Good morning Dubbers! I hope this bye week finds you happy and healthy. After a wild ride to begin the season, I think that we could all use a week off.
With the Buckeyes idle this week, I found myself remembering a pretty funny story from my Army days.
Back before every game was a national broadcast, you used to be in a bind if you lived out of market. So, EPSN devised this brilliant thing called Game Plan. We Boomers remember this plan well, but I'll summarize for our younger crowd. You subscribed week-to-week for $25/day and you got to watch all of the out-of-market games that ESPN/ABC had the broadcast rights for.
Needless to say, living in Alabama in the early 90s (and again later in the early 2000s) meant that I dropped $25/week on my cable bill.
It was during the '93 season (anyone remember Marlon Kerner blocking a FG against Wisconsin to preserve - gasp! - a 14-14 tie?!) that one of my roommates asked perhaps the most gullible question I've ever heard.
During commercial breaks, they rolled the scores thru because they didn't run advertisements. And, this fella saw that a team was not playing, but it was listed like this:
10 Alabama
Idle
With all of the sincerity in the world, this New Jersey native whom didn't watch college sports asked, "Who's Idle, I've never heard of them?"
Without missing a beat, I responded, "It's a small school in Texas, that's probably why you've never heard of them." And, it was on...
We ran with that joke, even inventing different trivia questions about them in our conversation. I don't remember all of them, but we were rolling. I do remember that we convinced him that "Idle" owned records like: most ties in a season and all-time, most shutouts, lowest defensive scoring average, most consecutive games without allowing a touchdown, most consecutive games without scoring a touchdown, and so on and so forth.
Lo and behold, he eventually saw more than one team on a bye week and asked how more than one team can be playing "Idle" at the same time. "Well, there's Idle State and Idle Tech." And, he bought it.
He grew suspicious of the story, and after a few weeks, he figured it out. And, I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that he was pretty pissed off that he was the butt of the joke for a while. But, I think he eventually got over it. Or, maybe he didn't, but either way it was a pretty good joke.
So, now it's your turn. Share a funny story, or better yet a solid gameday recipe. Main dish, appetizer, dessert, or drink - we don't discriminate. Just drop it in the comments Dubbers, this is your week.
Show us what you got!
Go Bucks!
Beat Idle!
