THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So last night was the big bad Bowl Championship Series National Championship game. Long title, huh? Wait, I think I missed a “Presented by Allstate” or a “dot com” or a “your mom”

Anyway, it was LSU vs. Ohio State. I have to say I am not a big Ohio State fan, but I marginally root for them. Growing up, I was a big Buckeye fan as there weren’t really many (any) major college programs in Cleveland. I remember having rivalries with my cousin Jef who was a Michigan fan, and whose Thanksgiving visits often coincided with the annual OSU-UM game.

After my mission and attendance at UC, I adopted the Bearcats and my like for OSU faded. Still, though, I remember one year where to advance some team I wanted to do well in the national scene (probably BYU), I needed Michigan to beat Ohio State. I tried to root for Michigan but just could not bring myself to do it. It reminds me of the (I believe ESPN) commercial that shows a guy with an Ohio State shirt on and a girl with a Michigan shirt on it. They’re on a couch making out and the camera shows them kissing for like 3-4 seconds. Then at the bottom of the screen it shows lettering that says “Without sports, this wouldn’t be disgusting” Good times.

There are a lot of Ohio State fans here in Cincinnati, and I talked to some of them at work about the game. Everyone was in full Buckeye paraphernelia mode. One of our consultant companies had sent one of the boss folks here (a big OSU fan) a tin of Ohio State cookies. I had a “Buckeye Chocolate Chip” one. It was good.

I made my prediction:

Ohio State 31
LSU 27
Number of annoying fireworks my neighbor (also a giant OSU fan) sets off after I’m already asleep: 10

Anyways, I didn’t turn the game on when it started since, as I mentioned, I was being “Mr. Productive Pants“. At about 8:15, I was upstairs and waiting for Carolyn for something, I heard massive cheering, hooting, hollering, and airhorning from out of doors. I thought “Hmm that seems early”. I checked the box score online and it was 0-0 on about the 2nd play. I refreshed and saw that Ohio State had rushed for a 65 yard touchdown. “Aha that makes sense”, I told myself.

After we got done cleaning the basement for the evening, I came back up and watched a bit of the game. OSU got out to a 10-0 lead but after that it was all LSU, who ended up winning. Which disappointed my neighbor I’m sure, but did not disappoint my lack-of-fireworks-loving self.

So Dan Miller is a very common name. Even though I was “fairly” early on the Internet, I did not ever even catch a sniff of danmiller.com

Back in the day, I used to keep a website of people named Dan Miller. If your name was Dan, Danny, or Daniel Miller, you could email me and I’d put you on the website. That got to be pretty burdensome so I stopped.

The grand Wikipedia lists 8 Dans, 6 Dannys, and 9 Daniels. There includes a 19th century congressman from Iowa, a Congressman from Florida, the guitarist from They Might Be Giants, and a singer from the band O-Town. None of those disambiguation pages list the main character from the (bad) movie Defending Your Life, whose name was Daniel Miller. And of course, I myself, despite being the world record holder for fastest traverse of 88 Ohio Counties, have so far in life failed to become the 2nd person from the NOHS class of 94 to have a Wikipedia page.

In any case, that is a lot of babckground to announce that the former Daniel Michael Miller II, a musician and rapper from Akron, is no more. According to this AP article, he has legally changed his name to “The” Dan Miller Experience.

From the article: His first name is “The” Dan, with the quote marks. His middle name is Miller and his last name is Experience.

Good times!!!!!