7. Indiana coach Curt Cignetti ripped the first College Football Playoff rankings, ESPN, and the SEC, stating, “SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN, you know, and all their writers that they don’t technically pay, but march to their drum,” while noting that this explains why “all these SEC teams up there, you know, and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten, not quite as high.”

6. Lowndes County announced construction of Project Red Clay, an 800-acre data center with an estimated $33.1 billion total investment in Alabama, 225 full-time jobs, over 1,000 construction jobs, and more than $2.8 billion in projected local tax revenue through 2049, as Lambda co-founder Stephen Balaban said, “We’re committed to showing up as a good neighbor, keeping the lines of communication open, and building a relationship that lasts well beyond the project’s development.”

5. State Rep. Mike Shaw (R-Hoover) was victorious in House District 47 by 376 votes, 8,266 to Democrat Jim Toomey’s 7,890, after a Jefferson County precinct error in which poll workers printed one machine’s results tape three times and reported those copies as totals for all three machines, an error Shaw’s campaign identified and corrected to secure the lead.

4. The Mississippi and Alaska U.S. Senate races remain too close to call, they could take weeks to determine, with Democrat Scott Colom leading Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by roughly 1,000 votes in Mississippi amid outstanding mail-in and provisional ballots, in Alaska where ranked-choice voting could delay final results until mid-November.

3. The media is now covering candidates it previously ignored, as Allison Montgomery, Alabama’s first openly transgender lawmaker who flipped a long-held Republican seat in District 25, said, “I’m going to work especially hard for those who hate me,” the media now wants people to know that Madison County’s new sheriff-elect Brett Jones is gay, and now that the election is over the media is concerned about access candidates and talking about their policies, except for Senator-elect Rudolph Drake because they don’t care about a man who allegedly wanted to shoot an ex-girlfriend.

2. Alabama saw a record surge in Democrat straight-ticket voting, with Democrats casting 549,433 such ballots (46 percent of the total) compared to Republicans’ 645,002 (54 percent), an 84 percent jump for Democrats from 2022 while GOP numbers held flat, narrowing the Republican advantage from about 351,000 to 96,000 votes, as a blue wave hit every single Alabama county and Democrats flipped seven counties that Trump won in 2024, including Madison, Mobile, and Tuscaloosa.

1. Governor-elect National Championship-winning Coach U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) accepted the delayed concession of Doug Jones, a petty wannabe tyrant, cowardly caretaker, former junior senator in an ill-fitting suit, who looks like he just woke up and stole his shoes from a homeless person, who will never be governor, attorney general, or U.S. Senator again, loves crushing ice cream sandwiches, and is definitely maybe a furry, with Tuberville noting, “I appreciate Doug’s kind words and look forward to representing every single Alabamian, even the ones who didn’t vote for me,” while Jones praised Democrat gains including flips in previously “unwinnable” districts and said the campaign built a more competitive political environment.

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Dale Jackson is a thought leader for Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 5-9 a.m. weekdays on WVNN.