Do you have a firm grasp on reality?
Football's offseason is when we ask ourselves the real questions. Here's how you can nail down the answer to that one - first, define the universe. Is it space and beyond, merely the perimeter of your personal world on earth encompassing your bedroom and wherever wander off to every day - or something in-between? You choose your arena.
Once you establish what the universe is, you are now equipped to answer the question - which is absolutely not, reality isn't real. None of us have benefit of ultimate truth to have a firm grasp on anything.
The only wisdom is knowing that we don't know shit - this is called a Socratic paradox and it sounds fancier in the original ancient Greek. Accepting you know nothing is knowing everything.
Perhaps you disagree, which is fine - you have the right to be wrong in whatever you have decided is your universe. Let's pivot; scroll to the image atop this article and stare at it for 10 seconds. This visual represents a snapshot in time.
This is your chance to squeeze reality a little harder - what took place moments before that photo was taken? Were you there? Was that real? Stare long enough and you'll spot this guy because of course he was there - he's always where cameras are pointing. Surrounding him are other cheering Ohio State fans. Something good just happened.
That's right. This glorious image you've deciphered didn't exist this morning. Here's the original.
Carnell Tate congratulates Jeremiah Smith following Ohio State's first score against Notre Dame during the College Football Playoff National Championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on January 20, 2025. © Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Touchdown, Buckeyes. Your grasp on reality is firm like an old man's handshake. The voice in your head told you that image was from the moment right after Jeremiah Smith ran a fake orbit route, caught a little swing pass from Will Howard and trotted into the end zone while wishing for peace to everyone on earth, except Notre Dame fans.
In reality, Carnell Tate was the first teammate to reach Jeremiah. The image atop this article includes no photographers, security guards or ballboys in it. The real photo has enough of those guys to form a human chain around the entire circumference of the field three dad bodies deep.
And that's not even Tate in the first image, it's Quinshon Judkins. This doesn't change the directional accuracy in capturing what the box score did on the night of the CFP Title Game. But the richness and reality of that moment, now memorialized atop an 11W article sure looks different.
Your eyes saw the image and your brain registered what you believed it was, but you probably didn't notice anything amiss despite the AI tool I used having no idea what to make of the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP stadium skin printed behind them, so it became awkward gibberish. Only AI could create a better image to pair with my writing.
Artificial Intelligence is notoriously weak at understanding the concept of fingers and toes, so that handshake - an imaginary fist bump in this case - became a tangled, 12-finger disaster. It's hard to grasp reality when you can't figure out what a hand is, so AI only tends to have moments of lucidity interspersed with confusion.
Which...that's us too! Hold that thought - let's ask Google's AI Gemini about the SEC chant:
Facts Only. via Google
Moments of lucidity interspersed with confusion. Let's peel back the layers here -
The "SEC Chant" is a chant performed by fans of Ohio State after a win against a Southeastern Conference (SEC) school.
VERDICT: Slaps true. We have recent auditory proof of this happening twice in the past two months alone. It feels safe to say reality suggests the SEC Chant belongs to Ohio State fans.
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American collegiate athletic association.
VERDICT: Also true.
The "SEC Chant" is performed by Ohio State fans after a win against an SEC school.
VERDICT: Repetitive, but so are sentient humans. Sentient machines are just imitating us - we love to hear ourselves talk, and even better, we love to say things that warm our cold hearts. True again.
A chant is a simple song or melody, often with several words or syllables assigned to one note.
VERDICT: Intransitive verb: to make melodic sounds with the voice; to recite something in a monotonous, repetitive tone. Yup, that's a chant. AI on an absolute heater here, True.
Football chants are sometimes based on hymns. For example, "Cwm Rhondda" has been used to create songs like "You're not singing anymore" and "We support our local team."
VERDICT: True, but kind of a weird pull by our AI friend. Cwm Rhondda was written by John Hughes (not that John Hughes) in 1907, which makes it only a few months younger than Carmen Ohio. That would have been a stronger reference, but admittedly my grasp of reality was shaped by Ohio, not Wales. I'm informed by my own biases, same as you with yours.
To sum it up - no lies detected here whatsoever. AI defines its universe, and at present its reality suggests chanting S-E-C is something Buckeye fans do in the 2nd quarter of games against the Tennessee Volunteers which everyone reading this should understand to be true. It turns out sentient machines can be just as myopic as their inventors.
And myopia why it's safe to believe no one has a firm grasp on reality. No one knows anything. Michigan fans at present are actively diminishing Ohio State's national championship because the Buckeyes' path to the title didn't include a conference championship.
It's true. Ohio State did not win the B1G. It did not win Gold Pants, either. It did win, no condescending quotation marks, the Natty and that is not sitting well with the Buckeyes' myopic rivals.
Getting really tired of hearing OSU fans squawking about their "Natty" even though they lost The Game and did not even win their conference? Well, we have you covered. At least, we have your torso covered...#GoBlue
— ForeverGameday (@ForeverGameday) January 29, 2025
#4-0#ForeverGameDay
America is the greatest country on earth because you can still print championship-referencing tee-shirts after a five-loss season that ended in something call the ReliaQuest Bowl without going to jail or getting sued for libel (finnicky Michigan lawyers might take exception to that M, but they've been too busy lately - hold that thought too).
Hopefully this shirt, which basically says I Am Not Mad, Don't You Dare Say I Am Mad will age very well, because aging poorly would require Michigan to become one of four-ish B1G teams who get into the CFP without winning a conference title before Pulling An Ohio State and masterfully transforming four top-10 college football teams into ceremonial diaper wipes covered with confetti.
No one wants to see that happen. And besides, fans of a program aggressively fighting the NCAA over how it's prosecuting a systemic cheating scandal should probably focus on their own reality. Michigan diminishing anyone else's national title? Every accusation from Ann Arbor is a confession in our reality.
Disparaging a natty run which didn't accompany a series of coaching suspensions, abrupt terminations and resignations - or 137 pages' worth of billable hours - is a special kind of salt the ocean has probably never held. Realities are always twisting and taking on new shapes. This is a new one for our universe.
We're just waiting for a righteous hammer to come down on those losers. Everything they hold dear should have a devastating asterisk attached to it forever - or even better - every bit of it should be permanently vacated from legitimacy.
That level of punishment would deliver a reality that no one could ever deny. Not even reality-hating Michigan fans, who would try and fail to cope with having Very Real Wins vacated from the scrolls. Their three-year tainted run would be relegated from the universe.
Reality is whatever you want it to be. via
But that all depends on how anyone defines the universe. You get to choose if it's infinite space and beyond, merely the perimeter of your personal world which encompasses your bedroom and wherever wander off to every day - or something in-between.
Perhaps it includes Ohio State's vacated 2010 season. Mine does, and that's all that matters to me.
The universe and all of the reality attached to it should definitely should include the entirety of the 2024 College Football Playoff, because that definitely happened. Jeremiah scored several touchdowns, as did Quinshon. Those moments exist on video, in print and embedded in our memory stores.
Reality is whatever you decide it should be. Personally, I wish Ohio State would have played Michigan in 2024. It would have made the natty just that much more special.
