My Productivity Guy makes the case for the West Coast Offense as the best football metaphor for the Palin pick:

Jonah I don’t think either analogy is quite right – both are just a single play, and you need more than one play to be a real “game changer” (as TFJ and others have called Palin). Which is why I’ve been saying the best football analogy for Sarah Palin is the “West Coast offense.” This is something that Bill Walsh is credited with inventing, and he used it to guide the SF 49ers to greatness. The trouble is, nobody ever knew exactly what the West Coast offense was, but they knew it when they saw it. It was a whole different approach to the game, and some of its main features were mixing up the conventional order of passing and running plays and using short passes to open up passing lanes and make the defense more vulnerable to long bombs. Because it was new, teams didn’t really know how to defend against it, and they looked weak, tentative and uncertain (and sometimes silly) in attempting to do so. The initial choice of Palin might look like a long bomb, but it’s just one element of a much bigger strategy that the Democrats didn’t see coming at all (e.g a new approach for advancing the reform&change themes and appealing to regular guy/gal voters). They now find themselves on the defensive against a new positive appeal for swing voters, and they really don’t have a clue on how to respond. I think Sarah – and McCain – are going to keep them confused for the next two months.