Checking the score: Tennessee and the Labour leadership contest

Cos where else do you get Tennessee football and British politics in the same post?

I meant to do two things yesterday when I came back from the park. Check up on the Tennessee v. UAB game and find out who won the Labour leadership. I did neither til late in the evening, when I checked the score.

Tennessee squeaked through - against a team that we really shouldn't have had to squeak against. If you're of a mind, go and check out what a squeaker it was at this animated drive chart. UAB missed an astonishing number of field goals and with a score of 32-29 and two overtimes - it was only by the slimmest of margins and perhaps a shift of the wind that made the difference. I think I'm kinda glad I didn't see it, especially through the long (and what must have been miserable) second half.

As Vol blogger Will writes:

Any Kool-Aid that was left in the orange solo cup was spilled on the floor in disbelief today. And while it's exponentially less painful to see in victory than in defeat, today was a stunning and very real picture of where Tennessee Football is right now.

Still, nothin' like a nail biter.



Labour leadership

I didn't even manage to check the Labour leadership scores until this morning. But I don' t really have a dog in that fight. I've maintained only a dim interest in contest over the summer - and it seemed David Miliband was a dead cert, until - well, yesterday. When his younger (shorter, dimmer?, less attractive) brother became the bookies' favourite and then finally won it after four elimination rounds.

The voting process itself - somewhat reminiscent of X-Factor or American Idol - see the votes tallied on first preferences first. David wins. Diane Abbot (perhaps the most entertaining of the lot) was eliminated. All of her 2nd, 3rd and 4th preferences are re-distributed and then... wait a minute. That doesn't sound right. Eee gads that must have been a headache counting all that up after each elimination round - what a complicated system. Anything that crazy surely would never be foisted upon the British public. Anyway, David came out the 'winner' of each round, right up until the end. He musta felt just about like UAB, if not but for one missed field goal - i.e. glad handing with union reps or lurching just slightly to the left. I shouldn't like to be at the Miliband house for Hanukkah dinner.

Anyway, brilliant news for the rest of us. Ed Miliband won't be as spectacularly bad as some of his opponents would have been for the Labour party. But y'all just keep drinking the Kool-Aid from your red solo cup. I suspect he'll have a lovely honeymoon period and then his true colours - whatever they may be - will shine through.




Photo credits: Valerie Everett and Arvind Grover