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By Brendan Loy
A big thank you to everyone who has donated to our March of Dimes "March for Babies" fund! As you can see at right, we've reached our goal of $500. A blog reader's donation of $65 this evening put us over the top. Woohoo! All that money will go toward research to help sick babies. Good work, everybody!
The march is tomorrow. I'll try to get a cute picture or two for the blog. :)
By Brendan Loy
Fellow "Irish Trojan" Katherine Kirkpatrick, who, like me, attended USC for undergrad (she's even a Daily Trojan alum), and who is now a rising 3L at Notre Dame, was elected NDLS's new SBA president in a runoff election last week. She will be inaugurated on Sunday.
A Trojan at the helm of the Notre Dame Law School student body: I love it!! Finally, Operation: Trojan Horse can proceed as planned! ;) Just kidding. Seriously, congratulations, Katherine!
In addition, an anonymous tipster informed me that A.J. Bellia and Lloyd Mayer -- the latter being my former Election Law professor and adviser for my Electoral College paper, the former being one half of the school's recent professorial retention coup -- finished tied in the initial balloting for NDLS Professor of the Year. That led to a run-off, which Professor Bellia narrowly won. Congrats to him, and to Professor Mayer for his close second-place finish; they're both great professors, and well deserving of the recognition.
By Brendan Loy
I'm traveling to Denver from May 4-6, and will be landing at the Nashville Airport (Southwest doesn't fly into Knoxville) at 8:25 PM on Tuesday the 6th. By that time, of course, results from the Indiana and North Carolina primaries will be coming in; indeed, winners may well have been declared before I land. Alas, I didn't think about this when I scheduled the trip.
Anyway, during my drive back to Knoxville, I'd like to listen to live coverage of election-related news on the radio. Hence, my question for Tennessee radio listeners: Are there any radio stations (presumably AM) in the Nashville area that would have this? What about in the no man's land between Nashville and Knoxville? And for that matter, what about in the Knoxville area? I almost never listen to the radio for this kind of thing, so I don't know.
By David K.
The Connecticut legislature reached a compromise with UConn that will allow the university's football team to schedule a six-year series against Notre Dame, even though none of the games will be played in Connecticut. The Irish balked at playing at the Huskies' 40,000-seat home stadium, Rentschler Field in East Hartford, insisting instead that UConn's "home" games played in larger stadiums elsewhere, most likely in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and/or New York. However, Connecticut lawmakers were unimpressed with the idea of UConn outsourcing its home games to other states. In the words of State Rep. Michael Christ, D-East Hartford, who proposed an earlier bill that would have required UConn to play all its home games at Rentschler, "Many of us felt we already had a beautiful facility in Connecticut and it was built for UConn."
The newly announced deal requires UConn to play six home games at Rentschler Field each year, "as long as the NCAA rules permit a 12-game season and permits a team to use one Football Championship Subdivision win per season as a bowl-eligible win." It also reduces the length of the series between UConn and Notre Dame from ten years to six. "I believe we have crafted a reasonable solution," said Christ, who added that he hopes UConn can persuade the Irish to play at Rentschler Field in the future. (Ha! Fat chance.)
The series will start in the 2011 season and go through 2017. The three home games for the Irish will, of course, be played at Notre Dame Stadium. The deal still needs to be approved by Notre Dame and venue officials. Connecticut and Notre Dame already have a separate deal to play next season in South Bend.
UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Rep. Christ wrote a scathing op-ed about this topic last week in the Hartford Courant. My dad suggested the headline, "Christ to Notre Dame: Screw you." Heh.
Anyway, here's an excerpt:
Loyal Husky fans flock with family and friends to Rentschler for every home game, rain or shine, in support of their beloved team. There are hundreds of stadium workers who depend on a game day payday from parking cars, working concessions and post-game clean-up. Many local school bands and clubs as well as charities also use games to bolster fundraising. Should all those benefits move to Massachusetts? I say no!
If Rentschler Field is too confining for the Leprechaun army the Fighting Irish deploy each week, how come the similar capacity stadium of the Boston College Eagles (formerly of the Big East) is not too small? That series alternates between South Bend and Chestnut Hill, Mass. ...There is no question Notre Dame will remain the "Wal-Mart" of college football as long as it is able to keep its national television network deal. However, UConn officials can come out of this looking like heroes both here in Connecticut and nationally by saying "no thanks." They could brag that no one, not even the legendary Notre Dame, can tell Connecticut where to play its home games. Even if the Fighting Leprechauns, after a few more years of two-win seasons, do eventually find their television revenue dried up and are forced to finally join a conference, it is very possible that the Irish will abandon their pseudo Big East affiliation and join the Big 10 anyway.
Ahem. It was a three-win season, thank you very much.
Incidentally, to answer the question posed by the title, I will, of course, root for Notre Dame, my alma mater. But as I said in comments, "if I had to pick one game (other than USC) for ND to lose, it would be the UConn game. Imagine what a huge win that would be for the Huskies program."
That said: Gooooo Irish! Beeeeeat Huskies! :)
By Brendan Loy
TNR's Michael Crowley makes two excellent points. First:
With about 95 percent counted around midnight [Tuesday] night, Hillary was leading by 10 points. But now, with 99.44 percent counted, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State shows her winning 54.6 to 45.4. That's only 9.2 points--less than her 10.3 margin in Ohio, and less than the 10.5 bar that all-powerful CW-arbiter Mark Halperin had set for her.
Yet no one cares. The storyline is clearly that Hillary had a decisive victory which keeps her campaign alive.
Why isn't the reality of single digits a bigger problem for her? One reason is that the final margin often matters less than the presumed margin when people like Russert go to bed.
That's absolutely true, and is something that I anticipated on Monday: "I maintain that a double-digit win is necessary for Clinton to really
claim an unalloyed 'victory' ... Though, the state of the race at around 10:00 or 11:00
PM Eastern time probably matters at least as much as the actual final
numbers, since the media usually decides its transitory 'winners' and 'losers' before bedtime on the East Coast."
Another reason--one an Obama aide was just grumbling to me about--is the weird havoc exit polls play with the media's primary-night storylines. Yesterday's early exit polls had suggested a nail-biter that suggested Hillary might be finished. Yet, much like Super Tuesday, Hillary made a "comeback" over the course of the night, as her vote margin gradually widened. Why, it was almost as though Obama had Hillary on the ropes and she fought him off with pure grit and determination. Impressive! She's back!
If I were a Machiavellian Obama operative, next time I might consider leaking some phony exits showing misleading strength for Hillary.
As I said repeatedly before
this completely predictable occurrence happened, there's absolutely no
excuse for the media to be fooled by that exit poll nonsense anymore,
because Obama always does better in the leaked exit polls than
he does in the final results. ALWAYS!! It's happened over and over and
over again: New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, Texas & Ohio, and now
Pennsylvania. Will these idiots never learn?
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