Five College Football Bowl Games That Need New Names

Every year between the end of the college football season and the national championship game we’re forced to endure a series of overly-sponsored match-ups by slightly-better-than-average football squads.  They are given a shot at eternal glory by conquering opponents in bowl games whose names leave even the most experienced commentators tongue tied.  So, whether we’re fans of the sport, fans of a team in the game, or someone who happens to be watching television over this holiday season, bowl games like the “Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl” often leave us with an overwhelming sense of confusion as to why teams are playing and who is watching.  Here are five bowl games whose names stand out as horribly mis-matched with the teams competing in them:

If Every Big Ten School Were A Parks And Rec Character

University of Illinois as Jean-Ralphio

“Technically I’m homelessss.”

Both are broke, but they still manage to have a good time anyways. Got off on a technicalllllityyy!

Indiana University as

How to Tell People You’re a Writer (Without Telling Them Anything)

If you’re anything like me, making small talk with strangers is high on your list of least favorite things, just below unpacking groceries and losing a limb. Most people don’t have a lot of trouble making meaningless chit-chat, but then again, most people aren’t socially anxious writers like myself. Even if I wasn’t socially anxious, I’d still be a writer, and therein lies the crux of my small-talk impairment.

Say you’re at a party, bar, or a very boring orgy and someone asks you, “What do you do?” Most of the time the questioner is trying to determine how you make a living, your hobbies, interests, etcetera. Most people can reply with, “I’m a teacher,” “I work for a PR firm,” or “I find money on the ground.” Any of these and countless other responses are perfectly acceptable, and will barely create a blip on the questioner’s conversational radar. However, when writers answer this question, the questioner’s nostrils expand, their pupils dilate, and in some cases, salivation has been known to occur; in short, they smell easy conversational prey, and are ready to put you (the writer) on the defensive.

New Roommate From Westchester Won’t Shut Up About New York Bagels; Pizza

Moorehead, expounding further upon his top 5 all-time shmears

SAINT PAUL, MN — Macalester College freshman and Westchester County native James Moorehead will not shut up about the elite nature of New York City’s bagels or pizza, sources report.

“I don’t know, there’s something about a New York City bagel that you just can’t find anywhere else,” complained a wary Moorehead at his local Einstein Bros Bagels.  Added the Bedford native, “I think it has to do with the water or something.”

Hell Hath Frozen Over, Reports NOAA After Learning Finals Have Been Cancelled

HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THAT FUCKING STORM

Following the announcement that Northwestern has cancelled class due to inclement weather, the NOAA has released another statement that “hell hath frozen over, and the end is clearly nigh.”

“Call your mom and remind her you love her one last time, because she’s probably going to heaven, and you’re definitely not,” advised NOAA spokesperson Noah DiRiccio. “The University cancelled classes an hour ago, so by my calculations, you should start drinking ASAP so you’re nice and anesthetized by the time the Four Horsemen get here.”

Minnesota native and SESP junior Michael Ervin was confused. “But the severe weather already happened, right? You guys consider ‘above sixty’ to be extreme here, dontcha?”

Witnesses report that Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl displayed an uncharacteristic amount of excitement upon receiving news of the world’s impending doom.

“You mean the university will be destroyed??” she said, allegedly making a facial expression.

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Stay safe, everyone.

Shurned Out: Riding the Bubble at Northwestern

Apparently he didn’t appreciate the five-foot pictures of his face in the crowd.

Last Saturday, John Shurna broke Northwestern’s career scoring record, surpassing Billy McKinny‘s 1,900 career points with a three-pointer against Minnesota. Last weekend I set a career personal high score of 18,310 points in BrickBreaker, but nobody made much of a fuss about it.* Or even a t-shirt.

As Northwestern basketball fans are starting to realize, life on the bubble of the NCAA tournament is a lot like what I’m assuming drunk sex with your pledge wife would be like: you hold your breath and hope that everything magically falls into place to bring about a wondrous sensation you’ve never felt before, but you’re really just waiting for something to go horribly awry and inevitably ruin everything you hold dear. There will probably be a lot of crying in the end no matter what.

