Politics and sports. They go together like … lamb and tunafish. Or perhaps you prefer spaghetti and meatball. Either way, nothing says “recreational fun that doesn’t involve anything other than mindlessly screaming for your favorite team” quite like “mindless screaming about issues that do matter.” Or something like that.

The point being is that as we get tight on the election day, you can believe you’ll see more and more athletes associating themselves with various candidates. One of these is Chicago’s Son, Mike Ditka, who was seen today rolling around with Sarah Palin.

Ditka, who said he was a conservative Republican, urged voters against partisanship and inaction. “This is the land of opportunity. It’s not a land of handouts. If you’re willing to work, you can find a job,” he said.

With his signature tough-love attitude, he tried to charge up voters. “Don’t talk about what you’re gonna do, prove you can do something,” he said. “If we’re smart, the only option we have is to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

Now, that’s taken out of context, but, um, yeah. It doesn’t really make that much sense. However, I would concur –based on the WSJ article telling me so — that Ditka’s (and therefore McCain’s) stra-tegery was to try and remind Pennsylvania voters that Barack Obama accused them of “clinging” to guns and religion.

But really, anything he did would have been better than what Sarah Palin threw out, in — sigh — some sort of attempt to sound hip and cool and happening, while relating this to sports.

Palin tried to make her own connection to this western Pennsylvania city, where golfer Arnold Palmer was born. “Now here is my connection with Latrobe. Todd and I, the first house we ever bought — we bought an $82,000 house in Wasilla, Alaska,” Palin said. “The name of the street: Arnold Palmer Dr. It is a nice small world. That’s awesome.”

That’s slightly worse than saying “I love Rolling Rock.” Or “PHILLIES 4 EVA!!!!!1″ And, while I’m a decidedly Republican blogger (what other kinds are there, right?), reading these sort of things are not exactly encouraging. And, lest you think I would close on any sort of political notion: football ruuuuuulez.