Dear Readers,
As all of you should know—primarily because you have called a psychic hotline and been told that you were going to meet someone tall, dark and handsome on your trip to the Bahamas by a qualified fortune teller only to end up being stuck in the hotel room the entire vacation because you drank the tap water and got a scorching case of dysentery (leaving you to wonder if your feces, while tall and dark, is in fact handsome?)—attempting to predict the future can often be a very risky, and at times fruitless, proposition.
As all of you should know—primarily because you have called a psychic hotline and been told that you were going to meet someone tall, dark and handsome on your trip to the Bahamas by a qualified fortune teller only to end up being stuck in the hotel room the entire vacation because you drank the tap water and got a scorching case of dysentery (leaving you to wonder if your feces, while tall and dark, is in fact handsome?)—attempting to predict the future can often be a very risky, and at times fruitless, proposition.
Try your hand at it and fail and be forever labeled as a quack that isn’t worthy of the $9.99/minute you charge lonely men who live in their basements for the comfort and contact you provide. Try your hand at it and succeed and it is likely that you will never get the praise or acclaim that you deserve. Do you know that there is a Science Fiction writer who predicted that Waterbeds would exist in the year 1961? No. Of course not. Because everyone thought he was crazy until the 1980’s when we realized how awesome it was to basically be sleeping on the ocean. And by that time some mattress wholesaler in New Jersey had gotten all the credit for George Heinlein’s idea.
In spite of the complex and perilous nature of the endeavor I mentioned above, prognosticating the outcome of forthcoming events has long been a common pastime in our modern society, a way for us all to assert our own reason and intellect into a conversation without, at that very moment at least, anyone being able to unequivocally prove us wrong. We do it with the stock market, the housing market, the Orange Juice market. We do in the field of international relations and diplomacy. We do it while projecting winners and losers in our political elections before a single vote has been counted.
We do it with concerns to sports. Think about all the questions that are being bandied about the blogosphere and radio airwaves right now, questions we all claim to be able to answer without actually knowing anything about how they are going to manifest themselves into reality. Who’s going to win the Super Bowl (easy: the St. Louis Rams)? Is it possible that Kobe Bryant will Ric Flair chop DeAngelo Russell in the throat when he tries to touch his basketball? If God finally decides that (despite Russell Wilson's previous divorce and Ciara's already birthed child not being reason enough already) it's Ok for the Seattle Seahawks quarterback to have sexual intercourse with a pop star without living the rest of his life in eternal damnation, is he going to last more or less than 6.7 seconds?
What will happen this college football season? That is the inquiry that is currently at the forefronts of everyone’s mind, on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Will Ohio State repeat as champions? Is Nick Saban really just a robot that is programmed to run on Little Debbie snack cakes and other people’s fear? Is it possible that this mutant defensive-end from Baylor really is athletic enough to go on and become an Olympic champion in the pole vault, kayaking, rhythmic gymnastics and beach volleyball all at the same time?
I don’t know. That’s the fun thing about the future, it hasn’t happened yet. That’s the fun thing about the future; in our minds there is a certain way that it is going to play itself out. The following is the way that it is going to play out in my mind. The following is not technically a list of facts, although at this point in time it might as well be.
College Football Predictions
Prediction #1: The Arkansas Offensive Line Begins to Eat Kickers & Punters-The offensive line at the University of Arkansas has an average weight of 321.1 pounds, which is 125 pounds higher than that of the mean American adult male, or approximately 299 pounds more than the average NFL offensive lineman in the year 1919. Yes NFL offensive-lineman weighed about 22.1 pounds a piece, give or take, 96 years ago. Turns out professional football, like many professions in that day and age, was dominated by child labor. Now children don’t even have the right to play in the NFL. Smooth move, judicial system.
The Arkansas offensive line is not composed of children of course. It is composed of grown ass men who are so big that they are representing the start to a new systemic food shortage that will overtake the human race as mankind continues to increase in size. And if you think five fellas that collectively weigh 1,605 and ½ pounds are going to be satiated enough by the copious amounts of steak, pasta and disgusting green objects (i.e. veggies) that the Gatti Family, pseudonym NCAA, allows them to be provided with when they can see the nice, juicy calf of a walk-on kicker sticking out of the bottom of his capri-pants during practice every day, then y’all are tripping. The Hogs’ hogs (as I like to call them) are going to get a taste of human meat. God help us all after that.
