COLUMBUS: This is the home of the National Champions of college football.

The whole state of Ohio is celebrating the Ohio State U. win over Miami, in two overtimes, 31-24, in the Fiesta Bowl. Of course, it seemed like half the state was in Arizona for the big game. Miami didn’t have anyone there except for the band and cheerleaders. And that is perfectly logical… if you’re in south Florida, and it’s January, why would you want to leave?

For this weekend, no other news is even allowed into this town. Nobody cares about budget deficits, tax cuts, Iraq, Israel, nuclear bombs, the stock market, lottery winners, oil prices, or how many Democrats have admitted they want to be President. And if anyone is gonna get cloned around here, they would prefer it to be one of the football players.

A year ago I predicted something that turned out to be true, and it happens so rarely I’ll reprint it for you: “Next year I think the BCS should pick the top two differently. Lately, those teams from the state of Florida have been so tough to beat, just let those Florida schools decide among themselves on one of the teams, then the rest of the country fight it out for the other.”

In a few days I’m going over to Indianapolis. If anything important is happening in the outside world they’ll let me know about it. Football ain’t doing so well there that it blocks out all other news.

Historic Quote from Will Rogers:

“The big Columbia_Stanford football game… Mr. Hoover was there, looked fine and got a big reception. He was the main old grad from Stanford…
But the game was in keeping with everything else that happened in sports, government and economics the past year. The experts were wrong again.” DT #2314, Jan. 2, 1934.
(Note: Columbia, with only 15 players, upset Stanford in the Rose Bowl, 7-0.)