Nerdosity at its finest

I have to say that I don’t exactly appreciate the fact that every game/mehmet you mentioned where my team was involved featured something horribly painful and anger-inducing happening to my beloved Stinky Pinkies/Shockers. Although I did appreciate your sidenote of props for the two years where a Chad Hendrix-led squad of Shockers defeated the Delta Queens. Okay, first of all, I will comment on any of your awards in which one of my teams participated.

Now, that Clemson game was about the best example (outside of NHL 2001) of a "no fucking way" game that you can get. The CPU absolutely refused to let me win that game. Coupla things about it though: the game was double-OT, not triple, with the extra periods playing out like this: OT1: Clemson gets the ball and scores a TD in two plays; I methodically score a TD, because everything I had to do with that team was methodical, because that was year 1 of the dynasty, the only year I had terrible black QB Mark Montgomery (who graduated and made way for the next year’s Heisman winner Marquis Santos) and my receivers were terrible. OT2: I get the ball first, and on the second play from scrimmage, my RB fumbles and Clemson returns it 82 yards for a TD. Game over, 48-42. Oh yeah, and that first year, we all had black QBs with big white backups who wore #16 (mine being the aforementioned Santos). Warrants mentioning.

That Delta Queen/Shocker matchup was from that same season, the first year of the dynasty, and you’re right, I was hepta-furious. Each team scored on every possession, and they were all like 4:00, 80-yard drives. It’s 28-21 Shockers, and Todd scores with like :20 left. He goes for two, and just runs like a dive up the middle, around which the Pinky D swarmed like Sean at a Jenny Craig convention. It sure as hell doesn’t look like he got in. But the official’s arms go up in the air anyways, as Todd apparently pulled a 1998 Vinny Testaverde and made the refs think his (glaring white) helmet was the ball crossing the goal line. The Shockers would go on to pummel the Man-Boy Love (the same day I took the LSAT) and win their bowl game, finishing 10-2 with just about the two most painful losses imaginable. But yeah, after that game against Todd, I was so angry that it was embarrassing. The MFIESADAVGL Award is, in this case, richly deserved (unless we’re counting Bond, where there were clearly some Chris Wakefield reactions that exceedingly outdid my wall-punching).

Ah, the origin of the Merlin Ball. Not good times. The only thing I’d say is, it was against Virginia Tech in the national title game, and not USC (and Lee Suggs in that version of the game was like Bo Jackson 0.9. Plus, he was inexplicably white. Now THAT was good times). I’d have been 18 times as angry about this if I hadn’t ended up winning the game anyway, stuffing the Pokies on 4th-and-inches at my 15.

The only other game I can think of to bring up is my battle with Auburn in the first season of the ‘04 game, the first year where the Flutists and the Squirts joined the party. The Shockers started out down 14-0 right away, and slowly crawled back (I was running the Flex Bone and all my RBs and my QB were slow) to a 14-14 tie with about 2:00 left. Auburn went into "no fucking way" mode, moving down the field in 15-yard chunks until they scored with about :20 left. 21-14. I received the kickoff and returned it out to the 24. But wait: clipping on the Shockers. We’re at our 11-yard line with 13 seconds left. Hail Mary gets us across midfield. We use our last TO - there’s 5 seconds left and we and run the shotgun-5 wide Hail Mary play again, and holy shit, there’s a guy open up along the left sideline. He hauls it in right at the goal line and gets tackled into the endzone the moment he catches it. Bingo. The OT was a foregone conclusion after that, as 2PooU punched it in on their possession and Auburn was all out of fight and folded up like Evan after a $1.00 raise. 28-21 Shockers. And there was much rejoicing.