President Obama filled out the final NCAA bracket of his term in office this week, and now the man he faced in the 2008 presidential campaign is also talking college hoops. Arizona senator John McCain joined The Dan Patrick Show on Audience and NBCSN Friday for a wide-ranging conversation about the NFL, concussions, Donald Trump’s comments on prisoners, and more, but also discussed this year’s presidential nominees in terms of who they’d be in a NCAA bracket:
There are some superb lines in there, with Patrick asking McCain “Is he [Donald Trump] a number-one seed right now?” and McCain responding “I’m afraid he is, my friend, I’m afraid he is a number-one seed. It’s gonna be huge, he’s gonna make the championship great again.” McCain and Patrick then discuss Arkansas-Little Rock’s remarkable double-overtime upset of Purdue, with Patrick saying “They’re the Bernie Sanders of this challenge,” and McCain responding, “Well, that means that Duke is Hillary Clinton, because everyone hates them.” Patrick then gets McCain to make further picks of schools as candidates, and McCain rolls with it.
“We all dislike Oregon out here, out west, you know, getting all that money from that billionaire and all that. Maybe Ted Cruz is the Oregon. Bernie Sanders? I think that goes into the, I would say the Florida Gulf Coast category.”
And what about Marco Rubio?
“I think he’s probably Mississippi State. Everyone likes the coach, they’ve got a good record, but they aren’t going to quite make it this time, it’s going to be Kansas.”
After a discussion about Trump’s comments bashing McCain and other prisoners of war, Patrick asks if McCain could take Trump in a wrestling match, and McCain responds “Two falls out of three? Without a doubt, my friend, because he would have to have such a priority to keeping his hair in place.”
