Shutdown Fullcast - The Edges of Fandom

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

Because we work with and around Braves fans, we decided to spend this episode contemplating the losses that have pushed various fanbases to consider just walking away and being done with the whole thing. Warning: if you are a fan of the Pirates, Bengals, and Arkansas, this will be a super unpleasant episode for you. But your life is probably kinda weird to start with, no? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the shutdown fullcast. This is the internet's only college football podcast. If you were looking for another college football podcast, I'm sorry, we're at, you're just going to have to make do. Fortunately, we have everyone's favorite dish on tap for you tonight, and that would be other people's misery. Not yours. I mean, maybe yours, but mostly other people's misery.

We promise it'll be something like, at most, 5% your misery by volume. It's very dystopian to think of a dish being on tap. It's not even soilant. It's just kind of a goo. It's just, hey, here's the meatloaf. Comes right out of the tap. Imagine if that meatloaf was. like imported from elsewhere also like we got domestics on tap but also we got meatloaf we flew in

from belgium this is craft meatloaf meatloaf on tap dan i'm a rat tap time all right well there's wherever you had the over under for first time we dipped into that i'm pretty sure the well maybe the over one i'm honestly surprised we didn't start with it so just the other day I was telling Janine! Oh, someone sent us after much discussion and... She knew the risks. Praise of Deerdorf and Brandstatter, our Homer, Michigan announcers that we listened to last week and thoroughly enjoyed. My favorite thing someone sent me was a replay of a 67-yard TD run by Michigan, where in the middle of it, as Brandstatter,

is ecstatically describing what is happening in the middle of it, you just hear Dan Dierdorf go, Oh! And now we all heard it too via extremely well-constructed headphones

to make sure we didn't miss a molecule of that noise. Just remember, when you're thinking like, gosh, I wish the full cast could sound better and clear. you'd hear that better yeah careful what you ask for my favorite things were obviously the olmec memes and also someone changed their handle to statter and deirdorf in honor of stettler and woldorf yeah just beauty all around so thank you for participating in that this week jason we asked the people about, I think, irrelevant.

It's topical, but it's also, it's eternal. It's perennial. Every single year for somebody, misery blossoms from the ground in the form of their sports franchise, sometimes an entire city or state sports franchises, right? Yeah, I think the reason this one popped up is, while none of us are Atlanta Braves fans, we associate with many of many people who are afflicted with that particular disease. It's like Paul, and it gets all over our cars. Yeah.

It's hard to avoid. Like, you know, even if you don't want to care about this franchise, it's just, it's like secondhand caring, I guess, maybe. But anyway, the topic was pretty fresh in our mind. So we asked on Twitter and, my God, y'all have some pain to unload. It's time. Let's go ahead and let's talk it out. wait wait wait what what happened to the atlanta braced uh they gave up uh it was i i saw the text

from a cardinal's friend who was really really trying to talk me into caring about this series so i was getting score updates from him uh i looked up to discover hey your baseball team gave up a touchdown and a field goal in the first inning so i tuned in saw a home run and tuned back out. Is that bad? It seems really bad, and that's about the score they lost by it. It's challenging. Don't think of it is bad. It's challenging. Well, that's okay. They'll get game six, right? They won't lose game six. I'll give you that. Hell yeah. I didn't really even realize that this was a five-game series. I think we had mentioned this a couple days earlier because we happened to be near a TV during a baseball game, but I

forgot about it by this time. So I was like, why are we so freaked out about losing game five? And then, oh, okay. Oh, so there's not one. Ah, okay. You got it. You got there, buddy. Okay, okay, good.

Surely, though, this franchise has, you know, more than one championship to lean back on in modern history. And so recent. Yeah. Sure. And surely that people of this town will have other things to remind themselves that sometimes sports can bring pleasure, especially in big moments, right? No. This is why if you're going to be a baseball fan, you should just be a Marlins fan. Because the Marlins are always very clear.

They only have two modes. Championship or tear it all down, 38 games won. Like, they're never going to, there's never like, oh, man, the Marlins blew a point. postseason? No, they're either taking the whole thing or they're just not even participating in the exercise. Other than the major tax grift that goes along with it, it is the most honest form of professional franchising. I mean, who more than a South Florida franchise would understand the notion of, listen, we're going to be underwater for a while, okay? Then one big score. And then after that, that's going to go downhill for a while.

it's all right fire fire fest the baseball team the the marlins are just pro auburn yeah it's it's all or nothing except the only difference would be if if like every time auburn got good they immediately traded away all their players do they i mean you know they would if they could right that is what i guess i guess that was the NFL draft is in many ways They also do accept lots of trades from, say, Blinn Community College, University of Georgia. Like, they're wheeling and dealing. Don't get me wrong. That's true. Let me, you know what, that's, can that be our entry point? Because I have a great Auburn-related story. Because Auburn's pattern in college football, if you're not entirely familiar with it, is to ruin everything, including their own team and fans' lives.

right like when you expect them to pull something off that's when they don't when you expect them to lose that's generally when they kneecap you at the worst possible moment right yeah and and not just on a game by game basis this is a year by year basis correct correct the other thing there is one team though that when you think oh what a terrible way to live what a horrible way to be a fan to exist as an Auburn person and just never knowing where it's going to land. Well, you could be an Arkansas fan, and the team ruining things for you could be Auburn. This is from Spammy Clark on Twitter,

said that the game that broke him, the one game that really had him considering whether to even follow this team or not anymore and to just take up something else on Saturdays, right, was Arkansas Auburn 2016. I forgot this game. You probably did two. But let's re-examine what happens. He says, coming off a W against a then-ranked Old Miss.