Prediction #2: Steve Sarkisian Shits His Pants During a Game-Steve Sarkisian (who may or may not play trivia at Mike Duffy's Pub on Clayton Road based on recent sightings) doesn’t believe he has a drinking problem, and I, for one, am inclined to believe him. So what if he washed a bunch of Vicodin down with some Jim Beam and then went out to a public event where he proceeded to drop an ample slew of F bombs while slurring his words, making incoherent hand gestures, and setting perhaps the greatest example for the young men and women that were present that the world has ever known? Who hasn’t done that? If that kind of drunken behavior around young people is immoral then I haven’t been to one single Bar Mitzvah that wasn't steeped in questionable ethics and sin.
However, while Steve Sarkisian may not have a “drinking problem” per se, he very clearly likes to rage, a trait that presents its own bounty of side effects, both of the positive (such as having higher self-esteem and not being a nerd) and negative variety. Here are some bad ones: feeling terrible. Wanting to kill yourself 50 out of 52 Sundays/year. Not having complete control of your bodily fluids. Pooping yourself involuntary either in, say, the Charleston airport (guilty) or during a throw away game against the 2nd worst middle-school football team in America—i.e. The University of Colorado—in November wherein between 3-17 people are watching your team play on TV. That last one will happen to Sark. Mark my words, by printing out this blog and either circling or underlining them. Whichever one, in your mind, makes more sense.
Prediction #3: Illinois Fires Tim Beckman-I’m calling it. Write it down in pencil. Then erase it. Then write it down in pen. Because of any prognostication I have ever made about something that hasn’t happened yet, but will in the future, and shared on the Internet this is the one I am by far the most sure about…
Prediction #4: Tommy Tuberville Makes Players Homeless-This year, for the first time in history, the Sinaloa Cartel (NCAA) will allow athletes at its member institutions to receive “cost of attendance” scholarships, otherwise called enough money to buy a pack of Ramen or an adequate amount of almonds to allow you to go a month without starving to death, which seems fair given the fact that these athletes only “practice” 20 hours/week and, hey, no one gives the actor in the school’s production of Wicked any almonds whatsoever even though his parents and one homeless guy went to see last Wednesday's matinee and The Cincinnati News Record called his performance “Transcendent” and “better than anything Nic Cage has ever done.”
COA scholies seemed like a good idea, or an upgrade, for "student-athletes" until University of Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville threatened to withhold some of that money from his players for off-field violations, things a long the lines of letting a friend buy you a McChicken without Venmo-ing him the $1.07 you need to pay him back in full within 5 minutes of eating it. This is an absolutely ridiculous concept for two obvious reasons: 1-Tommy Tuberville will make $2.2 million this year, and he is able to eat all the free McChickens he wants without impunity. 2-COA scholarships amount to somewhere between $400-6,000/year depending on the participating university, which means that if you fine a player a reasonable amount, say $5, for skipping his 8 A.M. class the opportunity costs of skipping said class and sleeping until 3 P.M. are going to far outweigh the financial burden it would impose, incentivizing a player to skip 15 straight classes before even beginning to realize that he now is once again only making about 0.2% of what his labor is worth as opposed to the new norm of 0.2222%.
Now the question becomes: what does Tuberville do when the very limited money he can fine players runs dry? Does he stop providing the players with textbooks so that they have to learn Introduction to Economics without ever having to read a word about it (and ironically have a higher team GPA than they did when they read stuff)? Does he stop giving the player’s jockstraps, in spite of the fact that absolutely zero football players wear them anymore, while waiting for one quick shot to the nads to change a player’s bad attitude? Does he stop the University from paying for their housing at all, causing the athletes he recruited to live on the streets in the Ohio Winter and start trying heroin because it doesn’t seem like they have so much to lose anymore? Yes. Tommy Tuberville will do all of these things. Because Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. An idiot who makes $2.2 mill and eats McChickens like a boss, but an idiot nonetheless
Prediction #5: Chuckie Keeton Wins the Heisman-Utah State QB Chuckie Keeton has been in college for close to a decade, a fact which has both allowed him to develop a great deal more physical and emotional maturity than any of his peers and will allow me to yell the response “Yeah they’re called doctors,” out from the audience when Chuckie Keeton begins his acceptance speech as the oldest Heisman Trophy winner in history by saying “A lot of people are in college for 7 years…” Talk about a future development that is going to make everybody happy that the best football player in the country goes to Utah State.
