Sunday, October 5, 2008

Heels Win, Cubs Lose

Carolina's football team kept rolling yesterday, trouncing the Yukon Huskies 38-12 in Chapel Hill. The Heels won the game on special teams but it was not Brandan Tate doing the damage returning punts. Linebacker Bruce Carter blocked 3 punts - in the second quarter. Those blocks resulted in 17 Carolina points.

Carolina is now 4-1 and has already equaled its win total from last season.

Carolina's offense was okay, but more importantly only turned the ball over once. In addition to the blocked punts Carolina's defense picked off three UConn passes: one set up Carolina's first touchdown in the first quarter; the second ended a long Huskies drive inside the 20 yard line at the end of the first half; one was returned for a touchdown in the fourth quarter, for 14 more of Carolina's 38 points.

The Heels take on Notre Dame, the Carolina of College Football, next week in Kenan. The Fighting Irish are independents in football, but this will the Tar Heels' third game against a Big East basketball school. It is also their last non-ACC game.

Oh yeah, it's also Notre Dame. A win against a big-name school will do wonders to solidify the perception that Butch Davis has returned Carolina to the glory days of the Mack Brown era, and practically guarantees that the Heels will go to a bowl game. Not bad for a team that is mainly sophomores.

More Tar Heel News.

After two decades of predicting - and hoping - that all the high-tech driven migration and demographic changes to the Tar Heel State would make North Carolina a swing state, it may finally be happening (probably more to do w/ Spanish speaking migrants rather than high tech folks, but we'll take it). Here's an interesting item from the N&O about Obama

Barack Obama is opening an office in Fuquay-Varina.

Dome readers outside the Triangle may not appreciate the full meaning of that news, so we'll help explain.

Back when Dome worked on the Metro desk, we covered Fuquay, a town of about 14,000 a 30-minutes drive south of Raleigh. Here are two of the stories we wrote:

* Town leaders, citing Scripture, refuse to allow soccer games to be played on Sunday at local parks.

* The owners of a potbellied pig rescue shelter spar with neighbors over town regulations.

In other words, Fuquay-Varina is about as close to Mayberry as you can get outside of Mount Airy.

Obama's outreach efforts here are a sign that he is pushing his campaign beyond the urban centers of the Triangle, the Triad and Charlotte.

In total, the Obama campaign now has 40 offices around North Carolina.

Unbelievable stuff. Obama in Fuqua-Varina.

Swing State Poll

Virginia edged out Colorado as the most likely state for Obama to pick up, 12 to 11. Besides those two states, readers also felt confident that Obama could take Ohio and Nevada. Only one person chose Florida, a state where Obama is now ahead thanks to the stock market slide and very high home foreclosure rates.

On the Dodgers Bandwagon

As you may recall from an early blog post, my heart said Cubs but my head said Dodgers. I had romantic notions of the Cubs winning it all this year, but Chicago was buzz sawed by superior Dodger pitching.

So tell Chuck to save a seat for me on the Dodgers' bandwagon (the team I rooted for in the 70s - before we got the cable and 100 Braves games on TV every season - after initially being a Cubs fan, coincidentally enough)! I always root for the NL team, except in special occasions when Tony LaRussa is managing the NL team or in times of curse breaking. The fact that the Dodgers were my old favorite team, combined with history that spans from Jackie Robinson to Kirk Gibson (smiting a LaRussa coached team, BTW), and the best uni in professional sports makes them an easy team to root for if they represent the NL in the Fall Classic.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember you liking the Dodgers and Braves -- maybe I was too young to remember the Cub phase! I'm rooting for a Red Sox/ LA series!

Anonymous said...

My Dodgers fanaticism goes back to forever. They were my first baseball love. True, after Lasorda left, I drifted away, and lost interest in baseball overall, but in the overall scheme of things, that was a short separation. Torre's hiring brought me back into the fold, and I'm happily wearing Dodger blue again.

Go me!