Oh, man. It's already misleading, right? Like, hey, we beat Old Miss. And they were ranked. Yeah. That's what the Antiques Roadshow expert turns to you and say, this is a clever forgery. You can see around the edges here that, in fact, this was never truly a ranked team.

But really, particle board slapped together with a dash of whiskey. Nice try. We fooled you. It's fiction. It's not real. We made it up. It's a falsehood. Yeah, that's already a bad sign. Then he goes, thinking it was going to be a great game. Arkansas got waxed 56 to 3. I was so confused and angry. The angry part I get, the confusion, that's on you.

I'm going to say that a lot this episode, by the way, because I picked a lot of these tweets. And looking at them, I just thought, well, you know, that sucks for you, but that's your fault. It's your fault for hoping. Because a lot of these people, I go, yeah, we knew that was going to happen. And you didn't. Why? What sort of work do you need to do on yourself? What do you need to do with the relationships in your life?

Think about it. I mean, the best Arkansas season in recent memory is the 2011 team. Team finishes 11 and 2. They go into the Friday after Thanksgiving matchup with LSU. Ranked third in the nation, LSU is first. Do you remember the final score of this game? I do not. It's 41 to 17.

LSU I think there's some kind of buildup or mathematical effect where the longer disappointment is put off for teams that will inevitably and historically disappoint you, the greater the margin of that disappointment will be, right?

For instance, if your team is up to 11 wins and you think, oh man, what could go wrong? It's going to go wrong by 40 points. Yeah, this one went south. I mean, the worst part is that Arkansas jumped out to a 14-0 lead. Well, jumped out. Nobody scored in the first quarter. So they lead 14-0 midway through the second.

And then LSU just like dumps all over them. There's a Honey Badger has a 92-yard punt return in here. Arkansas only manages one field goal the rest of the game. Jordan Jefferson throws a touchdown pass true miracles he also has a 48 yard touchdown run like yeah so when we send out the call for this I should have been clear about exactly what we asked for we asked for the games that made the game that most made you want to just quit on your favorite team forever just fuck it that's it I'm done um and Spencer went through all of them and collected a list. And the funniest one that I don't think we realized the scars were this deep,

but that appeared over and over and over was a Cincinnati Bengals game. Is that right? That is correct. That is correct. I will read the following tweets in sequence, because of all the things that we had mentioned in an account, which is ostensibly dedicated first to college football. The game most commonly mentioned was a 2015-16 season playoff game, the wild card playoff between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. John Ness. Just sent us a picture, which was a screencap of Cincinnati Bengals' playoff history.

That's it. It's just the image. No words. Which the last time, if you don't know, the last time the Bengals won a playoff game was 1990. The teams they played

in that playoffs, they beat the Houston Oilers in the wildcard and then they lost to the

LA Raiders in the division. That's how old their last playoff win is. You lost to teams

where if you sent the mail there, they'd be like, no, they don't live here no more. They haven't

lived there 20 years. No, they're dead. Don't know that guy. At Keith Buckhout. Considered quitting, 2017, Kentucky, Florida.

If you remember, that's the game, I believe, where Kentucky had two touchdown scored on uncovered receivers. And, but he says, actually quit, 2015 Bengals Steelers Wild Car Game. User at Sport Shouting, says the Bengals Steelers Wild Car game with a great parenthetical, 2015, not 2009. At M.J. Rill says

Fengel's nuclear meltdown in the 2015 AFC wildcard. At Mookie, two of us. Fengel Steelers, 2015 wildcard. What happened in this game? I didn't know because typically I don't watch a whole lot of the NFL playoffs. I remember this game vividly.

I remember watching this. Mm-hmm. I had to look it up. Yeah. Go ahead. What do you remember? Let me ask you. Just, you know, bystander. What do you remember happening in this game? So the Bengals basically had this game. This was a home game, I believe, for them. And they basically have the game locked up in the fourth quarter. And through a series of, I believe there's a fumble in here, deep in Steelers territory, where,

a field goal wouldn't have like won the game but it would have forced the Steelers to I think they would have had to score a touchdown to win I will yeah go ahead I will I will intervene okay go for it before any before any of this ever happens and oh man there's a lot that goes wrong in this game all right there is a 15 oh lead 15 nothing that the Bengals managed to get out to despite the fact that the guy taking most of the snaps the quarterback for this game is A.J. McCarran.

That's right. Yeah, A.J. McCarran is playing quarterback. The other thing that happens is, yeah, they're up and they fumble. Jeremy Hill fumbles deep. And then the following things all happen. By the way, they've also knocked out Ben Rothelisberger earlier in the game.

Who knocked him out? Vontes Perfect. Yeah. That is correct. Fonte's perfect, lands on him, injures his shoulder. Recently banned from the NFL for a season. Not for, not for like, hey, you did some crimes or you smoked all the weed. It was just like, you football in a very unpleasant way. Don't you go chill for a year.

