Back in the glory days of television news – when “trust” was still a word you used in the same sentence as “news” – Walter Cronkite got up in front of a flowchart covered with arrows and prophetically explained why this Watergate thing might turn out to be a headache for President Nixon.

Last Tuesday, a CBS reporter used a chart of his own to talk to the nation. In a story previewing the presidential debate, the reporter showed a computer animated graphic with two football helmets facing each other, one labeled “Bush,” the other “Gore.” When the reporter said that the candidates would need to attack each other in the upcoming debates, the scoreboard behind the helmets flashed, “Must score!”

It served to illustrate one of the most important dynamics at work in mainstream news coverage of politics today: the attempt to cover the election as a sporting event.

The helmets make obvious what does not always surface in election news: The instincts of successful political reporters lead them to treat politics like sports. In this narrow worldview of the political reporter, politics is all about wins and losses by winners and losers, not about policies by public servants.

Have you been hearing all the sports metaphors creeping into the election coverage lately? Last weekend, for example, with the two candidates taking a retreat to prepare for this week’s debate, reporters talked about the candidates’ “game plans,” and whether they would need a new “playbook.” The candidates were being “coached” as their campaign “teams” were “huddling up.” Commentators laid out the various ways the candidates could “score points,” “play hardball,” “hit a home run,” or even throw a “knockout punch” – which is very important when you’re “neck-in-neck,” in a “dead heat.”

Reporters waste no time in dropping sports clichés in their coverage. Phrases like “neck-in-neck,” “odds-on favorite,” “hands-down winner,” “frontrunner,” “long-shot,” and “homestretch,” for example, all originated in early 20th century horse racing reports. “Knockout punch,” “blow-by-blow,” “throwing in the towel,” and “on-the-ropes” seeped in from the boxing ring. You can spot the others for yourself as you hear the news – we’re told a candidate needs a Hail Mary, or a blitz of TV ads. You’d think news reporters hang out in the sports department while they write their stories.

Why all the sports? Why talk like beer bellies when you’re reporting on the next chief executive? Partly, it’s just lazy writing. Partly, reporters want to show you they’re not fooled by candidates’ sound bites – when they analyze a “game plan,” they’re trying to look smart enough to see the supposed story behind the scenes.

But most importantly, sports-like reporting is a misguided attempt to make elections more compelling. People like to watch sports action, so why not turn a boring speech by a guy in a suit into the Big Game?

Two Januarys ago, brilliant media analyst Kathleen Hall Jamieson spoke at Calvin for the January Series about this very phenomenon. She said the problem with sports reporting in politics is that we respond to sports reporting as spectators – we treat the election as something to be watched, rather than something to participate in. After all, we watch the Big Game, we don’t play in it. If a reporter says a candidate needs a knockout punch, we’re inclined to sit back, grab a brew and watch him try.

If Jamieson is right, it would lead to a great irony. The effort by news reporters to get people interested in their stories, by making politics into sports, is actually backfiring by detaching the public from democracy. The way reporters, infatuated by competition, present elections, they breed armchair quarterbacks rather than citizens eager to vote.

So keep your ears out for those sports clichés as you listen to news stories about the upcoming election, and understand the civic implications. Don’t forgive news reporters for trying to turn Super Tuesday into Monday Night Football.