Go Big Blue!

ODU's mascot, Big Blue, is in the Capital One mascot challenge finals and we need all the people we can to vote over and Over and OVER!  The Capital One National Mascot of the Year gets $15,000 to go toward its mascot program, in addition to the $5,000 each school's mascot program gets for entering the contest.

During each of the 12 "regular season" voting weeks during the football season, faithful fans logged onto www.capitalonebowl.com to vote for their favorite of 16 mascots from universities across the country.  Each week the 16 mascots were matched up in head-to-head battles, and their wins, losses, and total votes were tallied as the competition continued.  At the end of the regular season Big Blue had the most votes at 1,004,220, putting us more than 100,000 votes ahead of Montana's "Monte," who had the second highest amount of votes.  Big Blue ended the regular season with a perfect 12-0 record, as did University of Texas El Paso's "Paydirt Pete."

Now the challenge is in the third and final week of the playoffs, and after last week's intense battle against the Oregon Duck, Big Blue is poised to win it all!  Up until this week, there has been a live-feed bar at the bottom of the Capital One mascot challenge website showing the latest tally of votes for each mascot.  Since the winner of the challenge is not going to be announced until halftime at the Capital One Bowl, there is no more live feed to let us see how we are doing against Paydirt Pete.  This means it's time to VOTE like there's no tomorrow!

If you're bored at work, at home, or just need to take a quick break from whatever you're doing, PLEASE go to www.capitalonebowl.com now and vote for BIG BLUE!

Since the November elections are over and I know that you're just pining away for those original, respectful (ha!) campaign ads, here's one to hold you over until the next round of mudslinging begins (although you may be disappointed if you were looking for something scathing or scandalous) :

Check out the video that got Big Blue into the challenge!

Again, go to www.capitalonebowl.com to vote for Big Blue!  You can vote as often and as many times as you want, so vote every chance you get!  Think about it...if you pay to eat at a buffet, you don't just get one small plate of food (in fact, if you're like my dad, you get about three more plates past when you're comfortably full in order to get your money's worth), so don't just vote once and forget about it--let's test the limits of Capital One's servers!

Voting ends Monday, December 13, at 9:00 am Eastern Standard Time.  Big Blue thanks you!