The Inside Dope up for a KOUFAX AWARD....I'm stunned!

I've just now found out (by accident) that The Inside Dope has been nominated for the extremely prestigious (no really) Koufax Award in the catagory of Best State/Local Blog.

I still can't really believe it. It's got to be a mistake, as I sure the hell didn't nominate myself. (Who did??)

The Koufax Awards have become sort of the Oscars for progressive blogs and are compiled and administered by the fine folks at the Wampum blog. They check out each blog nominated and it must meet their standards for the best of the best. And with 27.2 million blogs out there and growing, it's pretty mind-boggling.

The Koufax Awards are national in scope and competition is pretty fierce with some of the very best blogs in the country having won in the past. Winning a Koufax is truly quite an achievement. It's a big deal... no kiddin'.

Just do a Google search on the Koufax Awards and you get 452,000 returns.

Washington Monthly lists the 2005 winners here.

I just don't know how I got there.

I suppose when the time comes, we'll have to mount a GOTV campaign and see how we do?

I'm not going to start writing my acceptance speech just yet, but this is really a great honor to even be among the nominees.

Two other Illinois blogs also made the list. Carl Nyberg's "Proviso Probe", and the Chicago edition of the national digest blog, "SoapBlox/Chicago".

(Thanks to Rich Miller for noticing this and for the stat on the number of blogs)