"Why do you sit there like that?
I know it is wet, and the sun is not sunny.
But we can have lots of good fun that is funny!"
-Woody Hayes
If I had a nickel for every time I read some permutation of "Holy geez the offseason, man. Right? Am I right?" from the months of February through the middle of August, I would have approximately 350 nickles, which is 17 dollars and 50 cents, and is coincidentally the same amount of money that you'll need to chase the offseason blues away (shipping and handling not included)!
No friends, it's not a coma-inducing drug, or a rubber mallet that you can knock yourself out with, or the amount it costs to hire a mean-looking Russian to hit you over the head with a vodka bottle. Quit trying to avoid your problems by losing consciousness for seven months! Induced comas are a short-term solution at best, and until we fully develop the suspended animation technology necessary to eliminate the concept of offseasons altogether, you're stuck looping YouTube clips of Ezekiel Elliott highlights and sighing wistfully into the ether.
Or you were, until I spent the better part of the last two nights cobbling together what is surely the greatest board game since the Happy Days themed version of Settlers of Catan.
You start in March Badness. Trudging on through the banality of an NIT tournament run, you are briefly cheered by Fake Football April, where the possibility of an entertaining Spring Game gives way to the reality that the Spring Game has never been entertaining. In Baseball's May Mirage, you have a brief flirtation with AMERICA'S FAVORITE PASTIME before your team goes on a 12 game losing streak and you completely ignore their subsequent 120 games. Moving on, you find yourself embroiled in Hot Take June Hell, alienating friends and family alike with your repeated insistence on Facebook and Twitter that Urban Meyer is probably a cool dad, Brutus Buckeye's likely weak OHP is more than made up for with his excellent deadlift, and how uncomfortable you are with the amount of tattoos on Kids These Days. Almost without knowing it, you've entered Complete Denial July, where your offseason-addled brain has convinced itself that you can function without three to nine hours a week of college football. In reality though, you are a barely living husk of a person, and when you are just about to collapse, hark! A Brutus on high, here to deliver you to fall camp as you exclaim "Am I Dead? Is This Heaven? Or Is It August?"
Of course, this game wouldn't be nearly as exciting without a few complications. To that end, every time you land on a space with a black dot, you must draw a card, each of which carries one of many exciting events that might either help or hurt you. Some examples:
All in all, I can't recommend "Surviving the Offseason" enough. Not just because I made it, but because we're all slowly going insane and God knows that we need something to keep the angries away for the next several months.
