While we wait for the Alphabetical to digest, let us focus on one key sad moment from Saturday: the final game of Todd Reesing's career, the charismatic leader from the heartland who could discuss the critical evaluation of Russia's deep problems with crumbling infrastructure and a low savings rate in one breath while asking you if you'd like to help him drink box wine shirtless in the next.
Perhaps it is fitting that like all great heroes from Beowulf to DB Cooper, he go out in a blur of daring defeat. Leading 39-36 and with his team standing in their own endzone, Coach/Motivational Speaker Mark Mangino called a quarterback draw on third down, a doomed call easily ready by Mizzou's defenders, who sacked our future President for a game-aborting safety.
Cruel as it was, let its miserable failure, nor Mark Mangino's comments afterward--"Todd was brought down on that play as easily as his great-grandfather was seduced by syphilitic whores and the lure of gamblin'"--tarnish Reesing's status as the reigning king of Kansas quarterbacking. 11,194 yards, 90 TDs, and a 2-0 bowl record don't come easy when you're playing with the short end of the recruiting stick in the Big 12, and it doesn't get any easier when you stand a generous 6'0" in the loftiest of platform shoes, which you would probably wear when tearing up a dancefloor with someone's mother, because real greatness gives a fuck when it wants to, man.
So with that: we salute you, Todd Reesing, the mini-Jared Allen of highbrow/lowbrow Zesty Caucasian Livin'. College football will be poorer without you, and despite your valiant but futile on-field demise, you'll always have Kerry Meier catching a sleet-covered pass in 2008 to remember when the nights turn cold and not even your American flag jacket can keep life's chill from seeping into your jorts.
Au revoir, hop-passer, master scrambler, and cougar-tamer. You shall be missed.