Scene: Vietnamese boathouse. Jim Tressel is being led into a room filled with men with guns. Reference: The Deer Hunter, for those not raised on watching scary Vietnam movies on Betamax.
From Mr2Cents, as usual.
Welcome. We're the rest of college football. Jim Tressel, we play this game now. You sit here. South Florida, sit over there. Three. No less, no more. Spin the barrels. Welcome to hell. You're number one? Nice. Spin the barrels anyway.
The preseason top ten? They were at this table, too. MAO! (Slap!) 16 losses between all of them. The consensus number one, USC? Lost to unranked Stanford. Spin the gun. Now! MAO! (Slap!) Favored by forty one points and they lost, sucker. You thought you stood a chance? LSU sat at this table, too, 'till they lost to Kentucky in three overtimes, stung by the first team that could pass effectively against six man blitzes. MAO! (Slap!)
Spin the barrels. MAO! Congrats. Number one gets to sit at the table. Quite a prize, no?
Louisville played the part of the Yugo: they started smoking early and often, losing to unranked teams until they spun wrong and ended up in the river. West Virginia couldn't handle South Florida.
I said put your money on the table, Tressel! What? You don't understand Vietnamese? MAO! (Slap!) Texas lost to an unranked. Florida lost to an unranked. Cal was in the chair for three seconds before they pulled the trigger and lost to to an unranked team.
You spin the barrels, sometimes you hear a click, and we all laugh and drink a little more mao tai and laugh like maniacs. Sometimes you hear boom, and we're laughing and grabbing the mop while you go talk to your ancestors and play your silly Yankee baseball in the sky forever. Either way, it's a hell of game for us. We just watch and point while you die.
MAO! (Slap!) Oklahoma was here, too, laughing all the way before they lost to an unranked team. Virginia Tech ran into a werewolf with a chainsaw for a dick and had to reboot on offense. You sure you want to be here? Because you know what happens when you play this game, right? One gun. One bullet. Spin.
Could be Michigan State. Could be Wisconsin. You don't know. Shoot! MAO! No one gets out of this shack alive. You get cocky, you look around, and all of sudden some unranked team is beating you with a bamboo cane. Ask anyone who was in this chair before. You play, you pay. Christ, we had Illinois in the top 25 for a hot minute there before they lost to--yup--unranked Iowa.
Now pick up the gun. MAO! Fun, eh? South Florida, your turn. This time, we do four bullets and Rutgers on Thursday.
MAO!
In this game, no one wins.