Well, my worst nightmare is official. Yesterday the Big Ten and the PAC-12 officially announced that they will not be playing football this fall. I don’t necessarily agree with the decision being made this early as it seems like all the camps were running smoothly, but I understand that it was probably ultimately going to happen. But now I’m left asking myself what the absolute hell I’m going to be doing to pass time on Saturdays.

At least in college with football you had a reason to go out and drink some good adult beverages before either attempting to get into the stadium or find your way back to the bar (or your bed), but without the games it just seems like you should be finding information for the nearest AA meeting.

As a guy who has spent his last four years with the BEST (yes I said it) college game day experience above the Mason-Dixon Line in State College, PA, I can’t even imagine what is going to happen to my favorite small town in the shadow of Mount Nittany. Small towns like that all over the country rely so heavily on the foot traffic that comes with college football game days that it becomes hard to imagine a perfect world where all my favorite dive bars (s/o The Saloon) and local restaurants can stay afloat. I would like to think that myself and my group of friends have spent enough money at those bars to keep them firing, but you really just don’t know.

I truly, truly feel for the seniors returning to campus this year. The energy on a State College game day weekend Friday afternoon is something that you really feel in your bones and is something I can say I’ve never experienced elsewhere. Leaving class on a crisp September Friday afternoon, hearing the bell of Old Main, seeing the traffic starting to flood in down College Ave, you just get that feeling of something big on the horizon for the weekend. Waking up that Saturday like it’s Christmas morning every weekend, throwing on a good game day polo and getting the screwdrivers flowing by 9:30 a.m. is a tradition that I couldn’t imagine college without.

And don’t you dare even get me started on the White Out. Take it from Kirk Herbstriet; the college football world will miss that Saturday in November where Ohio State comes to get greeted by 110,000 people in a sea of white. Especially this year with Buckeyes’ QB Justin Fields making his first trip to Happy Valley since de-committing his senior year of HS, it would’ve really been a sight to see.

Where else have you ever seen the crowd noise so loud that Jim Harbaugh shit his khakis and called a timeout before THE FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME.

So now as I spend my Saturdays listening to incest-ridden SEC fans talk about how the Arkansas Razorbacks would beat any team in the Big Ten, I will leave you with this video that had me in chills for the entire 1:49. The wait until September 2021 (and Penn State’s trip to Auburn) begins now. We will miss you dearly Big Ten football, and we will miss salvaging our gambling weeks on a little PAC-12 after dark.

Follow me on Twitter so you can watch me bitch and moan the entire Fall.

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