Him taking out Ben is like the one time he did something right, right? He actually does several things. He causes another, he gets an interception in this game. I mean, the one time he like, Vontase to maximum. perfectness and it actually Oh wait, you've got this flipped around. The Bengals didn't jump out to a 15-0 leave. Oh, I'm sorry, the Steelers

were at 15-0. The Steelers did. So this was this was a comeback that was looking near complete. Yeah. This is by the way, after in the same game, Antonio Bryant has the Gooch catch, where he catches a ball against his taint and does a backflip and completes

the catch, so it counts. Yeah. Already a bizarre game being played in a cold driving rain for most of the time anyway the following things all happen on the last sequence the Steelers get the ball back and Ben Raffles How much time is on the clock at this point

and what is the score? Marinated it Yeah I believe it is I'll tell you if you want It's all right so it's 1615 Yes The Bengals are leading The Steelers start with the ball

At their own 16 With 14 with a minute 43 left to play and Landry Jones is in a quarterback and Vante's perfect picks up a personal foul for hitting no no that's not what happens that's not what happens well go ahead all right I'll just jump you take the narrative

I'll take it back fine all right so the Steelers have a ball with less than two minutes to play they need a field goal to win Landry Jones throws a pick on the very first play on this drive. And the Bengals get the ball at the Pittsburgh 26. There are now, there's a minute 30 to go. I am reasonably certain for memory that Pittsburgh does not have all of its timeouts left. But like, the logic is pretty sound here. Just like kill a bunch of time, kick a field goal, win the game. In theory, the Steelers may not even get the ball back. On the very first play from scrimmage

Jeremy Hill runs six yards and fumbles and that's when this Pittsburgh this Pittsburgh drive starts so you can pick it up from here now Pittsburgh has miraculously gotten the ball back at their own nine with a minute 23 to play

and you get on this drive you get a personal foul to get 15 yards by Vantes Burfect on Antonio Brown, I believe. Yes. And then after that, there is a vicious hit that is another, that ends up with a personal foul on Pac-Man Jones because coming out after the hit on the field is Joey Porter, former Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker turned coach.

Pac-Man Jones yells at him and gets a personal foul somehow for another 15. and then game-winning kick for the Steelers. Bengals complete the so-called nuclear meltdown, and that's the game. Yeah, this is where, so the Steelers go from the Cincinnati 47 with like 20 seconds left to play. They throw this incomplete pass. Thanks to 30 penalty yards in one play,

they get all the way to the Cincinnati 17 and kick the game-winning field goal. Yeah, that's bad. Y'all, like, you put it at the mention, and I agree, 100% awful, top to bottom. Or as Dan Deirdorf might say, horrible, horrible. Don't be a Bengals fan. Like, just free yourself from that, right?

Yeah, don't do it. Seems that's the idea here. Okay, okay. There's a pretty good contingent of Seattle area sports fans in this, by the way. at UW Ferris says for UW Seattle sports fans, the 2008 Apple Cup was like finding out your spouse was cheating on you the same day you got fired, gotten a car crash, and your house bird down.

Which, to expand a bit more on that, at Shane Deegan says, 2008, we, by that he means, the University of Washington Huskies, went 0 and 12 and losing the Apple Cup to 2 and 10, Washington State. That was the year of the infamous Crapple Cup. The Seahawks went from four straight division championships to four and twelve. The Mariners became the first team to lose 100 games with $100 million in payroll. And the Sonics left.

This makes the Sonics sound wise. I know. Yeah. Especially because they went last. They were like, oh, no. I know what a haunted house looks like. Why would you move to Oklahoma? Have you seen this? Jesus. Fortunately, everything went great there. Yep. Everything went fine.

I am a little, I guess I don't really fully understand why. If you're 0 and 11, would it be nice to be a bad Wazoo team? I think that's a Paul Wolf team in the Apple Cup? Sure. Is losing it that, like, is it that bad at that point? I kind of feel like it doesn't matter. I think it always hurts, man. I guess. That is bad.

I mean, your rival taking you to 0 and 12, even though they suck as well. Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess that is like the literal bottom in a lot of ways. Like if you lose and you drop from like five and seven to four and eight, sure, that's not great. But if you lose this, people remember, like, you go to any college football fan, you say Crapple Cup immediately. Right. Yeah. To go winless as a Power 5 team is also just really hard to do.

And to have it end in this, that's, all right, you've convinced me. I can see it. A lot of Indiana fans in dimensions here. Oh, man. I do want to pick out this one. This is from Sean underscore ESPN. 2015 Indiana versus Rutgers. As an IU alum, this game is the perfect encapsulation of what you get,

and you think Indiana can have nice things. So let's take a look at this Indiana football team. So this is a team that went six and seven, and heading into the Rutgers game was four and two. They had lost to Ohio State by a touchdown, and they had lost badly on the road to Penn State, but they had beaten a bunch of teams that weren't actually that good. against Rutgers, at home, mind you, not in Mighty Piscataway,

yeah, you gave up 55 points, but it's not just that, it's that you led in the third quarter by a score of 52 to 27, and then Rutgers scored four touchdowns and a field goal to beat you. Off an answer, yeah. Off a three. turnovers in the fourth quarter this is a pattern by the way just lose early i will say this for braves fans you got efficiency all right you got nothing but efficiency out of the team that was going to step on your throat and make you very sad right because you did it in the first inning

