My mind has spent much of the last quarter century cataloguing the most exhaustive list of useless college football information — from random on-field happenings to various social media “Meme-ories” and other bits of jargon.
Whether it’s the sad Michigan band geek losing his mind after the Wolverines’ punter fumbled a snap, costing Jim Harbaugh his first ever win over the Michigan State Spartans, or Charles Woodson throwing up the “Heisman pose” back in the day — you can count on my dollar store Wikipedia of a brain to remember it all.
All of this is to say that I’ve spent an … unhealthy amount of time, let’s say … watching amateur football over the years, developing a childhood love of everything from the cadence of Keith Jackson’s molasses-smooth accent to the USC Trojans’ marching band’s rendition of the Fleetwood Mac classic, “Tusk.”
With that in mind, I’ve been stuck on a moment that happened on the four-letter network earlier this month in the run-up to Washington State’s Week 2 “upset” win over No. 19 Wisconsin in Pullman on Sept. 9.
For those that missed the moment I’m referencing, the ESPN crew that night pulled out their wayback machine to dig up an old pregame introduction that Jackson (who graduated from WSU) did when he was calling games for Disney’s magnum opus.
In it, Jackson poetically breaks down the charms of Washington’s eastern flank, setting the stage for another Saturday night at Martin Stadium the way only he could:
“When one is making their first trip into the Palouse country, it might be easy to ask out loud: ‘Where is everybody?’ Especially if you come from an urban region. Out here in the wheat land, it’s different. The air’s sweet. You can hear the birds’ song. And the natural process includes all the four seasons, with gusto.”
What ESPN’s crew did with that little ode to Jackson was twofold: One, it reminded the viewers that the Bristol-based fun bunch used to actually employ commentators that knew more than a Wikipedia length article’s amount about the places they visited each weekend.
Two: The Jackson intro reminded viewers that the days of the West’s collegiate conference were numbered — with the very region that Jackson waxed poetic about being one of the main victims of the network’s hit job.
A Modest Proposal For ESPN
While it’s too late for ESPN to pull the cat out of its proverbial bag and resurrect the Pac-12 the way a Vegas illusionist bedazzled in dollar store sequins would, there’s one small gesture the network can do for the very people that Jackson referenced above.
That would be for ESPN to send their premier pregame show, College GameDay, to Pullman for the second time ever — ahead of Saturday night’s showdown of the “Pac-2” of Wazzu and Oregon State.
Think about it: What better step could ESPN take to win the respect of their former elder statesman (RIP, Keith) than to bring the Beavers and Cougars to the nation’s conscience in the early morning hours of Saturday?
Also, Washington State and Oregon State are on a two-team rage room rampage across the West this season — with dueling 3-0 records that include victories over Colorado State, Wisconsin (Washington State) and San Diego State (Oregon State).
While the four-letter network has rewarded bedazzled insurance salesmen charlatans on Saturdays of late, it’s not too late for ESPN to pull a rabbit out of their collective hat and bring America into the heart of America’s bread basket.
Instead of rewarding some bloated program that produces America’s future mall cops (looking at you, Ohio State-Notre Dame), lets throw a bone to two programs that are fighting like hell to remain above water.
Lets reward coaches like Wazzu’s Jake Dickert — whose postgame interview with ESPN made me want to run through a damn wall.
It was an interview in which the former Wisconsin-Steven Point wideout made an impassioned plea to the nation at large about the Cougs’ place at the CFB dinner table.
“We belong in a Power Five [conference],” Dickert said. “We’re all we got, we’re all we need.”
It was a simple, 13-word declarative sentence that served as a warning shot to the rest of the country.
It also should serve as a siren song to whichever producer calls the shots now that Lee Fitting has been removed as GameDay’s head honcho.
It’s a song that should sound quite similar to the poetic magic that Jackson dropped way back when, about the lure of the Palouse.
Now it’s time for ESPN’s Saturday morning pregame show to follow the sport’s eminent emcee westward, to the hamlet of Pullman, where the air is sweet and the football is fine.