Prediction #6: Ezekiel Elliott Turns His Stomach Into An Advertisement-Ezekiel Elliott went to a less prestigious St. Louis area high school than I did. That’s probably why he wears his football jersey the way that he does. At John Burroughs, unlike at the St. Louis Priory School, no one takes the time to teach you how clothing works.
Lack of Priory quality education aside, Ezekiel Elliott’s exposed belly certainly is a unique feature of the college football landscape, a unique feature that, along with Ohio State football player’s propensity for getting free tattoos that may or may not give them hepatitis, presents an equally unique opportunity towards enhancing his ability to market himself. Think about it this way: any image present on Ezekiel Elliott’s gut will be viewed by millions of people during OSU’s inevitable run towards winning the 19th best conference in college football. The advertising opportunity and financial benefit that a very visible stomach tattoo could present to a forward thinking company is, in fact, incalculable.
So take advantage of that and throw something on your tummy Ezekiel. A PetsMart logo. A picture of the Michelin Man placing an American Flag on Jupiter. If you are feeling especially charitable, the word AIDS with a circle around it and a line going said circle. Whatever works. Don’t worry about it Zeke, you’ll be good. I’ve read the Medellin Cartel's, aka NCAA’s, rules and regulations backwards and forwards and they never mention prohibiting a student athlete from using his body art to help save lives…assuming that his body art is something that he actually paid for out of his own pocket in the first place.
Prediction #7: There is No National Champion-Well Ohio State will win it on the field, but something tells me that the Yakuza (common moniker National Collegiate Athletic Association) will have way more of a problem with Ezekiel Elliot’s anti-AIDS belly tattoo than I am guessing here so…will that make them pro-AIDS? Not an assumption I am willing to make here you guys.
Ignoring the NCAA’s (I’m too lazy to keep offending people) potential pro-AIDS stance, based on this post it appears as if the record books will once day say that, officially, the 2015 College Football Season never happened. The powers that be will force us all to get our memories erased by the Men In Black type memory eraser they are developing just for these kinds of situations in order to ensure that are brains will always agree with their version of history. Or something like that.
Who knows? Spoiler alert: not me. Spoiler alert: I cannot predict the future. Spoiler alert: no one can. It is futile and asinine to pretend otherwise. The future is a blank canvass. The future is an empty page. The future, the 2015 College Football season, is a story that will write itself over the next several months. That’s why I like sportz and don't care who knows. The outcomes are unknown. The results are uncertain. Anything can happen. As my grandfather, and millions of less intelligent people, have said: that’s why they play the games.
In spite of the complex and perilous nature of the endeavor I mentioned above, prognosticating the outcome of forthcoming events has long been a common pastime in our modern society, a way for us all to assert our own reason and intellect into a conversation without, at that very moment at least, anyone being able to unequivocally prove us wrong. We do it with the stock market, the housing market, the Orange Juice market. We do in the field of international relations and diplomacy. We do it while projecting winners and losers in our political elections before a single vote has been counted.
We do it with concerns to sports. Think about all the questions that are being bandied about the blogosphere and radio airwaves right now, questions we all claim to be able to answer without actually knowing anything about how they are going to manifest themselves into reality. Who’s going to win the Super Bowl (easy: the St. Louis Rams)? Is it possible that Kobe Bryant will Ric Flair chop DeAngelo Russell in the throat when he tries to touch his basketball? If God finally decides that (despite Russell Wilson's previous divorce and Ciara's already birthed child not being reason enough already) it's Ok for the Seattle Seahawks quarterback to have sexual intercourse with a pop star without living the rest of his life in eternal damnation, is he going to last more or less than 6.7 seconds?
What will happen this college football season? That is the inquiry that is currently at the forefronts of everyone’s mind, on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Will Ohio State repeat as champions? Is Nick Saban really just a robot that is programmed to run on Little Debbie snack cakes and other people’s fear? Is it possible that this mutant defensive-end from Baylor really is athletic enough to go on and become an Olympic champion in the pole vault, kayaking, rhythmic gymnastics and beach volleyball all at the same time?