you don't get more efficient to blow out than that right nothing's like there get all your sad out of the way it's done right the hoosers at football at least might be the absolute worst team in all of sports at following this rule yeah like if they're leading ohio state or michigan or michigan state or penn state in the third quarter it's like oh this is gonna suck you you you you there is zero doubt they're gonna lose if if they're leading a top 10 team or whatever like it's been a meme for like four years now yeah the instance in this case by the way happens and i oh god it's so bad um the last three possessions for Indiana are this

fumble return touchdown interception interception so all like and then punt so three out of their last four go four 21 points the other way yeah this is

this is a Rutgers team that to that point had only beaten Norfolk State and Kansas was this is also the season we're in the middle of like Kyle Flood being the worst amateur spy and eventually getting fired in the middle of the season. So how'd that work out for him? It's just different, you know.

Just different. They won eight games. Jason. Don't ask, don't ask over how many years. Jason, do you have a non-283 answer to this prompt for the Falcons? First of all, it worked out great for Kyle Flood because he's Alabama's offensive line coach. and yes actually 283 like

yeah it sucked it was fucking horrible but like I woke up the next day and like sort of clinically put my mind to like all right we are going to see if we have just witnessed the worst loss in the history of football pretty sure you know

and after going through every contender is like okay there is zero doubt I will not hear a single argument to the contrary there is no argument to the contrary this was it uh and then you know started looking around other sports as well and Brazil Germany 2014 that is the only one I will accept as worse than this period after that is that specifically because it's in Brazil because like an entire country poured everything they had for four years into this and that's what happened right yeah yeah in their in their

house by the way in the americana right right yeah right yeah and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse um it's a different kind of loss but i think you know an entire country four years all that um however they have won it before unlike us so but once that was out of the way it was like wow i am now invincible in fact i will not give up they will give up before i give up like the falcons are no like i'm no longer locked in here with them right you know you're every time they lose it's hilarious you are i can't lose you are like an astronaut right before they see the alien right as they see the alien queen and before they die where they're like my god it's beautiful yes and now i now i must go i'm stuck in the black hole forever the great mall the great mall of the

universe itself such majesty the one i wrote down is when i probably came closest to actually tapping out outside of the bobby petrino season or the michael vick uh jail experience which which were nicely jammed right next to each other yeah luckily we got that all the way out of all out of the way at once. 2012 made the NFC title game lose on a bad pass interference call the only time in the history of the NFC championship

that an NFC South team has lost on an unjust missed pass interference. It's never happened otherwise. Like, okay, things are finally looking up. Next year we get a little bit closer, you know, and then we go 4 and 12. That next year fell to 2 and 9 in a game in which,

stop me if you've heard this, Matt Ryan throws for 300 yards and gets sacked five times. That has been the entire last decade of my sporting experience. I think that was probably the moment when I was like, this is fucking 283. No, after that, I'm locked in. Fuck you. Let's do this. Like, I think on top of all this, the thing I can't fathom is also being a Georgia Bulldogs fan

because it's arguably even worse just in terms of number of times. times they've almost made it or if you look back at a full season came a bounce away from almost making it like mark rigged very easily could have had like four national titles kirby smart could already have like two like you know but this is where it's important for me to remember remind the listener that they don't they sure don't in fact they don't like there is a non far fetch scenario in which georgia is bama and it is a scenario it is not real it's a fiction there is there is a scenario where the braves have like win like four world series where the hawks have like an NBA title or two thrown no that one's too far no it's not there

there are years where the hawks winning an NBA title was not impossible no that's not true it was it was so so they won like 62 games one year and they had to face lebron come on yeah so you can say the braves could have like like something like you know seven world series and the Falcons could have like three or four Super Bowls and Georgia could be Bama and the Thrashers stayed What I'm saying is there is a You can't put the Hawks in there

Okay fine but there is at least a decent scenario where Atlanta becomes the Boston of the South Sure, sure If we get to count Athens and Statesboro We will and we do Yeah and in that

By the way the Braves And they made the World Series five times in a decade they won once once that's so if you want to know how many times if you want to know what the average your yield your yield for championship appearances in Atlanta it ain't good it's real bad it's got to be like eight percent or something like this hey we're a treasury bond with three percent returns buddy now here's the thing though here's the thing that does give us a piggyback excuse to talk about the pirates. We got this from Escalante Brew. Would 20 straight losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates count as one moment? And on a like geological scale of time, yes, that's

true. And the worst part about that is who do they lose the NLCS to the two years before that losing streak start? Both in, I think it's 90 to and 91. When soon slid, they lose to the Braves. two straight losses in the in the national league championship cheers to these braids over the next 20 years after that one year aside who's happier pirates fans are brave fans well they got the still they got the stillers on sunday so who's happier in 19 out of those 20 years I would I would argue I would argue Steelers fans are more unhappy because the Braves like bad things happen to the Braves but by and large over the course of that time They're not horribly mismanaged. They're not cheap skates. The pirates were like, even for the 90s, very open in the press about being like, oh, yeah, we're not going to pay any of these dudes. If they're good, they're going to leave.

