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Time Traveler here. Greetings from the future!
"Calm Before the Storm"? Yet that's what the historians of the Preciferous Era (your 65th century) called it. "Calm"? When I did my research, I found that those historians were simply using a little comparative analogy. But that's exactly what they termed the early portion of the 2020 football season before the Big Ten's Ohio State entered the fray in less than one of your weeks!
I nevertheless wondered why a phrase like that would be used in a year for your planet that saw such an upheaval of...normal. I mean, besides the virus and all the things an election year would drag with it, your world was anything but "calm". And the early college football season and its games were no exception!
Who would have thought that the reigning champions would sit at 1-2 to start the year? Who would have guessed that chaos would rule throughout the football landscape, that an Oklahoma match-up with Texas would already smell like sauerkraut left in the sun for a week...before they had ever taken a snap? And then to see that game play out in a quadruple overtime thriller? From a little Louisiana punching #23 Iowa State in the mouth, or an Arkansas State embarrassing Kansas State, the season to that point should have been called anything but "calm", right?
The single thing of relative calm to date in that 2020 season had been the absolute dominance of the only big fish in its personal little pond...Clemson bullying its way through its frail and undersized sisters of the ACC.
So imagine my confusion when I uncovered these ancient scrolls from what was termed the "Golden Buckeye Era"! The words of those historians were used to compare what was to what was to come. When they had fully analyzed what the 2020 Buckeyes would bring to the football table, the comparison was deemed appropriate and apt. It would start with the husking of "best friends forever" Nebraska. It was an unsettling victory, to be sure. Unsettling not to the Buckeye nation, but to the powers in college football and their fans. Unsettling because of the intensity and determination in which the team administered a simple loss to its opponent, underscored by the ferocity that was unleashed in real time...a recipe that cooked well throughout the year.
Some writers, even of your day, would describe it as "the perfect storm"...a team of national consequence getting a few extra weeks of strategic preparation with talent already judged to be at the top of the sport. This team was able to witness the failures of similarly talented teams who won with less aplomb or lost to lesser opponents. By the time they took the field at Ohio Stadium, the landscape was already littered with the corpses and dying gasps of the "might have been's".
But the Buckeyes were prepared to deliver. And deliver they did.
Fortunately, the Buckeye coaching staff was also a "perfect storm" accumulation of some of the finest minds in the sport, with probably the hippest video and promo team in all the land ("best damn" some suggested).
When this killing machine was triggered on October 24th, the collective college football world of 2020, with all its upset drama and crazy finishes, was rightly relegated back to..."calm". The Storm had finally arrived. And it did not disappoint.
For those who feared some mid-season collapse against an Indiana, or a struggle against a talented Penn State, they would see those fears allayed. The Storm would not abate, and would force future opponents to peer out their windows and tremble at the gathering darkness.
The game with the rival to the north would be satisfying once again, as that particular demolition never got old. Yet this year it would also be a little sad. More than a few Buckeye fans would eventually send letters of support for Jim Harbaugh after the "hang a hundred" was finished. Simmering rumors of a possibly un-renewed contract running out in under two years was a cause for some concern, as Buckeye fans had come to appreciate the lovable antics of the Wolverweenie coach.
Sports writers of your day will soon uncover a quiet plot from Harbaugh's superiors to just allow his contract to expire, and then pretend that they had completely overlooked the renewal date. The plot will be revealed and they will be Twitter-shamed into insisting it was only an "oversight", and that "Michigan men don't lie". It will be described by some as "a comical collapse of colossal proportions", and "sad, yet fun" by others. One sportswriter from your own beloved Eleven Warriors would describe their entire season of "hot pursuit" of Ohio State as "an episode of The Keystone Kops Meet Pickles and Peppers".
The Storm that was Ohio State in its championship year of 2020 would rain fire and brimstone all along its path to glory, and would cement its name in the history books as the one who "bullied the bully". Those are always great stories, even on my parallel plane of existence!
So, my 11W friends, I am popping in to simply encourage you to make ready...fill the fridge with your favorite adult beverages and foods...clear the DVD of pointless recordings and preserve this season for the ages. Who knows? Perhaps it will be one of your recordings that are uncovered in the excavated ruins of the Old Earth of your time-plane (don't ask how that happened)!
So lean back in your cushioned rocker and breathe in the "calm" of the present football season so far. This coming Saturday, make purchase at your favorite mouth-hole feederies and distilleries...stock up on all the necessities of your nourishment...and anticipate what is to come.
The Storm approaches. Batten down and button up, friend Buckeye, for the ride of a lifetime. Enjoy the Calm before the Storm!
Your extra-galactic time-plane hopper,
Time Traveler
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