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Obama Weighs In on Richard Sherman and the Super Bowl

President Obama says the game will come down to the last play.

Like most pigskin fans, President Obama will be up close and personal with his wide-screen TV when the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos throw down on Super Bowl Sunday. While he may root for one team in the privacy of the White House, in an interview that aired on CNN yesterday, he was all diplomacy.

"I think it's going to be a lot like the Seahawks-49ers game. I think it's going to come down to the last play," Obama said when asked to predict a winner. "I'm not going to pick because I don't want to offend any of the great cities participating."

He also declined to speculate on whether his vice president, Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton, his first-term secretary of state, will win the Democratic presidential nomination.

The president did, however, weigh in on an outburst from the Seahawks' cornerback Richard Sherman, who was fined thousands of dollars for unsportsmanlike behavior during the match against the San Francisco 49ers that secured his team's participation in the Super Bowl. In addition to making a choking sign at a 49er, Sherman declared himself to be the best.

"My sense is he's taking a page out of Muhammad Ali's playbook, which is, I think he said explicitly, this is a good way to get attention. In fact, Ali said he got his schtick from wrestlers he used to watch," the president told CNN host Jake Tapper.

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Follow Joyce Jones on Twitter: @BETpolitichick.

(Photos from left: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo, Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

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