And you should know that. We should all be on the same page. There was no, like, couched language about, well, we're going to make strategic investment. They were just like, nah, man, Barry Bonds, he's going to leave because we're not going to pay him. So that's like off-season stuff that makes. quitting very justified for the fan right like if they're not going to try to win why the fuck should i right that's true that's true i don't know like if you're not even going to have one marlins year a decade when you announce we have decided to compete i think with when baseball

teams are bad it's such a there's a real existential kind of angst that creeps in there because the season is so long if i'd check on on a football team i don't know they're bad you know pro football team might be bad for 16 weekends out of the year, right? 16 Sundays, Mondays, and they'll probably still win three games in there. Yeah, but man, a baseball team is like every time I dip my toe in this water, it eats the flesh off my foot. I'm like, well, I'll come back. Maybe the system will get flushed. And I put my finger back in. You're like, well, nope, skeleton finger. River's still just full acid. You know, there's a real, like, this thing is bad, and it will be bad so continuously and for so long, I will lose all hope not only in the sport, but perhaps in life and other

activities as well. Baseball is particularly galling for this as well, because it's such a, like, statistics and records-based culture that when you're bad, your badness starts to get translated into that. It's not just like we're talking about, oh, this many 30-plus home-run hitters. Like, when the Orioles stunk this year, it was like, all right, and they're up to 11 straight games giving up two home runs that's awesome they're terrible it's not like college football where you can say like oh if not for this fourth down we could have made a bowl right like the sample

size is complete you are terrible there is no argument to the contrary yeah like oh you could have won 59 games great the other thing is in college football you know in the NBA if you lose a lot of games awesome you get to draft someone from duke or kentucky that's great you know in the NFL tanking is less of a thing but still hey great you get a new quarterback in college football you get a whole new coach and that actually matters in our sport that does not matter in the NFL and I don't feel like baseball teams you really get any kind of a reward for being terrible because like your draft fix oh cool we'll see them in six years and no one cares who your new coach is baseball teams you just know you're going to be terrible again yeah you know the the when you hit rock bottom you've got

two ways to go as the song goes straight up or sideways sideways and baseballs and baseballs very real. You could go, if you could just, you could be a 400 team for a real long time. I was thinking the other day and I was talking in the office here about, um, I would really like a movie about the season after the season depicted in Angels in the Outfield where the Angels pay all this money to these actually, objectively crappy baseball players who were just getting assistance from the Lord and are no longer getting that assistance, but now

they've dumped, they've like given long-term contracts to dudes who still can't field or hit and just be like what must that experience be like that second season where you're just like what the shit dude you can't jump 12 feet in the air anymore i feel cheated that's that sounds like i call this one i i call this one god is dead in the bullpen or you could or you could just call it the marlins that's pretty much what the Marlins do every like seven years right like oh man we've got spirits supporting us the next year it's like where has gone gone this is like uh angels in the outfield is actually about blake mortals are the jaguars did you pull any jaguars ones spencer i did not you can share

all the jaguars ones you want because it ties into my recent interests of going to jacksonville and putting on an amateurist show. Speaking of surprise podcast business. We're doing a podcast there. Go to 25 Snakes.com. That's it. That's it. That's the whole business.

I don't know if anybody put the Jags. The entirety of the Jazz, Jags existence has in many ways of the fans been a like endurance challenge and i i i oddly respect them for persisting throughout it but um it's a lot mine i have one that made me i don't even know if give up was the was the sentiment that this game made me feel right if i didn't feel the like surrender or despair i just felt like somebody had begun turning my brain off right like had just sort of slowly short-circuited all my ability to understand anything that I was seeing and you know what game I'm talking about

in advance because it's October 18th 2014 and Florida loses 4213 to the Missouri Tigers at home on homecoming magnificent occurrence because you assume with a score like 4213, that Mizzou must have dominated on the stat sheet. Nope. No, they didn't. They had seven. How many yards did they have? Well, funny story. They had a total of 119 yards. What the fuck, man. I know the answer and I still can't believe it. Seven first downs for the game. 20 yards passing on the day. And yet, Florida loses by 29 points because, and I can't, like, I just, I was there sitting in the stands and saw the entire thing happen. And the person in front of us, when I began, as you can imagine, casually and in a civil fashion suggesting that Will Must Champ get fired, said,

Why don't you go support the team? You're being such a hater. By the time we were down 20-0-0 at the half at homecoming, with Mazoo doing absolutely nothing with the ball, a little quieter about that. And then the third quarter happened, where Jeff Driscoll fumbled and it was a turn for a touchdown. On the next series, the offense got the ball back immediately

with the score of 35-0, and I said out loud, Jeff Driscoll is going to throw this for a pick-six, which he did and putting us down 42-0 at that point driscoll then threw a touchdown to get it or harris through a train harris through a pass because he came in uh 42-7 and then immediately through another interception so yeah uh that's how you lose well must champ just broke football it wasn't like i didn't understand losing i didn't understand how this was happening in the manner it did when And it was by design. That's the thing. When a loss like that, where everybody's doing everything the way that they're supposed to, and you're still losing by 29, that's what breaks you. The absurdity of, oh, almost all of this is on purpose. This is the way you built this.

