Animal House is a very good movie for a lot of reasons. One, John Belushi smashes the absolute hell out of a Douchey Guitar Bro's love mandolin, a moment that has caused college freshman to silently pump a fist in victory for (Jesus, really?) 37 years now. Two, dead horse. Three, Germans, Pearl Harbor, etc.
But four, Kevin Bacon getting run over, is probably the single moment in that movie that sticks in my brain most vividly. His progressively screechy insistence that ALL IS WELL when all is most definitely not well tickles me just right; him getting trampled into a pancake by a panicy mob is exactly the kind of outcome an avowed pessimist like me salivates over.
Here's an example of said pessimism:
i refuse to believe anything positive about this game until the clock reads 0:00
— Johnny (@Johnny11W) January 13, 2015
I made that tweet with approximately six minutes left in the National Championship game, with the Ohio State Buckeyes leading by an (in hindsight) obviously insurmountable lead. Logic would've told me that Marcus Mariota hadn't been getting anything done all night and that literally nothing short of a couple A-10 Warthogs could've stopped Ohio State on offense at that point, and an Ohio State win was all but certain.
But negativity is like a nice warm blanket made up of hedged bets, so if you're a wuss like me you'll cling to it until the last possible second. But then we won! And I celebrated and was happy and it all worked out. Did I feel a little jealous of the people who repeatedly insisted on Ohio State victories all throughout the postseason? Yeah, especially when literal witch DJ Byrnes eerily kept predicting OSU blowout wins, but my completely befuddled pessimism kept me protected behind a wall of cowardice for the entirety of the playoffs.
In other words, everything sucked until it didn't. I wish that I had the guts to handle it differently, but today I'm here to tell you that while as fans that's admittedly not an ideal way to handle being a fan of something, it is exactly the kind of attitude that you want to see out of the people in charge or whatever organization you happen to root for.
Earlier this week, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said this about his quarterbacks:
Kelly said per BlueandGold.com. “I would take our two over Ohio State’s, but in terms of depth, I don’t know that anybody has a better situation than we do with the two quarterbacks that we have.”
Dang that's some tasty optimism right there. His two QBs that anyone has seen anything from, Everett Golson and Malik Zaire, have together built up a resume that could be called... okay? Zaire has all of one start, and Golson, who put up decent numbers in 2014 after coming off a yearlong suspension is maybe the statistical equal of J.T. Barrett? Also that's assuming you ignore rushing numbers and overall turnovers.
But for the sake of argument, let's say Golson and Barrett were about equal in 2014. That means Zaire is looking at an overall comparison to Braxton Miller and Cardale Jones combined, which... I mean...
It kind of falls apart. Obviously. So why even say it? Why would Brian Kelly even throw out some silly hyperbole that just ten seconds of thought from noted internet dingus Johnny Ginter can destroy?
My hot take on this is that sometimes people want something to be true so badly that they're willing to ignore reality in the hopes that it will eventually become fact. Brian Kelly has dramatically improved the Irish over the last several years, but given how bad they were before he took over, all that means is he's elevated them to solid "tier 2" status. Kelly knows that if he wants to throw purple-faced temper tantrums in a national championship game that he actually has a shot at winning, he needs a transcendent talent at QB.
Since Ohio State has three of those, then by the grace of a stern Catholic God his two guys are just as good, if not better. Even if they're not.
Another example of this is Michigan's hilariously sad ticket situation.
The University of Michigan football program has for years proudly extolled its streak of 100,000-plus crowds at Michigan Stadium games, which is at 258, but preserving that mark last season required an enormous number of complimentary tickets.
While comp tickets aren't a new thing at Michigan, the practice ballooned during the 2014 season, particularly in the final home game against Maryland, when nearly 17,000 free tickets were distributed. That counted toward the final attendance of 101,717, the sparsest crowd at the Big House since 100,862 saw Michigan play Memphis in 1995.
Michigan football is as relevant as it's always been, folks! Look how many people come to our games, week in and week out! Clearly the Big House remains the hallowed shrine to collegiate football that we claim it is, and not a literal pit filled with disinterested co-eds stuffing their faces with bear claws, 87 year old grandmas with lifetime seats willed to them by the estate of Fielding Yost, and the pervasive stink of malaise.
College football attendance in general is going down, but some schools (like Ohio State) have been largely immune from that downturn. Mostly because they've been very good. Michigan has not, but they still pretend that they're as good as ever to hopefully force it to be true. Which is why they're giving thousands of tickets away and counting all sentient mammals within the Big House as paying customers.
Luckily for us, that is not how Urban Meyer does things.
Meyer has what I like to call "functional pessimism." Instead of looking at something bad and pretending it's great, he takes pains to temper enthusiasm for his team until the exact moment when he thinks a tiny ray of optimism might be needed. One major example of this was his near constant fury at the overall crappiness of the wide receiving corps for several years; he wasn't wrong, but it was even more important for Meyer to point out to the public that he was aware of their failings and was working to fix it. When they finally became an offensive strength, he then went out of his way to make sure that credit was due to the players that deserved it.
Spring ball is another great example. A typical post-practice press conference in the spring reveals his attitude of the team to usually be somewhere between "meh" and "I hate these guys." Which is perfect, especially after a national championship winning season.
Because Urban Meyer knows that the key to continual improvement means never being satisfied with what you've accomplished. If you want to be a great team at the end of a season, you need to start it out by humbling yourself and looking for ways to improve. That kind of self-reflection is often times difficult for 19 and 20 year olds to figure out on their own, so... they suck. At least for the spring and most of fall camp. Later, when his team has won some games and proven themselves, the praise will come out. But not until then.
"All is well" can be a very dangerous phrase. Luckily the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes doesn't seem to have it in his vocabulary.
