It’s no secret, Gerald Ford could throw, and his famed football remembers him fondly, so singular and ever so brown, careening across the Michigan sky. He ran the country the way he assembled the field—one play at a time and always with the endgame in mind, but his football never forgave him, Ford having abdicated one favorite sport for another—both bloodbaths replete with sore losers.

Long snapper, linebacker, and alternate center, for three undefeated years Ford proudly cradled his ball, barreling his way through the stoic wide receiver (Donald Rumsfeld), the spiteful tight end, (Kissinger), and the punctilious fullback (Dick Cheney) to make his best and final play, granting Nixon a presidential pardon. And with that, the once stately, and always steadfast brown ball, decided to distance himself once and for all from the towheaded Prez.

It was a difficult campaign to be sure, one fraught with instability and several near-impossible maneuvers including ditching dear Gerald at his thirty-fifth college reunion. The famed ball even began to agree with Lydon B. Johnson’s estimation that “Ford played too much football without a helmet,” citing that Ford was no intellectual giant, having taken too many tumbles down the Air Force One stairs, and falsely claiming on air that “there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” Still, the last moderate Republican could not sway his once stalwart brown ball, who finally, in a fit of rage and disillusionment, defected from the United States, and in a stunning turn of events, joined forces with the Soviets to play for team Red Army. Ford was shocked, and felt betrayed by his oldest friend, who had remained in stillness atop a mantle in the Oval Office for so many years that the president scarcely remembered he was there at all until the surprising upset that sent him reeling. It is rumored Gerald Ford never fully recovered from the loss of his leather-faced friend, and finally retired to sunny California where he drank Mai Tai’s on the back porch of his Rancho Mirage estate, content never to have to sit through another Chevy Chase impression again!

  • Egon Schiele, "Self Portrait in a Brown Coast," 1910.

  • Gustav Klimt, "Tree of Life, Stoclet Frieze," 1905.

  • Lee Krasner, "Stretched Yellow," 1955.