If you were a Browns fan, why? Why? Well, now it makes sense. About that. I'm not saying, I'm not saying it like will continue to make sense, but at least right now for people who started this season excited and are still like hanging on, like, it's not, it's not absurd. It briefly made sense until the season started.

You know, I mean, like, for instance, if you are Jake Nazer on Twitter, said every Redskins lost for the last 10 years, that's on you. Why are you there? you know you know what this is it's a cash sum there's a but there's a weird thing if if the premises like what what has got you close to walking away it's that weird thing where the more you endure the less any individual thing should be the thing that the the thing that breaks you right like if you've already you know going back to arkansas if you've already lived with 15 years of arkansas what is what is what is an extra

one or two going to do to you and once you've done that what's an extra one or two more it's emotional sunk cost yeah for the payoff of what going to the wild card game and losing to the steelers in the bengel's case yeah i mean honestly right now Washington would love to go to the wild card game there was a three tweet sequence by i think another fan base that for different reasons should maybe have like you know i don't know a healthy amount of despair and then Boston College at LallyPB says and this is three tweets in a row we go on a journey with with them this is regarding a 30 to three loss to the University of central Florida in 2011 heaven forbid we don't talk about UCF you won this one you're a really good football team

congratulations guys but bolstered by rumors that are that he goes he tweets a shot of the score and says hey but it was bolstered by rumors that our head coach tried to punch out the OC in the locker room afterwards. Tweet two, my God, I'm looking back at the schedule, and the first three losses were all gut punches, including losing to a Duke team because we missed a 20-yard chip shot field goal wide. We tried on third down instead of running a play to center the ball. And then the third one.

Actually, yeah, I gave up on this team this year pretty hardcore after that. Thank you for letting me work through this on your Twitter.com account. We're here to help. That's what it's for. No matter what is posted, just share your feelings. I feel like we ended up in a good place. What is the worst that you have felt for another fan base while something was happening

that had nothing to do with a team you like? That's an open question to the rest of you, in three. I think my answers are mostly the Oregon Ducks. Oh, God, the Dennis Dixon season. Yeah, that one jumps out. also 2010 in a way like in hindsight you know Auburn was awesome but at the time you know we all really loved Oregon too uh it just Oregon has a lot of those seasons there there is a very very very very short list of teams that I an Atlanta Falcons fan look at and I'm like oh okay yeah that's pretty

bad too you know and the whole Pacific Northwest to me is on that list as long as you don't make too big of a thing about like, I, a Seahawks fan, sympathize because we lost one of two Super Bowls because the keyword there is one. Got one. The Lequan Treadwell injury at the end of the Auburn game, that is maybe the most like, oh, no. That's the worst single outcome play combo I've ever seen. And look, we've seen plenty of terrible injuries. and we've seen plenty of heartbreaking losses.

And I honestly cannot recall them happening in the exact same moment like that, on that level. Can I remind you the team that they lost too and that, of course, ruined everything with Auburn? Yeah, of course. Yeah, you're like, who's there at the most nauseating single moment combination of factors? Auburn standing there like...

I like that we've made Auburn like a character in the Stephen King universe who shows up and it's like, you've a debt to pay. when i see like when i see when i see when i see the bus that's going to only injure me but hit the 10 kindergartners crossing the street with me it'll have a war eagle bumper sticker on the front of it right yeah oh yeah i can't see what this mascot has on if there's no one to hit it's going off a cliff jesus take the wheel um the mazou lost to south carolina was pretty rough as well the the the one that clanked off the upright oh they can know

they can deal with it. I only have one answer and it's for, it's for the, because no one in the SEC really deserves extended pity. Sure. Land of the Damned. You all know what you signed up for. Woo! Right? I have no pity for any of you. You know this deal. The one, the one fan base I have extended, even Kentucky's off the Schneider now, right? Because they beat us. So yeah. Whatever, y'all. You big boys. Let's put those plasters in those boxing gloves. them on and cheat like the rest of us. Somewhere Vanderbilt's like, but we're like, shut up, you're rich. Yeah, you're rich. You got a law school. The one fan base I have deep pity for, and I've seen multiple games where I thought, I don't know how you're all not actually dead

from Sorrow is Indiana because they get close, because they've had so many games where you go, oh man it's a fourth quarter they're right there and even i fall for it right yeah sure right i'm right there like maybe maybe they're gonna pull it off y'all they don't they just don't they never they never the corner has never turned in my lifetime maybe the best hosiers coach of all time when they had things going and you thought man terry hepner's really going to pull this off i don't have to make this up he got brain cancer right that's i feel bad for indiana because i'm convinced there are forces beyond our control influencing the outcomes there they're just at the confluence of a lot of really terrible factors that always put them almost there and then not forget illinois

the deal with illinois is just non-existence despair it's just never occasionally you might get that weird sugar bowl season sure you might get to the rose bowl even it's what a miracle ron zook is as a human and as a coach but with indiana just always being on the edge of a low simmer i feel bad for you all yeah and like 19 years from now when indiana finally beats ohio state if the internet still exists we're all gonna lose our fucking minds man oh finally we did it we all did it. I mean, I want, to make it clear, by the way,

I want good things to happen for Indiana. I really do. I do for Indiana football, at least. Not the state. The state can be all on your own. Can we, should we talk about 13-9 at this point?

