Today The Badger Herald and The Daily Cardinal will duke it out in their annual Fall Classic football game to see which student daily reigns supreme in the ""getting drunk while watching touch football"" competition.
As a simple matter of pride, I must disclose the fact that the Cardinal has won several contests in a row, appearing en masse to devour with animal-like speed and precision whatever food and beverage is placed before us.
We usually win the football game, too.
But what this event underscores is the remarkable fact that this campus has two student newspapers to compete in the first place. All over campus these two publications vie to be considered the best source for UW-Madison news and opinion. It doesn't take an economics major to tell you that this competition makes both papers more accurate, appealing and precise. I just proved it.
If you don't believe me, just imagine the flip side. In the real world, one of us would have bought the other out by now and there would be only one paper. They couldn't call it The Daily Herald because that's already taken. They'd probably call it The Daily Badginal Herald, which is not only confusing, but may be illegal in some states.
Clearly, the present system works much better.
As a writer for The Cardinal, people always expect me to explain why it is better than the Herald for one reason or another. Since you're reading this, I don't have to preach to the choir. It's well known in your elite circles that The Cardinal rocks everybody's face off.
The truth is (and this is borderline blasphemy), I think they're both great. What you may not know is that The Herald has also been known to run quality content, even if it is somewhat distracted by the new ""pretty in pink"" layout.
As with any other ongoing debate on campus (be it Chipotle or Qdoba, College or Memorial Library, beer or more beer), every student has their own idiosyncratic preferences.
Some people like the Sudoku for especially tedious lectures, and others depend on hump day shoutouts to get through the week. There are even some weirdos like me who read both of them every day for news (those are the stories on the front).
Some of you are probably reading this and saying ""But what about The Mendota Beacon? Isn't that another valuable student resource?"" To them I would reply, ""No, and shouldn't you be getting back to your column on how Democrats eat babies?""
Besides, there can only be two teams on the field today, those are the rules. And just like your little league coach always said, ""Everybody's a winner."" I feel blessed to have a campus with this much intelligent discourse, and the winners here are students. Now let's all go out for ice cream—my treat.
