Big Time Football 2016 kicks off this weekend…. Simultaneously with the final 60 days of the latest Most Important Election in Our Nation’s History. Dwelling on #2 is like watching a Doomsday clock ticking down.
I don’t mean to demean the OMG importance of “Another Football Season” or “Another Critical Election”. Both over-flowing with muey partisan huffing and puffing… chest-thumping… cries of THEY’RE CHEATING… rampant hypocrisy… “they’re all a buncha ______”… etc etc etc.
Turning to the hypocrisy waste dump of BT College Football to escape Politics… is like using meth to lose weight. There’s gotta be a better alternative. …. bonsai trees? …. a salt-water aquarium? …. yoga?
When I discourse on how “watching a Cardinals’ baseball game” is my 3-hour escape from “all the other crap”…. so certainly is Football in America both Big Time College and The NFL. When The Kaepernick Kaper mingles those two… a nation teeters on The Abyss.
It is human nature to enjoy watching “competition” with a defined winner and loser whether it is a game / a book / a movie or whatever…. We enjoy projecting ourselves into that faux-combat and rooting for our definition of “the good guys”.
If our choice of “good guys” do prevail… we take immediate vicarious pride in that. If not, we either distance ourselves from their ignominous plight… or make excuses on their behalf and gird our loins for the next opportunity to, hopefully, prevail.
In “America” nothing quite matches that like Big Time Football. The physical stages are so much larger than other sports plus the shorter length of the season is such that “every game is critical”.
One of the hosts of reasons I prefer Baseball is I know from the get-go that “my team” will lose at least 60 games. Losing “a game” is not devastating because there is another one tomorrow… and the next day. Now it is September and each baseball game gains added importance for teams “still in contention”.
Being a player or fan of teams no longer “in contention” is a circumstance to be avoided if possible but ultimately is unavoidable. Being “mathmatically eliminated” is a fate we all face in various ways well beyond sports. I can look in the mirror and realize I have been “mathematically eliminated” from being a MLB shortstop… or the next Chuck Norris… or… or.
On Labor Day Weekend, no one’s dearly beloved is mathematically eliminated… YET. Every fan base boasts that every school but us… cheats. The love affair with the back-up QB begins at halftime. Not to mention those dreams of Christmas In Shreveport.
For Football teams and their fans with even a whiff of a chance at “a dream season”, each week’s contest is CRITICAL. 
Maybe one loss does not spell D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R but “one” means “two” is possible or even “three” or “four”. For “fans” of politics (and there actually are such sad souls) theirs is a One Game Season.
Yesterday afternoon (Thursday) I was surfing my Twitter feed and saw one from StateFanNation already bleating about “we’ll still have more fans in C-F than “those cheaters” over at UNC….” Yawn. Here we go again… and again… and again.
I “get” the on-going frustration over TGU because it is still and forever more an open-file…. But the “aluminum thing” is so worn out. Whats next? UNC board monkeys countering with “tractor / amphibious jokes”? Aaaaiiieee!
Battling board monkeys will always and forever duel one another on the most base level imaginable. It is who they are. It is what they do. I suppose I should take comfort in that oh-so-predictable aspect of human nature.
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As has become my custom over the past several years… I will suppress my loathing of the ever-increasing hideous hypocrisy of Big Time College Football both locally and nationally (and my even greater loathing of all things ESPN.) and simply enjoy the on-field drama each weekend…
I have no plans for any in-stadia experiences this Fall. But I respect the right of the rest of you to delight in doing so. Do we need an Amendment (or at least a t-shirt) guaranteeing you that right?
This Opening Weekend certainly has more than its share of “Big Match-ups”. It actually may be The Greatest Opening Weekend in The HISTORY of College Football. What would BTCF be without Hyperbole?
Do I need to assemble all our families’ big-screens and not-so-big screens into one Command Center where I can work remotes with both hands to not miss any action? If I do “miss any action”…. So what? OK, I will settle for one screen and one remote.
The bigger issue for me is “my Cardinals” play Saturday afternoon on MLB.tv requiring me to leave “cable” for Apple.tv. Switching back/forth from Apple.tv to cable requires two other remotes…. a total of three remotes ??? And you thought YOU had problems.
I “almost” contacted Bre’r Kennel last night to learn where, if anywhere, his Wolfpack were viewable in their inter-divisionable battle with William&Mary. I finally figured out it was on that computer TV thingy. There was some techno-issue with buffering of the cable feed on ACCN and what little I watched the video and audio were annoyingly out of sync.
Have I mentioned that UNCCH notorious gasbag – Gene Nichol – was fired as Prez of W&M for a lengthy list of really stoopid crap? You all do know that, right?
Congrats to “da Pack” for now being only five W’s short of bowl-eligibility. We can expect tweets until 5:30 Sat night touting that State (and Wake Forest) has won one more game than UNCheats? If The Fedorians do beat UGA, that line of snark will go dormant for a few weeks… to be replaced by 24/7 implications that the “paper classes” are still going on. They aren’t, but there ARE other areas of vulnerability “over there”.
Fedora’s Football Factory (FFF) must now deal with a fickle fan base that has gotten a taste of “big time” success. Dupicating / exceeding last year’s “almost dream season” is a given expectation… especially if Larry is hell-bent to grab his career brass ring. I believe he is so inclined but I have no “inside info” to back that up.
A USAToday report says his (Fedora’s) overt-bungling of Beckman-Gate has already hurt him with both Texas AM and Baylor “officials”. Uh Oh!
I hope you live/die State fans will not be offended that I cannot name a single player on this year’s NCSU team. Is there still “a Plumlee” around? Oops, wrong local program. I can name “maybe” three players from FFF. I’m sure I will get acquainted with various “student-athletes” as Fall progresses especially the ones who get arrested for whatever. … or who want to be Kaepernick wannabees. Expect “those copycats” to emerge for sure. FWIW…. I keep forgetting the Democratic VP nominee too.
With so many “playoff contenders” playing legitimate opponents in Week One, there are certain to be some shattered dreams aplenty across the fruited plains. That will mean multiple “hot seats” for the HCs of those once vanquished “playoff contenders”.
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I posed a question in that last column:
If Franklin Street Loonies DEMAND of Chancellor Chihuahua that UNC stop playing The National Anthem at sports events. How would the UNCCH powers that be – Chihuahua / BOT / Fat Cats – respond?
ABCers’ answer to that is a given. Me? I would have a field day enjoying the FUROR that would create. You know I do so enjoy FURORs and CHAOS.
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