80. Sloppy games in the rain. A mayhem situation of fumbles, slips, improbable catches, and butch-as-hell effects when people hit each other. Super impressive at night when the lights turn the scene into a cliched football movie finale.

79. Quarterbacks who refuse to slide. Dave Ragone, you may be brain damaged today, but even the FSU defense never made you bow. This year’s bet for this title: Joe Tereshinkski.

78. The shine of lights on newly polished helmets.


Oooh…shiny.

77. God bless you, Central West Multidirectional Vocational Institute of Technology. You just keep taking the checks, and big programs keep on sodomizing you on national television in embarrassing fashion. Thanks to the aforementioned Gameday package, there’s even more “toddler versus rabid Wolverine” matches to see. The only man who compares in the whole history of humanity to the quarterback for these teams is the ball turret gunner in a B-17; as Randall Jarrell wrote, when something goes really wrong for either one, they clean you up with a hose.

76. Wes Durham. The silky baritone that broadcasts Georgia Tech games locally has no shortage of awesomeness about him. He’s a huge Earth, Wind, and Fire fan. He comes armed with a bushel of southernisms so colorful they’d put Jean Miro and Keith Jackson to shame. His sense of timing and refusal not to homerize puts Georgia in the catbird seat of state announcing duos along with the indestructible force that is Larry Munson.


Really, really tan, too.

75. The song “Click Click Boom.” No one said you liked all the presents you got for Football Christmas. The song behind 73 percent of all highlight films on the web is laughable nu-metal that you’ll be conditioned Ludovico-style to love by the time you’ve watched your favorite team’s highlight reels played to it 521 times in a row.

74. TiVo. Because you can’t be everywhere at once. Even on drugs. Unless we’re talking about…

73. ProVigil. When we say never miss a game, we mean it. Provigil gets you there!

72. The 3-3-5 defense. It’s like pornography. You may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it, mister.

71. Complete, utter, earth-shattering upsets. They’re rarer than people think, but when they occur they strike with the unfair violence of sudden death. We mean this: we’re still wondering what the hell happened with UF/Miss. State 2000.