This Week In Schadenfreude: Little Man Agonistes

scha·den·freu·de

/ˈʃɑd
nˌfrɔɪ
/
-noun
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

[Origin: 1890-95; < G, equiv. to Schaden harm + Freude joy
]

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:

Perhaps the most horrifying spectacle was the woman who sat one row in front of me. She was older, in her 70s, I'd guess. And for nearly the entire game, before the game, during the game, during plays, while touchdowns were being scored...she sat there reading a f---ing romance novel. @#%^#%^$#%^#$%^@#$%^$%^^%$#%#$%&$%%&^$#%. Are you KIDDING me? You're at a FOOTBALL GAME, YOU MANIAC. If you want to read Through My Eyes by Barbara Delinsky, STAY HOME!!!

Michigan football: it's a great time to get some reading done.

PAC 10


It's time to check in on Washington message boards again after their 48-14 loss to Arizona. There are threads on the worst Pac-10 teams of all time, comparisons of the Willingham era to the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross death thing, and an epic thread about Washington's upcoming humiliation against Oregon State, which will be their fifth consecutive.

Dawgs are taking it well:

This post really says it all


Oregon freaking State rightfully expects to cruise to its fifth consecutive win over washington.

five in a row...at home...OSU...shotgun to my face...

we have entered hell.........

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:

Belllotti is Neuweasel's gimp

...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:

Tony Franklin=DEATH

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.


Tennessee actually won this weekend but they've already trapped in a Schadenfreude Spiral, where the flailing death throes of a scorned regime produce little bursts of the freude even when the team doesn't actually lose. UCLA underwent this procedure last year, and you'll get a heaping dose of it from Washington fans if, you know, Washington wins this year.

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:

We're 5-0! We beat Auburn! I'm so unbelievably glad that this is a Vandy blog that stresses how awesome Vandy football is! It'd suck to be a Tennessee blog right now, wouldn't it??

Rocky Top Talk, for its part, is sliding ever closer to the spittle-flecked ragepost I know is coming:

Just how many catastrophes does the team need to endure before a change is actually made? Seriously. I really can't get a handle on this. ... To change, we need to experience disaster after disaster even though college football season leaves no time for such hard lessons to do their work. We do not learn from near misses.

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:

Three incidents occurred last night in the student section:
1) Towards the end of warm-ups, one of Pitt's athletic assistants decided to shout back at the students. "You all probably scored an 800 on your SAT and were to [sic. also, lol] dumb to go to any other school."
2) It's one thing after a big win for the opposing players to do the "shh" finger to the students or a little back taunting, but for some of them to come over and find specific students and cuss them out is unbelievable. "I don't hear your sh** now, dis our house mother f***er. Kiss my a**".
3) Then to top it all off, Dave Wandstat (sp?) leaves the field after the game with a big smile on his face, giving the bulls horns to the student section.

Stay classy Tampa, Pitt has none. [also sic, also lol]

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:

Wake Forest comes into College Park in two weeks, and they will probably be ranked. Which means we'll win. Or put up a good fight. Or get bulldozed. Who the hell knows? Isn't that the fun of it? The answer is of course no. Just hope it isn't option 3 and the Hyde version of Maryland keeps Jekyll locked firmly in the trunk.

Otherwise it's going to be a mighty long season from here on in.

No, that is not the fun of it, the fun of it is keeping your head from exploding.

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