Big Ten slowly becomes Small Time

United States', Association of American Universities and National Collegiate Athletic Association's oldest Division I-A college athletic conference and its member institutions have finally dropped and fallen, the Big Ten of Eleven are now just a dead dirty dozen as the Northwesterns, Iowas and Illinois begin to slowly kill the Ohio States, Minnesotas and Michigans and thus kill the last great conference.

Originally, the conference was run exclusively by University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and Saint Paul Golden Gophers and University of Michigan Wolverines, in so far as winning football championships was concerned from 1896 to 1915, with only a trace of Chicago, Iowa, Northwestern and Illinois then Ohio State decides to show its ugly gray and red face.

After the Ohio State University Buckeyes of Columbus showed Ann Arbor a thing or two in 1916, there was no turning back, as University of Illinois-Urbana and Champaign Fighting Illini won it outright in 1919, University of Iowa Hawkeyes from Iowa City got it outright in 1921, Purdue University Boilermakers from West Lafayette Indiana stole it outright in 1929, Northwestern University Wildcats from Evanston Illinois captured it outright in 1936, Indiana University Hoosiers from Bloomington Indiana took it outright in 1945, Michigan State University Spartans from East Lansing gained it outright in 1965 and finally Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions from State College or Penn State found it outright in 1994.

This, of course, affected the outcome of the Rose Bowl, Tournament East-West football game or the Granddaddy of them All, as the oldest and most prestigious bowl game with its annual Tournament of Roses event and parade. Starting a tradition of New Years Day bowl games, it hosted the Big 10 and Pacific 10 conference champions, but now thanks to the BCS National Championship, unless they are involved in that Game then they are out.

Can't forget the classic on September the 16th this year in South Bend, where the Wolverines rumbled all over the #2 nationally ranked Fighting Irish, as Notre Dame went down 47-21. Then we all watched in the Game in Columbus on November the 18th, one day after the death of former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, where for the first time in the history of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry they met as nationally ranked #1 and #2 clubs in the country, expecting a huge defensive battle, both offenses almost go to 1000 yards as the Wolverines conceded the conference title to the Buckeyes 42-39. Finally bringing us here to, I will guess with thought, the future losses of Michigan on the 1st in the Rose Bowl against the U So Cal Trojans and Ohio State on the 8th in the Nat Champ against the U Flo Gators will happen because they both have lost their cultural way back home to the Mid West as Bo and Woody shake their heads at Carr and Tressel and need to find it fast.

Heck, they might get desperate for their old history back, the original University of Chicago Maroons just might be reunited with the Big Ten, since it left the conference in 1946, rebuild its Stagg Field they demolished in 1957 and bring on back their first squad, that dropped football in 1939, to play a game or two with since deceased football players like Grant "Goatboy" Giles. Other Monsters of the Midway, all of which helped win seven Big Ten Conference titles from 1899 to 1924, including a national championship in 1905 with Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, who later also became the first player to be drafted by the National Football League, helped to lead the way in keeping the club undefeated in football against Notre Dame. This remains even today as an absolute proof of how hard this team was, even though its namesake plays in the lowly NCAA University Athletic Association Division III football, as a life-long member of the "Nerdy Nine".

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A Liberal Party to be led by Kennedys and Trudeaus forever

Ten years ago to this day, Gerard Michael Kennedy, like an good Roman Catholic Liberal, used his good work running executive director in Daily Bread Food Bank for a decade previous, to take this professional show of charity and make it into a political run for hope, with faith others would follow. After replacing former Ontario premier and New Democrat Bob Rae in a byelection to represent the York South constituency as its Member of Provincial Parliament in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Kennedy immediately entered into a fight between progressive left versus conservative right on the leadership convention floor finishing first on the first, second, third and fourth ballots. Finally on the fifth ballot, Kennedy succumbed to defeat at 4:25 a.m. on the 1st of Dec. 1996 at the Toronto Convention Centre by the bland, folksy underestimated, underappreciated and unpretentious candidate Dalton Mcguinty Junior.

Though Pierre Elliot Trudeau and his evergaining Trudeaumania placed first all the way through four ballots in 1968 at the Ottawa Civic Centre, it still took four ballots for the left to get just less than 51% past the right and their champion York West Member of Parliament Robert Winters, where John Turner and his 195 Club delegates would simply wait for his chance to dance, quit politics in 1975 and return to win it on second ballot in 1984 against Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Chrétien pulled the same, by resigning in 1986 and then running to win in 1990 at the Calgary Saddledome, allowing Paul Martin Junior to repeat the cycle, stay as finance minister until leaving cabinet in 2002 and then being coronated coronated in 2003 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

The point here is that at the Palais Des Congrès De Montréal tomorrow, since the federal Liberals can not have a second coming of Trudeaumania, if the leadership race continues to be so lacking in hopeful inspiration, then there is nothing new to make this hopeless party and its leadership anymore exciting to vote for. Rather expect the same old fear and smear, shock and awe or divide and conquer politics we have witnessed since 2004 and the blame and shame gaming of the system since the start of time, all of this follows the brand new in so far as the arts and sciences of military tactical operations, creating a futuristic, almost negatively dystopian, melding of both into a hybrid of militics. If the Liberals want to guard away from that, they must move more towards a positive utopiuan chose change slogan mantra, with the need to take this race to a long term fifth and final ballot marathon fight, in growing support and inclusively bringing others within, to make sure another short term coronation sprint to a distant finish does not happen again.