This past weekend was one of the greatest sports weekends ever!! Saturday was the big day… The Iowa Hawkeye’s beat the Wisconsin Badgers 20-10. Their defense dominated the 2nd half. Though the record is not where everybody thought it would be, this game makes them bowl eligible. They have one more game left this Saturday against the hated Minn. Golden Gophers. This is a rivarly game and up for grabs is Floyd of Rosedale.

The winner of the annual Iowa-Minnesota football game is entitled to keep a trophy known as Floyd of Rosedale until next year’s contest.

A bet in 1935 between Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson and Iowa Governor Clyde Herring gave birth to Floyd of Rosedale. Tensions between the two state universities had been running high and a wager was made in an effort to relieve the situation.

After Iowa lost the 1935 game, Herring presented Olson with Floyd of Rosedale, a full-blooded champion pig and a brother of BlueBoy from Will Rogers’ movie State Fair. Olson gave the pig to the University of Minnesota and commissioned St. Paul sculptor Charles Brioscho to capture Floyd’s image.

The result is a bronze pig 53cm (21 inches) long and 38cm (15 inches) high. As of 2005, Floyd resides in Iowa City, where he has been for the past 4 years.

If Iowa beats the Gophers, again, this will greatly improve the bowl Iowa will go to. It also depends on Ohio State/Michigan and Penn State/Mich. St. Read about what could happen here.

I will be at the game Saturday.. should be cold, but that won’t bother me.

I am kinda hoping Iowa goes to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Tx. If that is the case I will probably go. San Antonio is south of Austin, Tx, which is where my brother, Andrew, lives. I’ve already started to plot my journey. So far all I have is the easy part… Andrew’s house to the Alamo Dome. How to get to Austin is the other question. Austin is basically directly south of here.. Just zoom over 50 miles to Interstate 35 and head south the rest of the way… it’s a long drive though. Those plans are still in the works… Iowa has to beat up on Minn first.. so I can get to far ahead of myself.

Moving on… Also Saturday the University of Northern Iowa Panthers beat Southern Ill. in the UNIDome to win the Gateway conference and gaurentee their entry into the playoffs. It was the greatest game I have ever seen in the dome. UNI was down 5 with 3 mins left and had 4th and 2 on the Southern Ill. 35 and threw a 35 yard TD bomb to take the lead and win the game. The dome was rocking.

Also, my High School, Tripoli, won another volleyball title. They made it to 8 strait title games, winning 6 of those eight. Pretty darn hard to do considering Tripoli is a little shrimp of a town.

One night after surviving a gut-wrenching five-game semifinal match with Holy Trinity, Johnson and top-ranked Tripoli had to dig even deeper Saturday night at the U.S. Cellular Center.

From overcoming a two games-to-nothing deficit and four match points in the fifth game to several uncharacteristic blunders by Johnson in the final stages, Tripoli managed to outlast second-ranked Treynor in an epic Class 1A title match, 23-25, 23-25, 25-14, 25-18, 21-19.

And on Sunday my Chicago Bears beat the 49ers. Da Bears are still in 1st place!!

Best weekend ever!!!!