Obama and McCain versus dancing stars and the amazing race

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Almost lost our sports interest in ‘The Amazing Race’ 13 when former NFL defensive back and former Washington State assistant coach Ken Greene and his estranged wife, Tina, finished last to the pit stop in Delhi, India.

Ken and Tina had some bad taxi karma and Tina was back to bullying Ken to the point where it seemed appropriate to scream at Ken, ‘Why don’t you just leave her now?’ (The couple’s theme seems to be whether Tina can ever trust Ken again after he cheated on her. When maybe the theme should be why Ken would care after Tina screamed like harridan about where Ken put her bag on the floor of the tuk-tuk.)

But all was saved by a not unexpected plot twist! This was a non-elimination leg, so Ken and Tina get to race again, albeit with the burden of knowing they have to complete a task no one else has to undertake and also work their way out of last place.

Ken looked pretty exhausted and very cranky by the end of Sunday’s episode.

Also cranky were the viewers in our house. For three weeks in a row -- since the racers toured New Zealand, Cambodia and now, India -- much of what has been shown has been filmed at night. And, you know what? India looks a lot like Los Angeles (except for those cows in the street) when everything is shown at night. What’s up with that?

The big question on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ tonight is whether Julianne Hough is recovered enough from her emergency appendectomy surgery last week to dance with partner Cody Lindley in tonight’s performance show.

Even a DWTS addict like me will have to put the dancers on the DVR tonight because presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will be making appearances with Chris Berman on ‘Monday Night Football.’ The candidates also are doing interviews with Jim Gray on Westwood One’s radio broadcast of the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins.

Go figure. A former NFL star, Warren Sapp, will be dancing up a storm while presidential candidates will be trolling for votes during an NFL game.

Gray’s (taped) radio interviews will air during during the pre-game show at about 5 p.m. Pacific and during halftime. The ESPN interviews will be aired at halftime.

So what’s more important to watch live? Dancing, without presidential candidates but with NFL players, or an NFL game without dancers but with presidential candidates?

DWTS’ results show will be postponed until Wednesday so viewers can watch the presidential election returns.

-- Diane Pucin