James Franklin Disease. It’s a serious condition. It’s the ability to put together a first tier* Big Ten program despite being an objectively bad football coach who does bad things during football games. Things like icing your own kicker. It’s also contagious. So let’s start at the end of this story and “Momento”** the shit out of this article because, sure, it may be a bit cliché at this point, and yeah, maybe I just slightly modified a line I stole from a Dane Cook joke about standing in line at a Walgreens.. but unless you want to read the same “Expectations of Jim Harbaugh” article for the 3rd week in a row, we’re gonna take this overplayed literary device and milk it for as much content as we can.
Opening Scene: Camera focuses on Penn States jumbo-tron. Fog of the breath of 100,000 Happy Valley spectators and a light rain slightly distort the 4th and 2 displayed on the scoreboard. Camera pans down to Michigan’s offense, ready to take the snap. They see this defense lined up across from them.
Scene Pauses. Narrator: Now Cade McNamara was, up until this point, a smart QB. All year announcers most positive superlatives have been about his ability to read a defense pre-snap. I am not a smart QB, but even I can read this defense… That’s 8 guys on the right side of the field… against 4 blockers… That’s bad. Even I know the one play you should not run here is “run right”. The play Michigan called was “run right.” This is where anyone who has ever played Madden would tell you: call an audible…*** You could… Run left! Then you’ve got 3 blocking lineman and a lead blocking Erick All (83) for 3 defenders. That’s an easy first down for Hassan Haskins… Or you remember that Erick All that we just mentioned?**** Again, 3v3 blockers and if they bite on the play action: touchdown.
The Scene resumes in slow motion. Chilling yet somber music fades in. No audible is called. The ball is snapped. Haskins runs right. he’s tackled by 8 guys short of the first down. Narrator: We had always suspected… but this is when we knew. He’d been in contact with “Patient 0” for almost a full half and now our worst fears about the disease had become fact. This was all the proof we needed that- TITLE SCREEN displays with a single BOOM of a bass drum: Black background with RED font and biohazard symbols before and after the words- “Dumb Rubs Off.”
The title screen transitions to another game. The colors are slightly more vibrant in this scene; similar to the way skin tones are more colorful in Equilibrium when characters stop taking their anti-feels medicine. This suggests a time when the situation wasn’t quite so dire. The scene opens back in Happy Valley. This time Penn State is on offense and Trace McSorley is down by one late with a critiical 4th and 5 against OSU. Penn state comes out in a shotgun formation with one RB. OSU is stacking the box. Penn States plan to run the ball up the middle is not fooling anybody. Penn State calls times out. A basic single notes piano riff begins in the background. It’s vaguely familiar and somehow chilling but too stripped down identify yet.
George Lucas style quick slide transition to James Franklin behind a podium. “We’re completely focused on Illinois right now. The Big House is a tough environment.” … “Sir, you’re playing Ohio State… in the Horseshoe…” A bass guitar has now joined the piano.
END OF ACT 1… TO BE CONTINUED.
*Ohio State is at an tier above first that I like to call “Professional”
**Momento is a 2001 Christopher Nolan film about a man with short term memory loss every 15 minutes and leaves himself sticky notes and tattoos to help himself figure out who killed his wife. It stars Guy Pearce, who has apparently been in a shit load of things in the past 15 years, but you probably only remember him as the villain of the “Bad” Iron Man movie (Iron Man 3). The viewer is kept in the dark as well by the movie starting near the end and backing up to reveal past 15 minute windows as he figures out the meaning of the clues he left for himself. I believe Seinfeld did an episode based on this movie as well. Also the difficulty of following the plot is increased by the inability to hear the dialogue over me shouting “God Damn You Cypher” every time Carrie-Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano show up on screen. It’s a good movie.
***For those of you who have never played Madden (or follow football at all outside of this blog for some reason…) an Audible is where you change the play at the line of scrimmage. When you see the QB walk up to the line, point at players and yell “Omaha”: that’s an audible.
****I hope so… that was 2 sentences ago… Even Momento had a god damn 15 minutes… If we can’t even get past a third punctuation mark this story is gonna be rough.