The Daily Dose/November 17, 2016
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Foremost Humorist
HUT, HUT HIKE: Official Daily Dose fave the Mount Union Purple Raiders football team opens the NCAA Division III football tournament today facing the Hobart Statesmen in Geneva, New York.
Fly In The Ointment: The big surprise is Mount Union will not open the playoffs as champions of the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC).
Uh, Could You Repeat That, Please: Yeah, we’re surprised, too. After 24 consecutive OAC titles and 112 consecutive regular season wins, our Purple Raiders were defeated by the John Carroll 31-28 Saturday, giving the Blue Streaks their fourth OAC title and first since the Paleozoic Era
Hard Earned And Well Done: John Carroll played a fine game, forcing four Mount Union turnovers, their highest turnover count since the Harding Administration. Not particularly impressed by playing at Mount Union for the conference title, they had the skill and poise to score the winning touchdown with 38 seconds left.
FunFact: The Raiders will play a road playoff game for the first time since the 1996 national semifinals where they beat Wisconsin-Lacrosse 39-21 at Camp Randle Stadium.
Breakdown Segment: The Purple Raiders will visit the Hobart Statesmen, co-champions of a group of misfits known as the Liberty League. The Statesmen (9-1) are in the playoffs for the 12th time and their best finishes were quarterfinal losses in 2014 and 2012.
This will be the fourth meeting between Mount Union and Hobart and the Statesmen lead the series. Hobart won the first two meetings, in 1972 and 1973 and Mount Union took the last meeting, 42-7 in the second round of the 2008 playoffs.
Getting To Know You: Hobart College is an all-male liberal arts college in Geneva, New York. Along with the all-female William Smith College, they are known as the Colleges of the Senecas because they are both located on Lake Seneca and while separate schools, they share many things, including websites and can trace their lineage back to the Geneva Academy established in 1797.
Hobart is named for an Episcopalian bishop named John Henry Hobart, and became Hobart College in 1852.
Dry, Technical Matter: Hobart’s teams used to be known as the Deacons. Their lacrosse team has won 15 national championships.
Speaking Of National Championships: Mount Union is looking for their 13th Division III national football championship, a record.
Jolly Good: As usual, the D-III playoffs sound like the draw for the annual country club tennis tournament, with Coe, Alfred, Olivet and Wesley all qualifying.
For The Record: As they should be, John Carroll is the top seed in their region and are in the same bracket as the evil bastards from Wisconsin-Whitewater. John Carroll opens against Olivet while UW-Wherever opens at Lakeland.
Oh, Jesus H: The Mount Union/Hobart winner will play the winner of the Johns Hopkins/Randolph Macon game.
SPEAKING OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS: The NCAA still refuses to conduct a major division football playoff, with men huddled in a conference room determining who will play in a four-team playoff, a playoff that is only held after we are force fed the Kraft Velveeta and Tostitos Bean Dip bowls, games that probably feature at least one team with a losing record.
Good Luck With That: Choosing the participants this year will be a lot of fun this year three of the four teams currently in the top four have a loss and some may not even qualify for their conference’s title game. Speculating on what might happen is futile, though fun, and it is entirely possible the selection committee may have a fiasco on its hands that would have people longing for the simpler days of the BCS.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: We say this every hour on the hour this time of year: a 32-team NCAA Division I football playoff could begin Thanksgiving weekend and end on New Year’s Day, the last day anyone really cares about college football. Anyone who things this would become an American classic quicker than you can say “Electoral College” is deluding themselves.
“…SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH…UNLESS YOU ELECT DONALD TRUMP…”: Abraham Lincoln delivers one of mankinds seminal speeches, the Gettysburg Address, on this date in 1863, at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
At just over two minutes, it was one hour and 58 minutes shorter than the opening speech by noted American statesman Edward Everett. What’s funny is that a two hour speech was more or less what people expected to hear at events of this sort back then and his speech was rather well received.
Five handwritten copies of the speech remain, all a bit different, and History is not entirely sure which one, if any, was read at the ceremony.
Another Small Step: Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean become the third and fourth humans to walk on the moon on this date in 1969. They would make two moon walks and return to Earth on November 24.
Dry, Technical Matter: America is approaching the day when it will have no left alive who walked on the moon. Five of the twelve who walked on the moon are dead and the two youngest are 81. It will be our loss.
More Official Daily Dose Policy: Regular readers of this crap know we are on record as saying it is a shame we have not put men on Mars yet. Had we wanted to, we could have done this in the 1980’s. Now we can’t even put anyone in space anymore.
Oh, Why Bother: Today marks the 16,078 day since man has walked on the moon.
Thought For The Day: America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow.– Gene Cernan, commander, Apollo 17 and last human to set foot on the moon.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: There was not a trivia question last time, silly.
Today’s Stumper: Abraham Lincoln was ill when he delivered the Gettysburg Address. What illness was he coming down with? – Answer next time!
