Well we’re back. Football started last weekend* which means it’s time to flood your e-mail boxes, stress about whether I have enough participants until about an hour before game day, get eliminated by Indiana, and metaphorically stand at a digital corner like a cyber-hobo begging for money (also flood your e-mail boxes).
I’ll be honest, I was thinking of skipping this year. Maybe I’d take a year off, just enjoy some football, and forget about this website until I get pissed off when an auto-renewal payment shows up on my credit card. Then I’d come back next year, nice and refreshed, with some exciting new content ideas for all one of you to enjoy. But then came the announcement. USC and UCLA are joining the Big “Ten”. That’s going to cause a problem with this game… 16 teams and only 13.2 weeks of football. Not having to pick Rutgers already makes this game way easier than it used to be.. So I figured we’d do this one last time while we still can. We’ll see what happens next year. Maybe I can come up with some rule changes to keep it going. Maybe something else will change before then (UCLA’s regents are fighting the decision to join the Big Ten apparently) or maybe I’ll retire. Until then, enjoy the game, send me your picks, and everybody laugh at Scott Frost. Who’d have thought that the Big Ten playing more games in the Rose Bowl would be a bigger threat to this game than a pandemic.
So why are USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten? Because they are a great fit and will provide useful contributions to the confer… just kidding. It’s because California has shit loads of money that the conference can use to make up for the imaginary loss they’re taking by having to allow some money to go to the athletes. Adding USC and UCLA helped justify a new $7 billion dollar TV deal. $100 million will go to each school.
So what does this mean for us sports fans? 1. Even more commercial breaks to pay for the… Billions…
2. An even more excruciating experience for fans attending “games”** (see 1) in person. 3. Some football games will be on streaming services. And not the ones you already have, they’ll be on the stupid ones like “Peacock” and “Paramount+” so you’ll have to pay for these too if you want to watch. 4. Maybe some of these services will also have normally un-televised games like hockey or baseball? So that could be cool if you’re a fan of those…
*If you count Nebraska/Northwestern as football…
**”games” refers to an event taking place in a stadium of 40,000-100,000 people watching a guy in a red hat repeatedly attempt to dodge through a sea of coaches, athletic trainers, and giant humans wearing body armor. He attempts to get to the middle of a large grass field while the previously mentioned crowd roots heavily against him. It’s kind of like Frogger. Oh, and occasionally there’s some football mixed in between these attempts.
CONTENT!!!!
Someone asked me why we were adding California teams. I suggested there were three reasons. One that rhymed with honey, one that rhymed with funny, and one that rhymed with bunny. Sigh.
Also, it’s a sad day when Rutgers looks more like a non-collapsing football team than Nebraska.
That game was hilarious. I learned a few things. Northwestern is surprisingly not awful at Offense. Both teams are beyond awful at Defense. Given enough chances Scott Frost WILL make “Frames Janklin” game losing decisions… Ok so I only learned one thing from this game…