With #3 Miami and #5 Florida State both being stunned today, and once-mighty Florida also losing, it was a very bad day for football fans in the Sunshine State. It’s the first time the Hurricanes, Seminoles and Gators have all lost on the same day since October 14, 1978!

Will the losses make Florida voters unexpectedly cranky on Tuesday, causing them to vote down the incumbent in a generalized rage against the status quo? Or will Miami fans vote against former Clemson football walk-on and North Carolina Law School grad John Edwards out of spite over the Tar Heels’ win? :)

The BrendanLoy.com community continues to predict an extremely close race on Tuesday. The latest aggregate prediction is Kerry 268, Bush 266, with one, election-deciding state in the “tossup” column: New Hampshire.

The deadline to submit your picks is noon on Monday. Enter now!

Aggregate-predictions map below:

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Lords of the BCS, rejoice! Unranked North Carolina (3-4) is on the verge of stunning #3 Miami (6-0), which would substantially reduce the chances of three or more major-conference teams finishing the regular season undefeated. It’s 28-21 Tar Heels with 8:05 left in the fourth quarter.

But if North Carolina does hold on and win, will the voters of South Florida hold it against John Edwards? :)

Meanwhile, USC continues to roll.

UPDATE: Now it’s 28-28. North Carolina ball; 2:15 left.

ANOTHER UPDATE: North Carolina has a 41-yard field-goal attempt to win it with four seconds left. The kicker is a true freshman…

IT’S GOOD! NORTH CAROLINA STUNS MIAMI!!! They’re rushing the field! WOOHOO!

P.S. This is yet more good news for potential BCS party-crasher Utah. But the Utes need to beat the rest of their opponents, starting with 2-5 San Diego State tonight. They’re struggling but leading, 27-21, at the moment.

In other news, USC crushed the Cougars, 42-12, final. Fight on!

Now, Cal is playing Arizona State in a battle for second place in the Pac-10; the winner could well go to the Rose Bowl, if USC goes to the Orange Bowl. The Bears are leading, 10-0, late in the first quarter.

The Washington Post has discovered, to its horror, that despite all the election “reforms” since 2000, there is a good chance “the unthinkable” will happen again in 2004: “Americans may not know who won the presidential race on Tuesday night. Again.”

There are several problems with this analysis. First of all, the recent election reforms have nothing whatsoever to do with assuring a speedy result — only an accurate one. And in this context, speed and accuracy are often competing factors rather than complementary ones; take, for example, provisional ballots, mandated by the Help America Vote Act, which (hypothetically) increase accuracy but (most assuredly) decrease speed. So the mention of the HAVA reforms in the opening paragraph is a total non-sequitur.

Secondly, “not know[ing] who won the presidential race on Tuesday night” is by no means unthinkable. In fact, it’s not even horrifying. Not knowing who won the presidential race on Jan. 20 — now that would be horrifying. But even that scenario isn’t “unthinkable” (as evidenced by the fact that I just thought of it). The prospect of not knowing the winner Tuesday night is, at most, mildly disconcerting.

My third objection to the Post article is along a somewhat different line. I don’t think the “we won’t know the winner for a long time” scenario is actually as probable as many pundits seem to think.

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Before going to bed tonight, don’t forget to set your clocks back one hour. Daylight Savings Time ends at 2:00 AM tomorrow — except here in Indiana and out west in Arizona, where Daylight Savings Time is not observed at all. So, unlike the rest of you, we don’t have to worry about “falling back”… nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah. :)

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The Newington High School football team recovered from last week’s heartbreaking loss to Platt with a 34-6 win over Maloney yesterday. The Indians improve to 6-1 — clinching their first winning season since 1993!!!

#1 USC leads Washington State early, 14-0.

#2 Oklahoma survived Oklahoma State, 38-35. #3 Miami is trailing North Carolina, 7-0, but it’s early. Oops! The ‘Canes just tied it, 7-7.

Maryland just wrapped up a stunning upset of #5 Florida State, 20-17. That’s very good news for Utah, among others. And Northwestern stunned Purdue, 13-10. So much for Kyle Orton’s Heisman hopes. A good day for Josh and Adrienne! (UPDATE: And Chris!)

Notre Dame is idle this week.

Last night at The Backer:

The kid right next to me, John, celebrated his birthday on the 29th. And Brian, in the background, had his birthday on the 28th. (My roommate Chris, at right, wasn’t drinking to celebrate his birthday. He was just drinking. :)

Earlier, at Rocco’s, “blowing out” the leaf on my birthday cupcake:

Heh. More birthday pics here.

Also, I just updated my fall foliage gallery. And, on an unrelated note, here’s a picture of someone paying rapt attention in Gunn’s Torts class on Thursday:

Heh.

Photographs can make Paris Hilton look busty and Hilary Clinton look, uh, less like Satan. But ever since a herd of overactive imaginations began fabricating alien abduction stories and supplying photographs of flying saucers, a group of eggheads got together to analyze this so-called authentic evidence.

Well, one of these nerds apparently has quite a beef with everyone’s favorite Texan.

I know I don’t have a lot of time to respond to comments on this board, what with the time constraints of a first-year teacher and the new co-advisor for the Drama Club. I know I still haven’t explained why I prefer the free market to corporate statism, and I probably won’t, at this point. This venue really doesn’t lend itself to expanding your thoughts, I’m afraid. In fact, I probably won’t have any time to respond to comments to this post either. But let it not be said I didn’t respond to the preposterous idea that any self-respecting libertarian who truly believed in individual liberty in all its forms would ever vote Bush. I leave it to Arthur Silber. (You should make sure you have plenty of time to read before you click.)

I’ll be sure to link to his endorsement for Kerry, too, when it comes out. In fact, if you want a good idea of libertarian thought - the kind of libertarian that distrusts centralized government education, that understands why all those liberals were up in arms about the very idea of internment camps for Muslims, that does see the problem with torture and arrest without trial, and that realizes that we can’t remake the world in our image by gunpoint if the people we threaten don’t want to change, among other things - just read as many of his posts as you can. You can also check out reactions to Bush from the Libertarian Party. You’ll note that nobody there likes him.

Don’t trust Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh, Jane Galt, or any of the other “authoritarian libertarians,” as one liberal blogger so aptly put it. They’re the kind who like guns and don’t like taxes, and think that’s all they need to call themselves defenders of freedom. They’re also the kind who still live in the fantasy world where George W. Bush bravely leapt into action the very instant he heard the words “America is under attack” and pursued Osama bin Laden relentlessly, without any let-up whatsoever, right unto his secret lair in Baghdad, where Saddam kept his treasure, his nuclear stockpile, and his djinn’s lamp.

@messaging.sprintpcs.comHappy Birthday to me! :)