President Obama and Mitt Romney put politics aside for a conversation about sports during halftime of the Monday Night Football showdown between the New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles.
The president, referencing a similar interview he did during the 2008 campaign, joked that he had achieved his call for a college football playoff, set to be instituted in two years.
"Promises made, promises kept," Obama quipped. "This was something I said needed to get done and this is the kind of change you can believe in."
The president added that he would like to see the four-team playoff expanded to eight teams, and also waxed philosophical about the prospects of his hometown Chicago Bears — predicting they could even win the Super Bowl.
"Best defense in the league right now," Obama said. "You know, you say yesterday's game and, you know, [Bears defensive back Charles] Tillman may be defensive player of the year, the way he's playing."
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also discussed football, saying despite having grown up in Detroit, he considered himself a New England Patriots fan.
"I've lived in Massachusetts now 40 years and I take personal full responsibility for their two Super Bowl wins, as well as the Red Sox winning the World Series," Romney joked. "Hey, look, as a governor, you get blamed for everything that goes on, you might as well get the credit for what goes right."
Romney also said that if he could fix any one thing about sports, it would be to rid athletics of "the specter of drugs and performance-enhancing drugs of all kinds."
"That's the biggest concern in sport," Romney said. "You know, I was associated with the Olympics for some time. That was always the issue that clouded a potential accomplishment."
But, true to fashion, both men also got in a little politicking in what will likely be their final interviews before voters head to the polls. President Obama said that he has been most struck during his four years in office by the resilience of Americans.
"No matter where you go in the country, you just end up meeting people who are doing incredible things in their communities. They're working hard," Obama said. "Obviously, we've had four tough years with the economic crisis that we went through, but watching the resilience of the American people and bouncing back from hardship has been remarkable."
Romney, meanwhile, said he had been invigorated by the process of campaigning day in and day out for the past 16 months.
"What I found that surprised me is, the more events I did, the more energy I seemed to get," Romney said. "The more passion that comes from the people, their desire for change, if you will, gives me more energy and more commitment to the process. So I came away at the end of the day, instead of being exhausted, I had a hard time falling asleep. It's just because of all the people that give of themselves."
