looks like a game of telephone that started with what might have, at one point, been a fact, but has been twisted into an all-caps overreaction screaming at me from the center of the screen.

Things like:

BARACK OBAMA WILL GIVE OUR EXTRA DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME TO CHINA! BY 2016 THE AMERICAN DAY WILL ONLY BE 14 HOURS LONG.

Or:

IF MITT ROMNEY IS ELECTED, HE WILL MAKE US WORSHIP AN ENCHANTED BOAR.

I just read one post, which was possibly typed from inside Tim Thomas' underground bunker, that said that one candidate planned to outlaw contact sports, taking football and hockey away from us (Well, football anyway. We can thank Gary Bettman for the other half.)  This seems highly unlikely, and not just because presidents have other things to do, like deciding how many snowy owls we need or spending the afternoon shocking the vice president after scuffing his sock feet across the thick White House carpet.

Slideshow   Presidential candidates and sports How do Barack Obama and Mitt Romney stack up when it comes to their sports backgrounds?

That's not to say that some previous presidents haven’t occasionally dragged sports into the Oval Office with them. Franklin Roosevelt wrote to then-baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, giving him the green light to "keep baseball going" during World War II. John F. Kennedy threatened to boot the Washington Redskins out of their "federally funded stadium" if they didn't integrate their roster, and Jimmy Carter shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his cardigan, wrestling with the decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

But most importantly, Teddy Roosevelt took time from shooting guns, oiling his mustache and arm wrestling elk to save football, to host the meeting that led to the creation of the NCAA and the legalization of the forward pass. That decision alone was worth carving his face into the side of a South Dakota mountain.

If the winning candidate did decide to do his best Roosevelt impression and turn his attention to the world of sports, of course, there are a few policy changes I'd like to see, such as:

• Despite tuition increases at public universities, every college-aged American will have the chance to play for John Calipari at Kentucky for one season.  BUT JUST ONE.
• He will encourage a thriving beard trade, harvesting the lush chin pelts of James Harden, Sergio Romo and Brett Keisel and sending them to developing nations to use as building materials.
• The Houston Astros' 107 losses will be redistributed across the league. This way, every Major League team will have the exciting opportunity to be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs by late May.
• Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson will be banned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, due to the excessive yardage he eats every week. Peterson gained 192 of the Vikings' 287 yards on Sunday and is on pace to match — or better — his career-best 2008 season. YOU'RE THE REASON ALL THE COWS ARE STARVING, AP.
• Make it a federal crime to interrupt a sporting event by talking about something other than sports. Oh really, Trader Joe's is selling something pumpkin flavored? And you just bought a new power washer? And you're still saying things out loud, aren't you? Just wait till the next Bud Light Lime-A-Rita commercial, because I'm totally citizen's arresting you.
• Discourage the use of the word "Lime-A-Rita."
• Reveal that the Keystone oil pipeline is no longer necessary because of the rich natural resources that have, until now, been hidden beneath Les Miles' hat.
• Pull a Michael Bloomberg and put restrictions on the size of ballpark novelty foods. This legislation will become necessary after a family of four is discovered living inside a Boomstick hot dog. They will be given temporary housing inside Brian Wilson's beard.
• Trace the source of the most drastic climate changes to the steaming froth that flies out of Stephen A. Smith's mouth. His larynx will only be allowed to operate under a set of very specific guidelines, much like a coal-fired power plant.
• List New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey as an endangered species. He will be placed into a special facility with other at-risk mammals like gray wolves, ocelots and people who aren't on Old Navy's email list.
• Politely explain to Tim Tebow that "No Child Left Behind" isn't another name for The Rapture.
• Make one foreign policy misstep by sending the St. Louis Rams to London, permanently.  Last week, they could only scrape together seven points against the New England Patriots during their transatlantic beatdown at Wembley Stadium. By contrast, Arsenal — Kroenke's Premier League soccer franchise — also put seven on the scoreboard. Both felt like anomalies. (Two months later, England will retaliate by sending the White House a Pottery Barn box stuffed with Queens Park Rangers.)
• Fully explain the October jobs report, revealing that most of the 171,000 jobs added last month were just people writing commercials for Peyton Manning to star in. 

May the best man win this Election Day. And may none of these posts end up on Facebook. 

Jelisa Castrodale has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. Read more at jelisacastrodale.com, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/gordonshumway, or contact her at .