Earlier this week, the Department of Justice and the FBI finally fulfilled the mission that they were both created for: to investigate and take down bribery in a largely foreign sporting organization.
That's glib, especially since the craziness that is the current FIFA mess goes far beyond simple charges of corruption and being jerks and whatnot. We're talking about bribery and graft on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars, and a rigged voting system that gave the World Cup to two at least semi-despotic regimes in a row, the latter of which (Qatar), has begun construction projects involving what amounts to slave labor and the potential deaths of thousands of workers.
Last year Fifa spent around $27m on a Zurich hotel. Between 2011-2014 it spent $13m on women's football development.
— Joe Hall (@joehallwords) May 29, 2015
So, you know, screw these guys. There really isn't anything more entertaining than the long arm of the law taking out snooty rich business suit wearing elitists with extreme prejudice. And to do it using the RICO statute, which is generally reserved for organized crime, is just the icing on the cake.
I enjoy a good, socially responsible game of footy myself, and as a result am greatly pleased at both the prospect (however unlikely) of Sepp Blatter and his cronies sobbing themselves to sleep in Federal prison, and the chance to for once feel superior about my college football fandom over other flavors of sport.
That's naive though. I was writing for Eleven Warriors during the whole Tressel scandal, and I spent the better part of that spring and summer dissecting the implications of him lying to the NCAA, and then trying to figure out what came next after we found out that those implications meant that his ass was fired. My point is that no one is immune from doing dumb stuff and then getting investigated/busted for said dumb stuff.
So for once, let's get ahead of the game. Here are a few of the major figures in college football, and how I expect them to get nabbed in the future. This is all hypothetical, of course, but when it happens look for my exclusive interview with Geraldo in August.
Nick Saban
Nick Saban, the diminutive, perfectly coiffed God of Tuscaloosa, is seemingly above all suspicion and inquiry. Except a crap ton of secondary violations, but pot, kettle, black, etc.
No, what will take down Nick Saban is his insatiable need to control the hydroelectric resources near his summer home by Lake Burton in Georgia. As one of the primary sources of hydroelectric energy in the Peach State, it's administered by Georgia Power, which itself has its headquarters in Atlanta, on Ralph McGill Boulevard downtown. Ralph McGill was a writer for the Atlanta Constitution who went to Vanderbilt, which is, you guessed it, an SEC school. The very same conference that Nick Saban is currently a head coach in.
I'm not saying that Nick Saban is using his SEC connections to manipulate the regulatory system that administers the power generate by the lake by his summer home so that he can run a vast network of cell phones that send out automated text messages to every four and five star high school recruit on the hour, every hour. I can't confirm that he has a vast data mining operation with entire servers devoted to the task of determining the least litigious way to tell a kid they've been greyshirted for the second year in a row. I would never insinuate that there's an experimental new leg-lengthening procedure that Saban might require a dam's worth of energy to power.
That'd be crazy. Until it happened.
Jim Delany
Oh man, Ol' Jimbo is going down.
It's going to make me very sad when it happens, because the large amount of stupid, misguided things he's done is largely balanced out by the equally large amount of stupid, misguided things he's done that somehow ended up working out okay. I mean, launching the Big Ten Network at exactly the moment that Big Ten football became completely unwatchable outside of Ohio State takes a certain amount of cojones that I don't think that I'll ever be able to muster in real life. And now the conference rakes in cash hand over fist from it!
Anyway, I see Delany as we know him as being a carefully constructed persona, a front if you will, for a hard core cock fighting enthusiast. Yes, during media days he gets up on a podium in Chicago and drones on and on about God knows what while wearing the blandest suits money can buy, but as soon as he's home, off come the Farah slacks and on come the overalls as he trains Senor Peckington in the fine art of mortal combat.
He'll get busted just as he achieves his greatest achievement, a victory on the Dakota Crusierweight Circuit.
Mark Emmert
Will escape all scrutiny until the age of 98, when someone uncovers a horrific secret that would've been really helpful to know about thirty years or so before that.
ESPN
The big dog, top cheese, el numero uno, whatever. All things must come to an end, including The Network's hegemony over all sports, not just college football.
Here's how I see it happening, in timeline format:
- Spring 2016: Bob Ley retires. Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith now in charge of all investigative reporting.
- Fall 2016: "Mike and Mike" becomes "Mike and Mike and Mike and Molly Big Bang Broke Girls CSI: Cyber" as the orginial Mike and Mikes attempt to assimilate the blandest parts of America media into one blindingly mind-numbing radio show.
- Winter 2017: "Mike and Mike and Mike and Molly Big Bang Broke Girls CSI: Cyber" is cancelled after Colin Cowherd destroys the set in a fit of jealousy and rage.
- Fall 2017: Scott Van Pelt goes missing. Is later found in makeshift labratory with a vial of Chris Berman's blood and a crude cloning machine.
- Winter 2018: Brtistol, Connecticut is overrun with hideous monsters that look like a cross between a sweaty, paunchy man and a really condescending accounts recievable manager. The monsters continually screech "BACKBACKBACKBACKBACKWOOOOOPWOOOOOPBACKBACKBACKBACK" and can only be killed by asking them to explain the importance of Tom Brady to the NFL.
- Summer 2018: The X Games are held. No one notices.
- Fall 2019: All shows on ESPN are condensed into a single, nonstop feed of the Philly Phanatic sobbing quietly into its hands while sitting on the rubble of what used to be the set of First Take. Ratings are not effected.
- Spring 2021: Bill Simmons returns, relases a 30 for 30 documentary called "Aiming For The Head: How ESPN Fought Off Mutants and Tribal Warlords to Maintain the Boradcasting Rights to the World Series Of Poker."
- Winter 2022: ESPN is bought out by Boeing, which will use the Bristol campus as a storage site for various radioactive materials and hazardous wastes they can't find suitable storage places for.
- Spring 2022: Mutant Mike and Mutant Mike resume their show on the glowing debris that once was their set. First guest of the new show is Kevin James, who is promoting "Paul Blart 5: Blart Back In Time."
And that's it! Valar morghulis, even the ones that you think never will. Sepp Blatter and his cronies have retained their power, for now. Until I saw the Big Ten rise up and thrust their dagger into the SEC last bowl season, I might not have believed. But now I do. Anything can happen.
