scha·den·freu·de
| satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune. |
On This Week In Schadenfreude we explore the sputtering rage, gibbering condemnation, and resigned ennui of the college football fan who has recently undergone humiliating defeat. Because even in your darkest hour, someone else is suffering too, and probably worse than you. Unless you are a Michigan fan who has just finished watching the Appalachian State game.
TWIS usually focuses on the violent emotions of the big-money teams in college football, since there are so many of them and to be really truly bats about a football team it helps if you've paid thousands of dollars and been repaid only in pain. But sometimes the agony of the little man cannot be denied, especially when you lose to Eastern Michigan.
Bowling Green did that last weekend, and the Futon Report says "That's the Worst Thing Ever" and responds thusly:
BGSU, you are the Tears of Unfathomable Sadness award recipient.
The rest of the week in spleen after the jump.
| BIG TEN |
| Michigan... yeesh. Twenty-five point home losses to Illinois are a great honeymoon cure. Or cause for whatever this is: This man, "MichiganManiac5594," doesn't seem maniacal, precisely, but maybe that's because he's trapped in an 80s music video. BEAT THEM WITH A WRENCH IT'S WRENCH FIGHT TIME. Spawn of MZone goes right for the jugular, capturing Rodriguez's Eight Faces of Pain. This one is my personal favorite:  But all that is just run of the mill awful brought on by a coaching transition and bler bler bler. This was the true Lovecraftian tentacle god horror of the weekend:
Michigan football: it's a great time to get some reading done. |
| PAC 10 |
|
Does anyone remember when Tyrone Willingham was taking Stanford to bowls and so forth and so on? Isn't that weird? I was terrified when Notre Dame hired him. |
| USC righted the ship against Oregon like whoah, splattering the Ducks 44-10. There are your requisite calls for the DC's head, complete with cute nicknames like "Allow-a-lotti" and then... uh... this: ...in prep for the upcoming UCLA-Oregon game, no doubt. |
| SEC |
| Vanderbilt is 5-0 and that is delivering massive amounts of freude directly into the veins of all who hate flailing SEC teams. The latest 'Dore victim is offense-less Auburn, now flailing about under the "direction" of Tony Franklin, except it's really Tommy Tuberville with his hand up Franklin's back making the gums move. Don't tell that to the restless, though. Herewith we present perhaps the greatest headline in TWIS history: In three words and one mathematical symbol, this man has summed up every complaint ever uttered on the internet. Running on third and long=DEATH. The BCS=DEATH. Attempting to predict anything Maryland does=DEATH. |
| Of course, when you beat Northern Illinois 13-9, you've sort of lost even when you haven't. Result? Running backs speaking pterodactyl and Tennessee blogs looking towards Nashville enviously:
Rocky Top Talk, for its part, is sliding ever closer to the spittle-flecked ragepost I know is coming:
Seriously, guys, just get it out. It's going to feel great. |
| BIG EAST |
| Syracuse 0, Bye Week 45. Crying child? Redacted, unfortunately. |
| With South Florida's demise went any hope the Big East would field a representative in the national championship game, and Pitt took the opportunity to rub it in: I'm sure the Pitt players were being serenaded with polite requests to please stop running LeSean McCoy down USF's collective throat; their outbursts are completely unacceptable. Nothing so rude has happened in bucolic Tampa Bay ever before. |
| BIG TWELVE |
| You'd better believe the downtrodden members of the Big 12 who experienced merciless beating after merciless beating from Nebraska in the olden days are enjoying their reign over the newly inept 'Huskers. Here's a sign from Missouri's latest epic beating:  BONUS: this is becoming something of a tradition. |
| ACC |
| Attempting to predict what Maryland will do is the prognosticatory equivalent of an MC Escher painting, all impossible angles and men walking out of the ceiling and infinite surface areas and HOLY HELL YOU LOST TO VIRGINIA 31-0. As you might imagine, this is taxing: No, that is not the fun of it, the fun of it is keeping your head from exploding. |
