The spat between Gov. Martin O’Malley and Comptroller Peter Franchot at last week’s Board of Public Works meeting was hardly the most significant confrontation of the past couple of weeks, but it may reveal a bit more about both of them than either had intended.

The battle that had the most attention recently was, of course, the Feb. 5 Super Bowl in which the big winner was yet again the National Football League. Head and shoulders above all the other professional sports leagues, the NFL keeps demonstrating that parity, uncertain outcomes and skilled marketing will always draw a crowd.

Even though there are some elite teams in the league, they are not guaranteed victory, as the Packers, Saints, and Patriots discovered. The teams are so incredibly evenly matched that a play or two in the Super Bowl, as well as the week before in both the Ravens-Patriots game and the Giants-49’ers game easily could have changed the outcomes. The Redskins are, to be sure, more than a play or two away from the Super Bowl, but NFL parity allows everyone to dream and encourages the public to keep buying tickets and paraphernalia and even bet on the games.

The ongoing struggle for the Republican presidential nomination also has kept producing a clear winner — Barack Obama. The president, by any historical standard, should be deeply worried about his re-election chances, but the circus that is this year’s Republican contest has got to have him smiling. Much of the commentary has focused on the way in which the candidates keep beating up each other, but you could just as easily see each of them as their own worst enemy, piling self-inflicted wound on top of self-inflicted wound.

Could a candidate get “hot” late in the primaries, like the New York Giants did this season, and be the surprise winner? The rules of nominations, as opposed to those for winning conference titles, are stacked against that outcome, but the lack of enthusiasm for any of the candidates so far means that a lot of people will be watching with great interest.

The most dramatic battle last week was the incredibly stupid fight that the Komen Foundation picked with Planned Parenthood. Komen’s capitulation after an onslaught of Facebook and other social media attacks made the 1967 Six-Day War look like a marathon. The incident will go down in history as one of the most clear-cut examples ever of squandering a good brand name for no good reason.

It’s still hard to figure out what the leadership and board at Komen were thinking. Did they really believe that anyone would buy their thinly disguised ideological explanation that they were cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood because it was the subject of a congressional “investigation”?

As she was resigning, Karen Handel, the apparent driving force behind the ill-conceived attack on Planned Parenthood, accused the organization of being a bully. Handel clearly understands irony because that is exactly what she was trying to do herself.

With all that activity, it’s amazing that the O’Malley-Franchot fracas got any attention. To understand why it did, you have to consider the broader context rather than just what got said.

Earlier in the week, Franchot had forcefully, using deliberatively provocative language, criticized the governor’s proposal to increase the state’s gasoline tax. He called the idea a “shot in the gut” to Maryland taxpayers and concluded that now was not the “right time” to talk about new taxes.

O’Malley, who has demonstrated remarkable self-control ever since a few highly public blowups while mayor of Baltimore city, let Franchot get under his skin. He resorted to what he obviously considered the worst possible kind of political insult, comparing Franchot to Mitt Romney. Given that O’Malley has become a leading Democratic spokesman in attacking Republicans, Romney was obviously on his mind.

A win for O’Malley would have been to ignore Franchot. The comptroller, seeing the gaggle of reporters, also failed to restrain himself and took his own shot, saying that he was sorry he was getting in the way of the governor’s presidential aspirations.

That barb would be more effective if Franchot weren’t busily traveling the state in preparation for a run of his own for governor in 2014.

The way that O’Malley and Franchot handled this exchange has to be seen as a lose/lose encounter. Neither looked particularly good, even as both probably thought they had gotten in the most effective rejoinder.

As to the substance of the issue, however, I’m with O’Malley. Maryland has serious transportation infrastructure needs and has to find a way to respond to them if the state is going to remain economically competitive. The gasoline tax is at the same level as 20 years ago, and “market” prices often fluctuate more in a matter of days than the proposed tax increase would when fully implemented.

While we are certainly in hard economic times, arguing that we are better off ignoring or deferring dealing with our problems is hardly a demonstration of political leadership.

Laslo Boyd does consulting in higher education, public policy and politics. His email address is lvboyd@gmail.com.