Oh, my. We don't have to. I would say, by the way, when we ask people for answers to this question, no one said, the 2007 West Virginia pit game Nope

Nope Just got a score Multiple instances of people typing in Three numbers and a dash 139 Is this one a little bit of a conflict of interest For us as stated pit fans

Seeing as this is the most Pit game of all time I guess I guess a conflict of interest for our group entire If not necessarily every individual here. I think we're all compromised and we should just bypass it by pointing to it, shaking our heads, and moving

on. You know what? Let's pass it. Like Mountaineers passing Mr. Green Boots on Everest, right? Crops don't grow there. Don't plant. I would I want to go to it. It's been rough.

Like, I was trying to explain to somebody the other day that reactions very greatly by age group among fan bases, right? he was saying that UGA fans were the most arrogant fans and I said well how old were the fans you were dealing with and he said well they were all about my age and this guy was about 55 and I thought okay so they remember a championship right so they have a much different attitude the younger UGA fans I know are like oh man it's 28 27 whoa let's watch us lose this thing like most most the UGA fans are always waiting for the other shoe to drop whereas I think older UGA fans having frozen their lives in 1980 and 81. They just, you know, they're like, well, we'll be back there, right? Other UGA fans are like, that's cool.

This sports car is going off the road and into the wall at any minute, right? This is kind of true of Nebraska fans, right? Because Nebraska's had some very, yeah, they've had some, their older fans were always waiting for a return to greatness, right? And younger fans, younger fans are like, like, it'd be really cool if we won, like, you know, 10 games. That'd be cool. We'd like that.

Because they remember things like the memory of Hardy Wallbanger, who said, Texas Tech 70, Nebraska 10, full on Callahan. This was 2,000. Well, wait, wait, wait. You're not to just, surely the coach responsible for that on the Nebraska side doesn't work in football anymore. He is currently the interim head coach for the Washington Reds. kids.

Weird. Wow. Wow how this keeps popping up, y'all. Yeah. Surely the coach they fired to get to him has since floundered and failed, right?

Well, about that. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. This was, this has one of my favorite stat lines ever because

Joe Daly, Joe Daly is ineffective and throws for about 187 yards 1 TD 1 interception for Nebraska and he's replaced by a guy named Bo Davis I haven't heard of Bo Davis there's a reason for that he went 1 for 8 had 12 yards

and threw 4 picks averaging 1.5 yards a completion yeah that's that's what Bo Davis did meanwhile on the other side oh I don't know you got a prime Mike Leach team 2004

rocking and roll it they score 70 points Do you think that a lot of those came early, right? No, no, no, no. They score 28 in the fourth. So do the math. Do the math. When they were up 42 to 10, you know, in his own words from the game, we were just trying to play efficiently.

28 points in the fourth quarter. Texas Tech defensive. end, Adele Duckett from the AP Recap. The last nine minutes took forever. Everyone got involved. It was good stuff. I'm going to rupture something. This is magnificent.

Oh, dear. Yeah, Nebraska's had some moments, including, by the way, there was, it's not worse, but it's kind of worse. Kansas Humb 70 on them, too. Jesus. did uh ryan did you have one for the tampa bay bucks or new york nix um never been never been a nix your beloved new york nix so haven't haven't had that as an issue um i don't know if i had a i mean growing up the bucks were terrible so it i didn't really have any understanding that they could not be and when they won the super bowl in 2002 is just sort of like oh

but but it wasn't that long after that that I left Florida and like I don't know man the idea of like I'm going to be a Bucks fan in New York City just feels like it sends a lot of bad signals out to be especially when you're moving here and you're like it's not like I'm moving with several Florida friends it's like I have to meet new people and I don't know that I necessarily want to be like yep this is my Bucks shirt and everyone knows you as Bucks guy. Right. Yeah, like that's, you know. Bucks guy. Hey, it's Bucks guy. I really just, I understand that now that it's been spoken into the universe, people will tweet at me Bucks Guy, and I hate that.

I'm fun, call me, I'm a fun guy. I call me Party Nickerson. Woo. That's so dated. You went so far back from it. I'm so fashionable. Call me Derek looks. I hate that I've already threatened.

to kill myself so many times on this show this season already because I thought like I should have been saving it for this one. So no, I don't think there was any particular The funniest moment was definitely when the Bucks I think at the time blew the biggest lead

maybe in Monday Night Football history. It might have been something specific like that. To the Colts, to Tony Dungey and the Colts. I think this is the first game Tony Dungey had been back to Tampa for since he had gotten fired by Tampa and taken the Indianapolis job in a game

and just like in Tampa blew the stupid lead briefly thought they had blocked the game winning kick but somebody got called for leaping if memory serves and then yeah that was that was just funny

and bad especially because it came so quickly after the Super Bowl I think it was the next year if I'm remembering correctly but yeah things got bad fast yeah you know they i would say they reverted to bad fast yeah i think that's what it really is is that you know um our buddy action cookbook has a podcast that of course i'm going to remember forget the name of i think it's called circle seven seven circle seven circle seven circle um and i was on i was on that with mark anis talking about Tampa franchises generally and like, man, this is the same franchise that like Bo Jackson told

them, do not draft me, I will not play for you under any circumstances. They took him with the first pick and Bo Jackson meant it so seriously that he just didn't play football that year and got redrafted the next year by the Raiders in the seventh round. Like usually when a player pulls the Eli Manning, you know, hey, it's not happening, trade me, you do. The Bucks are the only franchise that has been like, all right, let's see this through to the ah shit. Well, guess you're serious. You're playing for us.

