Football Counter-Programming 2025: Week 12--The Return of the Soup

 2009 me is nodding furiously right now.

And, that's . . . it for this week, I guess.

Except to say that it takes participation on your part to make a soup. You've got to gather the directions, read the recipe, prepare the ingredients, cook and stir, season and wait. 

And in the end, after you have make your choices and done your job . . . you get delicious soup.

None of that happens when you watch college football.

It's entirely passive. And you are the passive one. You sit and watch. And nothing you shout or swear at the TV will make a difference. 

And you don't even get delicious soup at the end.

So, spend your time today making delicious soup and less time watching college football.

Football Counter-Programming 2025: Week 9--Change is Everything

Last night was the final football game for Jay's Senior Year. The band visited Dublin Scioto High School and it was a nice moment of symmetry. Four years ago (almost to the day), Eighth Grade Jay visited Dublin Scioto to perform the "Wild" show.

So, last night, you might say that their band experience came . . . "Full Circle" (an old head WNMB joke there).

It was an unexpected thing to notice as I pulled drum major podiums into the football stadium to walk past some very familiar red, wooden rectangular platforms. I immediately thought that these props looked like the red props that the Bluecoats used in their 2024 DCI Championship "Change is Everything" show. And sure enough, after asking a Bluecoat alumni who works on staff, it was confirmed.

(The Bluecoats--like other drum corps, probably--sell props and uniforms at the end of each season to boost income for the upcoming year.)

So, Lynda and I looked up the Dublin Scioto band show for 2025 on YouTube and discovered that it was called "The Knockout." (No . . . not that "The Knockout," but perhaps a close second.)

Here is a photo of last night's Scioto show from the sideline, showing the props in action.

 After the game was done and I was pulling the drum major podium back to the equipment trailers, I got some help from my pit crew friend Mark and we both got photos of each of us geeking out on some authentic DCI props.

And this, brings my band experience into a Full Circle moment as well.

I know that there are two more weeks of competitions before it is fully over. And I'll be helping with Bingo events into the future to help provide needed funding for the band program. But my high school band geek self met my adult band dad self last night, connected by a decades long love of the marching arts and DCI excellence.

It's been quite a ride the last decade with my kids and the adults and staff that make this band go forward each and every year. I've loved it!

But . . . remember. Today--if you watch college football (which you shouldn't!) the best and only thing to pay attention to are the marching bands. And, unfortunately, you're not going to see them on TV. So you might as well find something else to do.

I bet you need to vacuum your house. So do that!

Football Counter-Programming 2025: Week 7--Comparisons

Last week was the first Saturday off that I've had since the marching band season started in earnest. So I took advantage of it and didn't do much.

Unfortunately, part of that not doing much was NOT writing a Football Counter-Programming effort. (Though, I did write a tangential call to action post on Facebook encouraging people to think about the value of well-funded schools.)

More on THAT upcoming election issue in a separate post that I need to sit down and devote serious time and thought to, to make sure that it is written well. Not dashed off in the moment. Because it is important. And I want it to be meaningful.

But that is not what this is.

This is largely meaningless. And so is college football. 

(Sure, people are employed by it and all of that. But so is the tobacco industry. And both segments of industry have been given too much centrality and influence is the point I'm trying to make here. . . . each and every post.)

So . . . for the love of everything . . . if you smoke . . . STOP. Put your earned income to better things. (Like funding the community schools that actually try to do good in your world and make each one of us better, more informed, more connected citizens of the places where we live and work and love one another.)

And if you watch college football . . . STOP. It won't miss your attention. At least not until enough of us deprive it of our attention.

So, let's start this week.

Football Counter-Programming 2025--Week 5: Rest in Peace

Recently, Robert Redford died. 

I don't have a very strong connection to Redford. As a child, I remember him in Out of Africa and The Natural. I've seen his version of Jay Gatsby. I certainly know him as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Alexander Pierce. But he hasn't been a huge acting presence in my life.

I know that so many people revere him, however. And when anyone of notoriety dies, the social media posts light up with praise and remembrances.

I want to highlight an observation that I liked from one such remembrance--via The Ringer. It posits that Redford shaped a new late 1960s & 1970s version of the male archetype as an in between space transitioning from the midcentury male who "bends but never breaks" [I'll suggest Captain Steve (America) Rogers, who can get up, dust himself off, and do this all day.] and the 1980s muscle-head who never stops inflicting himself and his pain on his target. [Here I'll point to Tony "Iron Man" Stark, who is a thinking version of Rambo--someone who always has whatever he needs to inflict him action on the enemy.]

