As their poll numbers look worse and worse by the day, the Republican presidential ticket has been going after the “Joe Six-Pack” vote incredibly aggressively in recent weeks, even making a pseudo-celebrity of a plumber from Ohio. But apparently they should have been going after the “Joe 24-Pack Then Vomiting Into a Cooler at the Tailgate” crowd, otherwise known as hardcore college football fans.

If you see Sarah Palin suddenly become the No. 1 Ohio State fan over the next few weeks, here’s why: Researchers at Auburn University studied randomly selected homes in Alabama, and compared the 2006 voting records of residents whose houses had Auburn flags, signs and other stuff on them with those who didn’t. The results, as TIME notes, were surprising: college football fans are twice as likely to vote as non-fans. Of course, this being Auburn, half of the votes were write-ins for “TOMMY TUBERVILLE IS GOD!” while the other half were for “FIRE TOMMY TUBERVILLE NOW!”

What’s the connection between sports fandom and political activism? The TIME article suggests that it’s two-fold: politics is so much like a spectator sport that sports fans find it easy to get involved; and that being involved in politics gives people the same sense of community that being a sports fan does, meaning that yu get to be a know-it-all blowhard and call into to talk radio shows and ramble on with complete certainty about something you know absolutely nothing about.

I’d like to add a third reason into the mix: along with the reasons above, politics actually lets the people following it play a part in the final outcomes. As much as a loud, boisterous crowd can boost the home team or disrupt the visitors, they don’t have a vote of fans at the end of the game to decide who won. And as much as fan reaction might play a part in if a coach or GM is fired, the ultimate choice is made by owners.

So what if they wasn’t the case? What if fans got to decide whether a coach or GM stayed or was replaced? Maybe voting on a head coach every two years, and assistant coaches (the State Senators of the sports world) every year? You would make sure you voted for that. You could throw random staff in there, like Strength & Conditioning coaches (the equivalent of the races for Superior Court judges that no one ever knows anything about, so you just vote for the incumbent). And you could have ballot measures on how to run the team. (Dodgers Proposition 12: Should the team allocate $150 million over the next six years to retain the services of Manny Ramirez?)

It would be chaos. It would be spectacular. The Lions should institute this plan immediately. No one else seems to be able to run the team (except into the ground), so why not let everyone try. Plus, if it fails, the fans have no one to blame but themselves.