I don’t know. That’s the fun thing about the future, it hasn’t happened yet. That’s the fun thing about the future; in our minds there is a certain way that it is going to play itself out. The following is the way that it is going to play out in my mind. The following is not technically a list of facts, although at this point in time it might as well be.
College Football Predictions
Prediction #1: The Arkansas Offensive Line Begins to Eat Kickers & Punters-The offensive line at the University of Arkansas has an average weight of 321.1 pounds, which is 125 pounds higher than that of the mean American adult male, or approximately 299 pounds more than the average NFL offensive lineman in the year 1919. Yes NFL offensive-lineman weighed about 22.1 pounds a piece, give or take, 96 years ago. Turns out professional football, like many professions in that day and age, was dominated by child labor. Now children don’t even have the right to play in the NFL. Smooth move, judicial system.
The Arkansas offensive line is not composed of children of course. It is composed of grown ass men who are so big that they are representing the start to a new systemic food shortage that will overtake the human race as mankind continues to increase in size. And if you think five fellas that collectively weigh 1,605 and ½ pounds are going to be satiated enough by the copious amounts of steak, pasta and disgusting green objects (i.e. veggies) that the Gatti Family, pseudonym NCAA, allows them to be provided with when they can see the nice, juicy calf of a walk-on kicker sticking out of the bottom of his capri-pants during practice every day, then y’all are tripping. The Hogs’ hogs (as I like to call them) are going to get a taste of human meat. God help us all after that.
Prediction #2: Steve Sarkisian Shits His Pants During a Game-Steve Sarkisian (who may or may not play trivia at Mike Duffy's Pub on Clayton Road based on recent sightings) doesn’t believe he has a drinking problem, and I, for one, am inclined to believe him. So what if he washed a bunch of Vicodin down with some Jim Beam and then went out to a public event where he proceeded to drop an ample slew of F bombs while slurring his words, making incoherent hand gestures, and setting perhaps the greatest example for the young men and women that were present that the world has ever known? Who hasn’t done that? If that kind of drunken behavior around young people is immoral then I haven’t been to one single Bar Mitzvah that wasn't steeped in questionable ethics and sin.
However, while Steve Sarkisian may not have a “drinking problem” per se, he very clearly likes to rage, a trait that presents its own bounty of side effects, both of the positive (such as having higher self-esteem and not being a nerd) and negative variety. Here are some bad ones: feeling terrible. Wanting to kill yourself 50 out of 52 Sundays/year. Not having complete control of your bodily fluids. Pooping yourself involuntary either in, say, the Charleston airport (guilty) or during a throw away game against the 2nd worst middle-school football team in America—i.e. The University of Colorado—in November wherein between 3-17 people are watching your team play on TV. That last one will happen to Sark. Mark my words, by printing out this blog and either circling or underlining them. Whichever one, in your mind, makes more sense.
Prediction #3: Illinois Fires Tim Beckman-I’m calling it. Write it down in pencil. Then erase it. Then write it down in pen. Because of any prognostication I have ever made about something that hasn’t happened yet, but will in the future, and shared on the Internet this is the one I am by far the most sure about…
Prediction #4: Tommy Tuberville Makes Players Homeless-This year, for the first time in history, the Sinaloa Cartel (NCAA) will allow athletes at its member institutions to receive “cost of attendance” scholarships, otherwise called enough money to buy a pack of Ramen or an adequate amount of almonds to allow you to go a month without starving to death, which seems fair given the fact that these athletes only “practice” 20 hours/week and, hey, no one gives the actor in the school’s production of Wicked any almonds whatsoever even though his parents and one homeless guy went to see last Wednesday's matinee and The Cincinnati News Record called his performance “Transcendent” and “better than anything Nic Cage has ever done.”
COA scholies seemed like a good idea, or an upgrade, for "student-athletes" until University of Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville threatened to withhold some of that money from his players for off-field violations, things a long the lines of letting a friend buy you a McChicken without Venmo-ing him the $1.07 you need to pay him back in full within 5 minutes of eating it. This is an absolutely ridiculous concept for two obvious reasons: 1-Tommy Tuberville will make $2.2 million this year, and he is able to eat all the free McChickens he wants without impunity. 2-COA scholarships amount to somewhere between $400-6,000/year depending on the participating university, which means that if you fine a player a reasonable amount, say $5, for skipping his 8 A.M. class the opportunity costs of skipping said class and sleeping until 3 P.M. are going to far outweigh the financial burden it would impose, incentivizing a player to skip 15 straight classes before even beginning to realize that he now is once again only making about 0.2% of what his labor is worth as opposed to the new norm of 0.2222%.