Redford never came off as someone who would happily take a punch. He was too pretty for that. And he wasn't the angriest man in the room either.

I'm not a fighter. So, I could never pattern myself after a tough guy--either one of the Greatest Generation or of the Last Action Hero genre. But we need different versions of male attitude and action these days. If I have to pick, I'll pick Redford I suppose.

But, whomever you pick, don't pick College Football on a Saturday.

Thanks and see you next week.

Football Counter-Programming 2025--Week 4: A Blast from the (Recent) Past

Now is the week where I play catch up and get retroactively upset about something that either

a. you didn't even know happened--and maybe don't care (until I try to convince you otherwise), or 

b. you did know that it happened, but you don't care because . . . well, it happened a while ago. 

Ed. note: It occurs to me as I create this justification structure that it is very similar to the whole counter-programming effort. Here I am trying to convince you not to do something that you are already committed to. And the only shot I have to make you care is to pull out all of the rhetorical flourishes and engagements that I can come up with to swerve you into my direction. Unfortunately, since I set aside time to write these diatribes in a very narrow window that usually buts up against the start of the Saturday noon kickoff . . . my skill level and my creativity are often not up to the task I put before myself.

Andbutso . . . what is this past moment that got my retroactively upset?

Take a look at the accompanying image for this post.

Is it helping?

Sure, Sam Neill played a paleontologist in the past. But that is not the past that I am referring to. Or it is only part of that past. Paleontologists study the far distant past, using the fossilized remains of dinosaurs (and other flora and fauna) to help us understand the complexities of evolution and the historical development of our world.

But again, I'm also more upset about the recent past.

Because . . . last weekend I watched a past episode of Netflix's Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. (Specifically the April 2025 Dinosaur episode.) 

And when I watch it, I got PISSED.

Mulaney's tongue-in-cheek premise was (paraphrased) . . . are we sure about dinosaurs?

Meaning . . . do we have the whole story of dinosaurs right? Because he made some jokes about how scientists think they evolved into birds now. And that some dinosaurs had feathers then. And just how accurate can those museum skeletons be anyway? Those types of jokes.

Funny enough. And I'm not here to get crotchety and demand that John do a better job of explaining the scientific method and how uncertainty and the willingness to be wrong is baked into good science. And to get also not get into the history of how generations of paleontologists did in fact, very much so, get dinosaurs wrong at first. And then science did its thing and fossil records were better analyzed. And then science itself got better at pretty much everything. So today's dinosaurs are probably (in my opinion) on pretty solid ground, theory wise.

Those sorts of Neil DeGrasse Tyson attitudes just get in the way of the funny jokes. I get that.

This is not what upset me.

Because, after the monologue, John as well as his first guests Conan O'Brien and Ayo Adebiri, took some live phone calls from the live April 2025 airing. And the SECOND caller was non other than Dr. Jack Horner, himself. Noted paleontologist and the inspiration of Sam Neill's Jurassic Park character pictured above.

The problem was the Mulaney and his guests DID NOT recognize Dr. Horner for who he was and though he was just some yokel Ph.D. paleontologist from Rock State University or something. Maybe they don't care and I'm sure they don't. But hell, they live and film in Hollywood. Couldn't SOMEONE on the staff have enough knowledge of recent film blockbusters to know who was calling and swerve the conversation into some joke trajectory that made sense? Rather than simply treating like any other scientist that they don't know.

Maybe it couldn't have happened in the moment of the phone conversation--which was pretty short and silly. So I get then why a off-stage production assistant couldn't talk to Mulaney's earpiece (?) and correct him. But the episode continued for anther 40ish minutes after the initial phone call and NO ONE figured out what had happened and didn't think to write up a cue card to get Mulaney to throw back to the earlier phone call with a bit more context?

Just a huge missed opportunity.

I'm still kind of upset about it.

But not as upset as YOU will be if you spend several hours of your Saturday watching college football.

Read a Michael Crichton book instead, why don't you?

And remember, your land-grant alma mater is desperately looking for enough funds to pay hard working scientists to keep doing quality research. The athletic department doesn't need any more of your help.

Until next week . . . remember also . . . that life finds a way.