No. No. The thing about Bo Jackson was the original Bartleby the scrivener of the NFL, right? Bartle Bo. Yeah, Elway did it, to be fair. Elway did not. Yes, Elway, Elway did it as well. But Elway got traded as a result.

Yeah, he got traded. Bo just did the, I would prefer not to. Which, again, do you know what that is? Do you know what that is to return to an earlier theme? That's Auburn ruining something for someone. The bucks were already ruined. We can't put that on Auburn. I have one note, which is the trade of a player.

this is from at tc internet's i think it doubles as a fine instance of like midwestern parenting the day that dollar bill words traded chescellios to the red wings i cried in my living room and told my dad i was done with the black hawks he laughed at me and told me this was nothing and that i wouldn't be quitting this stupid team then he told me to shovel the driveway your son is sitting there in the living room like I'm never doing this again. You're like, shut up. Idiot.

Go shovel the driveway. You're here forever, so start cleaning up. I'm going to remind you. Like to the non-Midwestern mind, that sounds like, oh, you're punished for being a baby. But in the Midwestern dad's mind, that's like, well, let me give you something fun to do. Don't shovel the driveway.

It'll be great. Kids will love it. Fresh air. A little bit exercise. Back time. Sorry There's one on here That I don't really want to get into a ton

Because it scares me This is from Elinine Mimphian This is all it says 2018 Senior Day Iowa 63 Illinois Zero I think the thing is this If you are a bad If you are a bad team

You should not do homecoming You should not do Senior Day you should not have any special days on your calendar because they make losses like this they add a little boost of unfortunateness like Spencer remembers that

that Missouri Florida game was homecoming the specific day when the university says hey those of you who have graduated and would like to relive memories come we're having a festival and then that happens same thing with Senior Day where you're like hey, to honor the members of this football team who have worked the hardest and put the most

time in, we'd like to honor them. Iowa 63, Illinois, Zero. Like, I think if you're bad, I want to give you permission to be done with festivities. No more family day. You don't have to salute the military. You can, every week can just be like, it's plain, unflavored yogurt week. It's unflavored week. all, none of them are special, none of them are distinct. This happens to Tennessee every time Peyton shows up, by the way. I wasn't going to bring that up, but yes.

Oh, God, but it's so fitting. That's so sad. Oh, I know. I feel bad. I feel bad now. No, you don't. I take who. Just for a sit just because they're like, hey, Peyton.

Oh, no. With happiness comes sadness. Um, I want to go back to Arkansas for a second because they have another. great recent example of their trajectory as a program and again it's against Auburn ruiner of things maybe my favorite handle on Twitter at this is hog Arkansas 20 Auburn 52 in 2017 Arkansas had possession for nine minutes in the third quarter and still managed to give up 28 points this is I want a advanced stats in football, but the advanced stat I want most is the team that held the ball

longest while giving up the most points. I want the team that basically was like, yeah, our offense is a really ineffective tourniquet. The most ineffective tourniquet, I want to know whose team that was because, man, that is a stat. You managed to control. Yeah, I really like soccer games like that, where you're like, this team. had positioned 70% of the time and took 30 shots on goal and this team scored five on them and won five five five no five one five one five man you that's that's tip that's typically how it goes yeah i they had they scored 28 in the third quarter despite only having six minutes to do it that's That's all-inspiring efficiency, Ed.

I really do think being an Arkansas fan is the hardest thing in the SEC at this point. It's a bad lot. It's a hard pull, right? Because, like, who are the contenders? Vanderbilt, you know what you're getting into. Kentucky basketball. South Carolina, you went to the SEC championship not that long ago. Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, you all have, most of you have a national title within

the fan base is life Georgia if you Georgia you're pushing it well Georgia you're like not in a position to complain right now LSU and Bama and Auburn you all have titles Texas A&M you're rich as shit

I know I forgot Missou but you're also there in the east Is it like the Mississippi's at least you have each other? Yeah the Mississippi schools you get to ruin each other's shit and that's but like Arkansas is kind of out there alone their closest, I guess, they're most closely tied to LSU,

who they are not close to in terms of like trajectory. They, yeah, it's just, it's hard. They're like the peak moment for that program historically is the game of the century that they lose. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's, you know, against Texas in what, 1969? Yeah, that's the historical peak of the program right there. you do have a split title with Bama that I think you have the better case for

but otherwise your second biggest moment involves Richard Nixon yeah it's just it's challenging and if you are still hanging in there as an Arkansas fan like good job Arkansas is the weird guy that lives in the woods of the SEC right Arkansas has no friends I think the whole SEC lives in the woods Kentucky takes genuine offense to that no they live in the hills, like the holler, but Arkansas just lives out, Arkansas just lives out in the woods. Lips in

what the bog woods? You want to be my friend? Did you just make Arkansas boo Radley? I did. I'll sleep in the ditch, it's fine. It's good over here. It's cool. That is fitting because

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