Nothing like a few contests to start the new year off on a good foot, right? I seem to have already won one that I didn’t even know I had been entered in: namely, the ultra-exclusive “Hottest blogger dudes of 2006″ contest that my friend Leigh Himel of Oponia Networks put together recently in response to Amit Agarwal’s post about hot women bloggers. Thanks, Leigh.

And the second contest is something Allen Stern of Center Networks is calling BloggerMania I — a kind of blogosphere Wrestlemania, with Allen playing the part of Vince McMahon of the WWF. For some reason, Allen has decided to have a series of round-robin “matches” between different bloggers, and yours truly has been matched up with none other than Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt, a partner at the PR company known as Citizen Agency, who blogs at horsepigcow.com.

And what is this contest based on — looks? Rhetoric? Argumentation? Sophistry? Cool sidebar widgets? That’s the worst part. Allen isn’t saying. According to his description, “I have received a few questions about what the bloggers below need to do to win. The answer is nothing. I will create the results based on studying each blogger’s style, posts, etc.” Great — I’m destined to lose, and will never know why :-)

In his post, Allen says “If you are one of the challengers, you should do everything you can to get your community behind you! Remember, your community’s support may help you win!” So, there you have it, er… community. Get to work. I can’t let Tara — or the Number One seed in my category, Steve Rubel, win just like that.