WE ARE ALL GOING ON THE SPURRIER CRUISE

The celebrity cruise is a capital T Thing and has been for a moment. It is especially a thing for sportswriters for a lot of reasons, the foremost being “We get guaranteed access for at least a few minutes to our subject, and also get the company to plausibly pay for a cruise the journalist gets to go on.”

We’ve never done one because boats are not our idea of fun. They sink, for one. They’re on water, for one, and being on the water is deeply overrated in general.

Specifically, being in a cruise ship on the water is overrated. But you can drink and gamble and shop all day, and they have buffets! If that is your thing, they have all that in Las Vegas, and all available without the risk of sinking or being trapped on a ship during a norovirus outbreak. Poop ship nightmares are something we’d like to avoid at all costs; Never getting on a cruise ship seems to be a foolproof way of avoiding that.

Also most of the things associated with cruises? They’re all things we as Americans do every day anyway. Why would we pay money — like, a lot of money — to go on a boat and spend more money on overeating, buying things we don’t need, and gambling? Those are all things we can do on our couch, without the risk of Poop Ship Nightmare or Talking To Strangers With Sunburns. A cruise ship is just your lifestyle packed into a floating ecological disaster, and we don’t really want to try that unless it’s the only option available.

But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to try one.

Four nights, three days, one Head Ball Coach, all for the low price of $1,541 per person in double occupancy. The possibilities, as defined by the limited entertainment options on a cruise ship/floating luxury prison, are limitless.

• Play Laser Tag with the HBC as he gimps his way through a dark maze and tells everyone how he wasted Bobby Bowden in paintball once! Even though Bobby presents “A very low target to hit”!
• Get waxed at air hockey by the Ball Coach himself while he tells true tales of Dan Snyder’s outstanding corporate culture!
• Discover what casino games he’s not good at! (Our guess: Blackjack.)
• Find out who’s going because they just want to hang out with Spurrier, and which weird people are going as diehard Orlando Apollos fans! (Hint: That will be us, and three very strange dudes from Winter Park in cargo shorts.)
• Figure out the options after it turns out Spurrier thinks you are kind of creepy, and just wants to hang out

The cruise ship — the Mariner of the Seas — has an escape room, too. For those of us with a real fear of being trapped on a big ship with people we don’t know and doing things we don’t like anyway, the idea of someone putting a metaphor for the situation as an attraction located in the situation is bitterly funny.

Also, Spurrier’s getting us all out of the escape room with four playcalls and one pass protection audible, and if that won’t do it well, nothing will.