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Not A Football Podcast 2: Scott Tossed
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Not A Football Podcast 2: Scott Tossed

Roger Cormier finds joy in late-night football in the accompaniment to this podcast episode, which features Britt, Jesse, and Keelin chatting about all the happenings of the week that was
The Queen smiles down from Heaven on Iowa-Iowa State, but it’s Iowa-Iowa State

2 a.m. football is the best football

By Roger Cormier

The NFL would never, even in its deepest, darkest pandemic days, dare start football games at 11 p.m. Eastern. The NCAA, however, doesn’t give a damn about sleep schedules. This utter carelessness is frowned upon by those who care about such things as mental and physical health. I get it. But what they don’t understand is everything that goes into football that spills into the wee small hours of Sunday morning.

This past weekend had two patently insane match-ups that simultaneously, beginning at around 1:30 a.m. reached an entirely other level of wackiness. On ESPN, you had two ranked teams, No. 9 Baylor making the trip to Provo to face No. 21 BYU. It went to double overtime, which already is not a thing in the NFL during the regular season. How did they get there? I watched and can’t remember. That’s the beauty of late night football: You don’t remember the details, just the feeling, and the feeling is always something synonymous with feeling like you’re getting away with something.

Down-to-the-wire pigskin action is for the waking hours. What of those who work on the weekend? There’s no chance of enjoying such fun live. What of those who don’t want to stay up late on any day of the week, lest their sleep schedules get all fucked up? Well, they don’t get to experience Baylor and BYU missing field goals and not scoring in the first overtime, disowning their kickers in real time. They don’t get to see Lopini Katoa finally get in the end zone in double OT, then BYU missing the required (!) two point conversion attempt, then Baylor getting to BYU’s 5-yard line and failing to score in four downs and then Brigham Young faithful pouring onto the field, with the coach dancing in the middle of it all. (I looked up all of that except for the dancing coach, because of course I recalled that.)

Meanwhile, on CBS Sports Network, you had Oregon State on the road to face Fresno State, two schools with little in common beyond the word “State,” so the match-up seemed totally random and somewhat dreamlike, like your brain just selected two schools on the West Coast and mashed them together to make a bowl of soup. With 1:50 left, Oregon State scored a touchdown and converted a two-point conversion to lead, 29-26. I missed that score but my remote control workout did result in me witnessing the end of the BYU game and the following from this one: Fresno State scored a touchdown in 45 seconds but missed the extra point, so the Beavers just needed a field goal to tie. A pass interference call set up Oregon State at the Fresno Bulldog two yard line with three seconds left. First, they set up to go for the win. They called timeout. Then they set up to kick a field goal, and Fresno State called time out. Then they brought back the quarterback and his friends, and as the clock reached zero, Jack Colletto found himself in the end zone off a two-yard run to win it for the Beavers. 

Then I flipped to Fox Sports 1. Mississippi State, led by weirdo Mike Leach, was playing Arizona. The Leach boys ended up winning 39-17. I turned the game off and went to sleep at around 2:30 a.m. my time, since the Bulldogs were comfortably ahead. I took a risk to miss a thrilling comeback along with all the other schmucks who keep sane hours. But by that point I was a) tired and b) a fully-committed risk taker. I already gambled and won big.

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