Duke Dog upset by dark horse

The Hot Corner

What 11 other mascots couldn’t do, a judges panel took care of.

After rolling to an 11-0 record in the Capital One Mascot Challenge, Duke Dog’s proverbial rug was pulled from underneath his feet on New Years’ Day when it was announced that Monte, the grizzly bear from the University of Montana, was named Mascot of the Year.

Not since the stock market crash of 1929 has there been such a sudden and unforeseen course of events.

Duke Dog’s unblemished record was emphasized by the parity in the rest of the mascot field. Monte and Hey Reb from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas were 6-5 overall. Each of the other nine mascots were under .500.

Let the controversy begin.

The simplicity of the announcement was anticlimactic in comparison to the final verdict. Capital One’s Web site. for the mascot challenge said the winner would be announced at halftime of the 2005 Capital One Bowl.

By that, Capital One meant they would show a relatively mundane and simple 30-second clip during a commercial break. Melissa, the woman being courted by the 12 mascots in the bachelorette-themed contest, chose Monte as her true love.

If Melissa is satisfied with mediocrity, so be it. After all, the only other system that seems to create similar uproar is college football’s Bowl Championship Series, where, as JMU coach Mickey Matthews once told me in a conversation about the BCS, 6-5 gets you bowl eligible.

But it doesn’t win you championships.

Capital One dropped the ball in this year’s competition. After encouraging people to vote for their favorite mascot, the powers that be negated that voting power by placing equal emphasis in a group of judges whose decision was made last summer.

No system is flawless in a short season. The NFL has issues with their tiebreaking system for playoff spots. NCAA Division I-AA football has a skewed method for determining who gets to host postseason games. Division I-A football has the aforementioned BCS fiasco.

But this does not condone the Capital One problem. Let the judges decide which 12 mascots make the All-America Team and then put the fate of the competition into the hands of the voters. If nothing else, it would eliminate the controversy; no one would have questioned a Duke Dog victory, not after he ran the table in the online vote.

Instead, Madison’s favorite canine joins the 13-0 Auburn Tigers as the resident snubbed member of a flawed system. Auburn was left out of the BCS national championship game because the University of Southern California and Oklahoma University also were undefeated and were deemed more worthy of the spotlight game.

USC wound up beating Oklahoma by 36 in the most lopsided BCS title game since the system was implemented.

Auburn was the odd-man out in a three-horse race and went to the Sugar Bowl.

Duke Dog was just the odd-man out; the people’s champ denied his apparent victory, in a year when undefeated wasn’t undefeated after all.

James Irwin is a sophomore SMAD major.