Bowling Green State University Football.... A Season of Firsts!

A great headline if I might say so myself, but too bad it translates into a historical negative for the local recordbooks. ESPN.com claims that last night's 63-7 thumping by Tulsa over BGSU officially became the largest margin of victory by any Division-1A opponent in Bowl Game History. That's a factoid worth singing "Go Big Flag Guy" too! I should assume that Freddie and Frieda probably didn't get down to the Chicken Dance the entire 12-13 hour bus ride home from Mobile, Alabama last evening.

In other news.... Barack Obama reportedly opened up a 10 point lead in a recent CNN-USA Today New Hampshire poll. All of this since being neck-in-neck in a 33% standoff with H.R. Clinton mere days ago. This could be the first stages of an independent surge toward Obama in the Granite State, or merely another example of a shaky poll.... one destined to give tv commentators something to bloviate about for another 24 hours on cable television. The same poll showed the new gap being gently carved (if that's possible) out of H.R. Clinton and Johnny Boy's supporters. Let's hope this is just a bullshit sampling... Edwards needs a 1st or 2nd finish for my ramblings to actually offer a tangible hope for continued success.

Final note...For a candidate that stands 0% chance at becoming president in 2008, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson looked pretty sharpe at the most recent ABC News/Facebook (yeah, Facebook) New Hampshire debate. I really enjoyed his comments regarding the economy and education. While he wasn't the first to interject the specific comments regarding the issues, and his stances may be quite similar to those of Johnny Boy and others; he was the first to bring the issues up in the debate---which, to that point, had been a long and winding road of issues that I didn't want to spend a great deal of time upon.

Welcome Back to Reality... Classes and Work resume this morning. Ohio State vs. LSU tonight after night class.... the heart says "Go Buckeyes" but the statisticians don't exactly agree with me. We'll see... maybe the point disparity will wipe the Falcons out of the recordbooks after a one-day title position?

Well.. that's why they leave storybook endings for storybooks. My dream of watching John Edwards board a plane from Des Moines to New Hampshire with a 5 point victory and a full head of steam might just live in one of those storybooks, BUT I can be rather satisfied with the results.

What does 2nd place in Iowa mean? Well, with regard to raw delegates and numbers, not much. There really isn't much difference between 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place ---about a one delegate differential in each dropping tier. But Edwards victory over the Clinton machine and his ability to compete with Obama mean that the little guy, the people's candidate, the man on a mission can still swing punches even if large corporate interests, individual donors with padded overseas bank accounts, and megastar talk show hosts don't keep his campaign fodder afloat.

Edwards should be able to convince a few more unions to come to his rescue--unions that were most definitely holding out to see if he was still legitimate from their past endorsement in 2003-2004. Additionally, Edwards will be able to recruit more volunteers, activists, small to medium level donations, and indirect surrogates because of this forced/gained respect in Iowa. That translates into more media coverage with a better spin. Instead of the down-and-out boy, Edwards is becoming the giant killer in much the same way that Huckabee is enjoying his new sound bytes. If Edwards can stay in the top 3 in New Hampshire and do well in Nevada and hold ground in South Carolina, then he still has a good chance of remaining a legitimate candidate going into the new "super dooper tuesday" in the first week of February.

Break out your bumper stickers, baby.... it's show time!
Sadly, Ohio has to wait until March to be a player in the primaries... but don't you worry, we'll make the difference again in November.