They almost got away with it.
"Oh, don't even bother with Big Ten Media Days," they said. "Same ol' thing, you know the drill, 'We're good, but need to get better,' 'We expect contributions from our new guys and for our veterans to step up their leadership,' 'Lots of challenges but in a few weeks we'll be where we expect to be,' blah blah blah. Don't even worry about it."
Little did we know that this was just the narrative being pushed by Jim Delany's goons: that Big Ten Media Days was just an excuse to ask bland questions about college football while players and coaches give bland answers during a particularly boring part of July. How very convenient that the Big Ten conference has full control of the audio and video of these events. How incredibly nice it must be for Jim that he is the unquestioned czar of the second or third most important college football conference in America, free to alter news and history as he wishes.
Oh, you're surprised? Don't be. Every second of precious video, audio, or text coming from the Big Ten conference has been gone over with a fine tooth comb before being released to the general public, all to present us with a narrative of a professional, well-run group of teams and coaches. Tape delay, white-out, paper shredders, cement shoes in the Hudson river... these are the impenetrable tools of an unstoppable propaganda machine.
Until today. My network of spies managed to infiltrate Big Ten Media Days and smuggled out what appear to be extremely real, authentic, and not fake documents detailing the actual transcripts of the coaches talking to the media. What follows is a small sampling of these documents, which I'm collectively labeling ChicagoHyattFootballCoachNotTrueGate.
PAT FITZGERALD
P.J. FLECK
LOVIE SMITH
MARK DANTONIO
KIRK FERENTZ
Yes, there is video, and yes, we spent a huge amount of time this week dissecting all the events going down in Chicago. But Eleven Warriors is nothing if not brave, and it's time that all of us stand up to the tyranny that is censorship and shine a light on the most important issues in college sports: is Chris Ash trying to pull a Talented Mr. Ripley on Urban Meyer? Does James Franklin realize how fine a line he walks between "cool" and "completely obnoxious?" Is Purdue real, or just a collective fever dream we can't wake up from?
I won't rest until all of these questions are answered. See you next week. And if you don't, avenge me.
