PIRATES OF THE GREAT LAKES

The MAC now has a battle flag. This is not a joke: The commissioner wants it flown after any MAC victory, even after MAC-on-MAC violence.

Considering that pirates never really go along anyway, this is fine, though its applications outside the conference feel like they have a lot more potential. Consider a map of territory claimed by the Pirates of the Great Lakes via out-of-conference conquests. Consider that even just using the MAC’s last five out-of-conference upsets against the Power 5 that is it both bigger and simultaneously more obscure than you imagined.

Anything with that map is either:

• A listing of the last remaining open K-Marts in America
• Exhibit D-20 in the Federal trial of a massive meat and meth smuggling ring
• A visual representation of America’s most toxic but beloved Superfund sites
• Wait it can’t be that, it doesn’t have the Berkeley Pit on it
• Locations of deeply unglamorous mob hits
• “Places I Have Shat Uncomfortably” by Spencer Hall

We need one, is what we’re saying. The flag, not a memoir of places we have shat uncomfortably. That story is written in our heart, authored by an ill-advised roadside oyster po’ boy purchase, and seared into the mind that only wants to forget but never, ever will.

By the way, there were actual Pirates of the Great Lakes — including one who was possibly the world’s only savage Mormon pirate, though even then he was probably pretty nice on a scale of both Mormons and pirates. I bring good news! YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE BOARDED, LANDLUBBER. If that’s alright with you? Just say yes, we’ll wait nicely.