Now the question becomes: what does Tuberville do when the very limited money he can fine players runs dry? Does he stop providing the players with textbooks so that they have to learn Introduction to Economics without ever having to read a word about it (and ironically have a higher team GPA than they did when they read stuff)? Does he stop giving the player’s jockstraps, in spite of the fact that absolutely zero football players wear them anymore, while waiting for one quick shot to the nads to change a player’s bad attitude? Does he stop the University from paying for their housing at all, causing the athletes he recruited to live on the streets in the Ohio Winter and start trying heroin because it doesn’t seem like they have so much to lose anymore? Yes. Tommy Tuberville will do all of these things. Because Tommy Tuberville is an idiot. An idiot who makes $2.2 mill and eats McChickens like a boss, but an idiot nonetheless
Prediction #5: Chuckie Keeton Wins the Heisman-Utah State QB Chuckie Keeton has been in college for close to a decade, a fact which has both allowed him to develop a great deal more physical and emotional maturity than any of his peers and will allow me to yell the response “Yeah they’re called doctors,” out from the audience when Chuckie Keeton begins his acceptance speech as the oldest Heisman Trophy winner in history by saying “A lot of people are in college for 7 years…” Talk about a future development that is going to make everybody happy that the best football player in the country goes to Utah State.
Prediction #6: Ezekiel Elliott Turns His Stomach Into An Advertisement-Ezekiel Elliott went to a less prestigious St. Louis area high school than I did. That’s probably why he wears his football jersey the way that he does. At John Burroughs, unlike at the St. Louis Priory School, no one takes the time to teach you how clothing works.
Lack of Priory quality education aside, Ezekiel Elliott’s exposed belly certainly is a unique feature of the college football landscape, a unique feature that, along with Ohio State football player’s propensity for getting free tattoos that may or may not give them hepatitis, presents an equally unique opportunity towards enhancing his ability to market himself. Think about it this way: any image present on Ezekiel Elliott’s gut will be viewed by millions of people during OSU’s inevitable run towards winning the 19th best conference in college football. The advertising opportunity and financial benefit that a very visible stomach tattoo could present to a forward thinking company is, in fact, incalculable.
So take advantage of that and throw something on your tummy Ezekiel. A PetsMart logo. A picture of the Michelin Man placing an American Flag on Jupiter. If you are feeling especially charitable, the word AIDS with a circle around it and a line going said circle. Whatever works. Don’t worry about it Zeke, you’ll be good. I’ve read the Medellin Cartel's, aka NCAA’s, rules and regulations backwards and forwards and they never mention prohibiting a student athlete from using his body art to help save lives…assuming that his body art is something that he actually paid for out of his own pocket in the first place.
Prediction #7: There is No National Champion-Well Ohio State will win it on the field, but something tells me that the Yakuza (common moniker National Collegiate Athletic Association) will have way more of a problem with Ezekiel Elliot’s anti-AIDS belly tattoo than I am guessing here so…will that make them pro-AIDS? Not an assumption I am willing to make here you guys.
Ignoring the NCAA’s (I’m too lazy to keep offending people) potential pro-AIDS stance, based on this post it appears as if the record books will once day say that, officially, the 2015 College Football Season never happened. The powers that be will force us all to get our memories erased by the Men In Black type memory eraser they are developing just for these kinds of situations in order to ensure that are brains will always agree with their version of history. Or something like that.
Who knows? Spoiler alert: not me. Spoiler alert: I cannot predict the future. Spoiler alert: no one can. It is futile and asinine to pretend otherwise. The future is a blank canvass. The future is an empty page. The future, the 2015 College Football season, is a story that will write itself over the next several months. That’s why I like sportz and don't care who knows. The outcomes are unknown. The results are uncertain. Anything can happen. As my grandfather, and millions of less intelligent people, have said: that’s why they play the games.
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