Today, Ted Cruz held a press conference to announce that he has selected Carly Fiorina to be his running mate. That’s great & all, but he isn’t in the lead, he just got dominated in the “Atlantic Primaries” where he lost all 5 contests, and this potentially great idea just might have moved the needle,…if it had come weeks or months ago. Wayne Gretzky once said “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take”, but I think he meant “in regulation”. There is no time on the clock. He has been mathematically eliminated. It’s over. I don’t blame Ted for trying, but his timing is bad.

I have long hoped that candidates would name their “Dream Team” as early as possible so that we can imagine what the whole cabinet would look like. Just imagine if Ted had named every person who dropped out of the race to his squad. Sure,…Jeb’s 3% isn’t impressive, but what if it were added to Ben Carson’s 5%, or Rand’s 4%,….or whatever. You get the picture. There were many candidates who bowed out, but they could have brought their supporters if they joined Cruz when they left. If he had said, “hey, don’t worry,…your candidate is joining my team. A vote for me is not only a vote for your candidate, but it’s also a vote against “The Donald”.

I think it could have worked. Hell,…I know it could have worked. I did something similar in High School.

I put together an intramural basketball team during my Senior year when I noticed that most of the best ballers in school weren’t playing on the Varsity team for various reasons. I loved to play, & thought it’d be cool to assemble a Globetrotter-esque super group, so I approached my football coach Mr. Nowak who was also running the league. He told me there was just one team opening left, so I signed up my team on the spot. I paid the admission fee, & claimed the last opportunity.

It was true that at the time I didn’t have any players on that team, but I did have a plan, if only a last-second gamble.

I went up to about 10 of my friends and asked them if they wanted to join my team of one. Keep in mind, although I played all the time & was a solid player, I stood 5’10” & fell somewhere on the “average to good” skill spectrum. This wasn’t LeBron asking Kevin Love to join a super group. I was just a dude with a strong work ethic & hustle, & some decent fundamentals. Point being,…the opportunity to join my team wasn’t all that appealing, but playing with my fantasy team was an idea that proved to be irresistible.

When I told each player who was on the team, I rattled off the names of 10 of the best hoopsters in school. When they heard that all-star roster everyone said yes, I ended up with the team that I had in my mind all along. We went on to win the Championship that year, and it was a magical season. It happened because I just snuck in at the deadline, and took a gamble that paid off. Cruz would have been the guy asking Mr. Nowak for a team after the full schedule had been finalized.

All I know for certain is that I can’t shake the phrase “too little, too late” when thinking about Cruz, although in sports, there really isn’t too little time to make a game-changing play. Recently we saw game 3 of Cavs V. Pistons in the 1st round of the playoffs that featured Matthew Dellavedova rifling an amazing bull’s eye, cross-court pass to Kyrie Irving in the corner who swished a dagger of a 3 pointer with just .7 seconds left on the shot clock that essentially closed out the game. With .7 seconds left, some people might wonder “why even try”? But in sports, with time on the clock, you always have a chance.

Then in game 4, Kyrie hit a half court shot at the buzzer to close out the 3rd quarter, & another with under a minute left to play in the game. Cavs fans are getting used to it at this point. Cleveland is no stranger to big plays at the last second, as the 1980 Cleveland Browns even earned the nickname “The Cardiac Kids” because of all the nail biting, come from behind victories. Cleveland is also a sports town that has seen THE MOST misery & heartache of any 3-team sports city in America. “The Shot”, “The Drive”, “The Fumble”,…these are all last second plays that doomed the Cleveland teams of the past.

Who knows, maybe Trump won’t get enough of the vote to become the nominee and I’ll look back on this column and think about how silly & naive I was to doubt Mr. Cruz’s master plan. “It was so diabolical and I wrote off the strategy it too early” I might reflect. Who knows. This is a crazy year. It’s the wildest political season I’ve ever seen, so I can’t really discount any of it.

The Drudge Report lead story shows a picture of Ted & Carly with the title: “It ain’t over till the skinny lady sings”. We’ll just have to wait until the end of this race to see if Cruz’s strategy pays off with a potentially raucous Cleveland Convention. When I said earlier that “it’s over”, …well,…that isn’t exactly accurate. While it is true that Ted cannot reach the magic RNC number, he could prevent Trump from getting there, and it would essentially force an overtime. If 2 NFL defenses don’t allow the other team to get into the end zone in regulation, then overtime starts with a 0-0 score.

If Cruz/Carly/Kasich can keep Trump from getting 1,237, & the RNCC ends up going to the second, or third, or 4th ballot resulting in a Cruz nomination, both Cleveland and the Republican party would turn upside down & inside out (especially if the Roger Stone prediction/plan comes to fruition).

If the Ted Cruz “half court shot” actually works, you might even see bigger Cleveland riots than if the Cavaliers can finally bring a Championship to the title starved city that has been waiting 52 years to celebrate.

The “Hail Mary” has been replaced with the “Hail Carly”.

George Carlin once said: “When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.” When you root for Cleveland laundry, you get a front row seat to watch your teams repeatedly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Wouldn’t that be exactly what would happen to Trump if he finds a way to blow this lead???

“What better place than here? What better time than now?” (Rage Against The Machine, “Guerilla Radio”).

In the season of Trump, we have officially watched reality t.v. morph into politics. The key to ratings lie in outrageous & erratic behavior that either makes us laugh, or makes us cringe. What better place than Cleveland to potentially watch a train wreck from the front row seat!

By Brian Engelman