Here are some bros wrestling on a frozen river in 1910

”Hey, Beefer, hey, Squelch. Thanks for having me on, longtime first-time. So I was thinking, looking at all the hype and ... yeah, sure, I can turn the radio down, Beef, sorry about that. But so I was thinking, looking at all the hype and whatnot in college athletics today, you know, with the kids getting so entitled and the coaches are just ... right, right, I’ll turn the radio all the way off. Sorry about that.

”But I was saying, it’s like college sports is so about money right now, I think it just makes you miss the days when it was about the game instead of the TV deals and the ... right, yeah, Squelch, except Auburn, except Auburn. But not to, and I know this makes me a fuddy-duddy or something, but not to take anything away from the Jadeveon Clowneys or whoever, but remember when college sports was just a bunch of alarmingly yoked shirtless dudes wrestling on a frozen river in high-waisted tussling diapers? And maybe Theodore Roosevelt was there on the right, holding some ridiculous Janet Jackson circa-1995 abs?

”So my question is: kids have the fancy weight rooms and the locker rooms all got waterfalls in them, but isn’t it just about tattoos and the money and the swag and whatever now? Instead of wearing mocassins and weird briefs and grappling with your hands and wits and nothing else, presumably in subzero temperatures, before eventually getting conscripted to fight in World War I a few years later and probably dying. And, and I’m almost done, but: so wrestling in the cold and later probably dying in like a forest or a trench, but not without first having felt the bloom and rush of a type of athletic competition that simply doesn’t exist anymore, something too elemental to effectively sell, and which we might never really have even believed existed in the first place given the current state of things, if not for this circa-1910 photo from Retronaut? I’ll hang up and listen.”