Famous Moments in Hook Up History

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for two consenting parties to get their mutual rocks off, mankind has resorted time and time again to the perennial spectacle of the “Hook Up” in order to satisfy its carnal needs. From casual make-out sessions to all-out boot knocking, humans have been engaged in the barter of sexual favors pretty much ever since we evolved to develop the capacity for euphemisms, and at an increasingly rapid pace since the invention of alcohol, Cosmo, and the internet. But despite the interminable nature of this miraculous form of erotic consortium, there are some moments in hook up lore that truly stand above and beyond the rest of the fray. These aren’t just your run-of-the-mill regrettable one-night stands, but rather moments of extraordinary courage and fervor, where the libido of two humans changed the course of human history forever.

The evolutionary process enables humans to complete the walk of shame faster than any other mammal

48,000 BC: Caveman and Cavewoman
Historians have concluded that the first hook up in the history of man occurred approximately 20 minutes after Homo sapiens reached full behavioral modernity. The inaugural event, commemorated on cave walls and cave chat rooms everywhere, is rumored to have taken place at the annual Festival of the Woolly Mammoth, when a noticeably intoxicated caveman of the local Sig Ep tribe managed to seduce a female, forget her name at least three different times, and engage in a brief and thoroughly mediocre tryst with her. The next morning, the proud male reportedly never even considered hunting breakfast for her the next morning, and neglected to send smoke signals her way after a three-day waiting period. During their next encounter at a cave party in Lascoux, France, the two cordially greeted each other, but then quickly separated to avoid the shame and awkwardness that was to forever plague the human race.

Alright, my roommate's gone for the next 30 minutes. Let's see how fertile the Nile Delta really is.

41 BC: Cleopatra and Mark Antony
The inventor of the “power trip,” Cleopatra was never quite satisfied ruling over one of the greatest civilizations in the world or bearing Julius Caesar’s child. Instead, she cooped up in her love den with Marcus Antonius (the most tantalizing triumvir in all the Roman Empire) in what became one of the most geo-politically significant coitions of all time. Using highly sensitive facial recognition technology, archaeologists have determined that Cleopatra was approximately 56,000 times hotter than a combination between Brooklyn Decker and Pippa Middleton, which goes a long way to explaining why Antony preferred to get his freaky on in Alexandria than return to Rome and his wife Octavia. Pascal once that “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed,” which means that, had Cleopatra been less of a slampiece or Antony less of a gallant philanderer, Octavian might never have risen to power as Augustus, and the world never would have inherited such valuable cultural contributions from the Roman Empire as corrupt politicians, togas, and lax sexual mores.

"If I were casting for a modern film interpretation of our romance, I'd totally get Claire Danes to play you."

1591 AD: Romeo and Juliet
In a now classic move, two adolescents met each other for the first time at a lame party and fell instantly, nay noxiously, in love with the first person to ever requite their affection. This hook up practically wrote the template for horny teenagers using make-out sessions to rebel against their family, and imbued western society with a healthy dose of suspicion towards drug-dealing Friars that hang out with 15 year old girls. That, combined with the fact that any male who can recite the balcony scene is instantly guaranteed to get some at any time he so desires, makes Romeo and Juliet’s horrifically saccharine relationship qualify for a position amongst the masters of the art of the hook up.

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1788 AD: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Jefferson’s 38-year relationship with his slave Hemings that produced 6 children born into slavery was not just one of numerous blights on American Presidential history and convoluted racial past, but also a testament to three of the most important aspects of most hook ups: lying, hypocrisy, and shame. It took major cojones to write that all men are created equal and born with unalienable rights, and then to turn around and use those cojones to knock up a slave. Like most other men, Jefferson never divulged the truth about his affair, and the shame of his duplicity still hangs over the nation even worse than the memory of that one time with those two theater majors and a bottle of rum.

You have no idea what's hidden beneath those robes.

1928 AD: Harry Blackmun and Tiffani Brooking
During Justice Blackmun’s junior year at Harvard, the Lambda Chi brother experienced a regrettable one-night stand with his Con Law study partner. The episode turned far more distressing, however, during the ensuing pregnancy scare. It is said that the tense period when Blackmun wondered if he would become a father at the age of 20 greatly affected the future Supreme Court Justice, eventually playing the deciding role in his authoring of the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The American hook up scene would be a much different world without Blackmun’s passionate advocacy of abortion rights, earning this jowly Minnesotan the distinction of having partaken in one of the most important hook ups in all hook up history.