Super Bowl XLII may be this Sunday, but the skulls will really crack on a “Super Day” of a different name. On February 5^th, a.k.a. Super Tuesday, a whopping 23 states will hold their primaries and caucuses in what has become one of the most competitive presidential primary elections in years. With an ever tightening race in the Democratic primaries and the lack of a clear frontrunner on the Republican side, the primary race has devolved into a painstaking fight for delegates, with the candidates counting congressional districts like yard lines. When you consider 41 percent of Republican delegates and 52 percent of Democratic delegates are up for grabs on Super Tuesday, don’t be surprised if some candidates walk away with torn suits and grass in their teeth.

          Let’s consider the players. The MVP of the primary race so far has been Hillary Clinton, who dominated the polls right off the snap in early 2007 and now leads the democratic primary race with 256 delegates. However, don’t discount Rookie-of-the-Year Barack Obama, who’s gaining on the old girl with 181 delegates under his belt.  Because a Democratic candidate may win the most delegates in a state primary even when he or she did not receive a plurality of the votes, nothing is certain in Super Tuesday. Hillary may have won the popular vote in the Nevada primary, but it was Obama who beat her in the scoreboard with 13 delegates to her 12. Now that John Edwards has announced his withdrawal from the Democratic primaries, the field is wide open for Obama to pick up Edwards’ displaced supporters and sneak past Hill Dawg into the end zone.

          In the Republican primaries, John McCain has come back from a presumably dead campaign to surge ahead in the race, earning him 93 delegates and the Most Improved Player award.  The Republican race is less determined by individual delegates than the Democratic side, as some of the states (like Delaware) have “winner take all” primary systems in which the victor is awarded all the delegates from that state. However, in a race this competitive, every delegate is worth his weight in election gold. At a close second in the race is Mitt Romney, with 59 delegates and as many state victories as McCain. Mike Huckabee may have lost some of the swagger gained from his evangelical touchdown in Iowa, but he’s still in the race with 40 delegates and his omnipresent one-liners.

          With 1,681 delegates at stake, there’s no telling who will get sacked come Super Tuesday. However, one state is sure to sit the bench in the big game. Delaware has a mere 23 Democratic delegates and 18 Republican delegates to the national conventions, putting the Diamond State in the bottom tier of the Super Tuesday primaries. Out of the 23 Super Tuesday contests, Delaware has the least amount of Republican delegates and the third fewest Democratic delegates after Alaska and North Dakota. In a primary race driven by numbers, Delaware just doesn’t have enough delegates to attract the same kind of campaign attention as California, New York, New Jersey, and the big states of Super Tuesday.

          Even though Delaware is a third-string state in the Super Tuesday elections, its delegates will play a full game in the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The beauty of a delegate-driven primary race is that nothing is predetermined and every vote truly counts. In a close fight such as the 2008 presidential primaries, Tuesday is the New Sunday. Let’s just hope Chris Matthews doesn’t break out his pom-poms for the halftime show.