Linda: Y’all can sit anywhere here at the counter you want. Or feel free to take a booth.

Gunner: What do you think, you want a booth?

Bryce: Ion’know

Gunner: Let’s do the counter. Let’s be the counter crew.

Bryce: Okay

Linda: Got a new recruit, Gunner?

Gunner: Yep, we got Bryce here, he’s gonna be our new QB2!

Linda: Well, congratulations to our newest Trojan! I knew it was a special occasion. Y’all haven’t been down here in too long. Bryce, you oughta be honored!

Gunner: Oh, it’s a big day, Linda. Big day for our new guy here.

Linda: Well, I sure hope you enjoy. The menus are right there in the rack with the salt and pepper. Y’all take your time and let me know when you’re ready to order.

Oh, and y’all want, I can put the football on.

Gunner: Oh yeah, please, that’d be great.

Gunner: Tell you what, Bryce, I’m not gonna lie to you. Part of the reason I’ve been lookin’ forward to this is sitting at a counter and getting a hot plate of food.

I could’ve put my order in a month ago, Linda. I could’ve stuffed it in an envelope and mailed it to you. Three eggs, sunny side up, double order of hash browns and a side of sausage. Tell you what, the only eggs I’ve had all this year are scrambled eggs that come out all rubbery. It’s hard cooking on a propane stove.

Linda: Oh, you’ve got one of those little ones, right?

Gunner: Yeah, just one of them tiny little jobs, and a little steel mess kit. And if you don’t wash it right after you eat it’s Hell to get the eggs scraped off ‘em. Half of me wants to quit and ask you for a job! Least I’d get a nice flat top to cook on!

Linda: You’re a football hero, Gunner! Who else is gonna run the Troy defense?

Gunner: You’re damn right! You’re damn right.

Linda: Hon, you still lookin’?

Gunner: You wanna order something? My treat.

Bryce: Uh some uh

Burger

Linda: You got it!

Ten: I remember this guy.

Juice: yeah?

Ten: Yeah, Bryce. He’d wander into this game or that from time to time, never stuck around.

I remember he used to irritate me. He was gifted eternal paradise and not only did he not take advantage of it, it didn’t even occur to him that he was delivered a miracle. I get that self-improvement is only so important now, but Jesus, you’d think that after a few thousand years, you’d at least give it a try.

Instead he’d just lean on the side of his Acura hatchback in some parking lot, always wearing these cargo shorts and a gigantic white T-shirt, mumbling into his flip phone, always having some argument with a friend over some $20 weed deal. The only thing he’d ever talk about was how he was going to install undercarriage lights in his hatchback.

I checked in on him two hundred years later and he was still doing the exact same thing. In more or less the exact same place.

He never got those lights put in. Even in a post-scarcity world! A world where you can just go to an ATM and there’s five hundred bucks already waiting in the tray for you! You can go do this whenever you want! And he never did, he just stood around and talked about it!

Then I got older and I came to realize how perfectly fine that is.

I can tell you every single thing about the Hyades star cluster. Anything and everything you want to know. Bryce probably thinks the Sun is a hundred miles from Earth. I couldn’t tell you which of us is happier.

You know? Spend it however you want. You’ll never run out.

Juice: this guy is cool

this guy is me

Ten: It’s why I love you.

Took me a minute, though.

Juice: oh i know

Gunner: I mean, I won’t lie to you, son. I’ll tell you the same thing I tell every recruit. Our field at Troy is not a fun field. Have a look at it here.

If you could just take a look at it here.

Juice: lol their field is dog shit. just a matter of bad luck really

there’s this stretch of about a million yards where it runs into absolutely nothing. like in corydon, indiana there’s a gumball machine. that’s like it though

Gunner: In terms of amenities, we’ve got pretty rotten luck. You can see we’re in Ponce all the way down south, and believe or not, this is the only place you can get a hot meal in a restaurant between here and Indianapolis. Even goin’ through Troy, the field manages to make a clean miss of every restaurant in town. Same with all the other little towns here.

Then north of Indy, it’s pretty slim pickin’s as well. I should let you know in Muskegon, there is an Arby’s, but the field only runs along the front door and the corner with the condiments and whatnot. Used to be, they were nice enough to come around the counter and bring your order out to you, but they got tired of being hassled so they put up a sign saying “counter service only.’ Sometimes if you’re extra hungry, and extra tired of camp food, you can squeeze yourself out some horsey sauce.

That’s about it, though. Between Indianapolis and Canada, that’s it. No grocery stores, no department stores, nothin’.

Bryce: Man I’ll just go to another field.

Gunner: Well.

Y’see … and you know, not everybody is always happy about this, but this is the way we do it at Troy. For the first hundred years, you play defense.

And you know what that means. When you’re on the 25-player defensive squad, you can’t leave the field, it’s against the rules. But this way it’s actually good, I think. By the time your hundred years are up and you transfer to the offensive unit, you’ll know every single branch of every single tree on this field!

Bryce: Pshhhhh

Juice: yeah kid fuck this

get the fuck outta here, this shit sucks

Gunner: Well

Well you know, you’ll really be a superstar in this program once you do. The Troy football program, you know, we really value those who know our field inside and out. Other programs think they can safely hide a ball on our field? No sir! No sir, they can’t. We’ll sniff it right out.

Linda: I’m sorry y’all, I’m still trying to get it up on the TV. The cable man gave us a new clicker and I’m trying to figure how to make it work with the old box. I guess if it’s … ope!

Marty: –bzzZzrt–where. They are. And how. In the world. Georgia Tech allowed this to happen.

Linda: There you boys go. Guess it’s uh, they have one of them talk shows on.

Gunner: Appreciate you, Linda.

Marty: And this is what we know, Clark. On the night of October 12th, that was just one week ago today, Georgia Tech, who had remained one of the top five teams in the nation for more than four hundred years, did not just fall out of the Top 5. They did not just fall out of the Top 25. They fell all the way to the bottom, Clark.

Clark: And you know what, Marty? I’m sitting next to you today with egg on my face. I believed in Georgia Tech. When it first happened, the line coming out of Bobby Dodd Stadium was, “look, we’re relocating our footballs. We’ve moved them off the sideline to somewhere more secure.” And I believed them.

And now to find that they’re all, in fact, on the WKU field, incontrovertibly points to the fact that this was a cover-up. They lied to their fans. They lied to America. They have no clue, just like the rest of us!

Juice: ohhhh shit theyre on the WKU field now huh

Ten: Yeah, I’ll track ‘em down. One sec.

Marty: And what’s SHOCKING about this moment? What’s most shocking of all?

Is that dynasties fall piece by piece, Clark. They don’t collapse all at once like this. This doesn’t happen!

Clark: You are absolutely right, Marty. Something like this belongs in the ancient era of this game. We’re talking the 17900s, the 18200s. Wayyyy early on in this game. Before the strategies and schools of thought were really clearly developed. Before superpowers learned how to be smart about how they carried their footballs and where they hid them.

This was a failure of leadership. There is no reason that a team in the 20000s should be keeping every football in one place. No matter how secure it is. No matter who’s guarding it. And I think the only way forward is for Connor O’Malley to step down as the leader of the Georgia Tech football program.

Marty: I couldn’t agree more, and you know what, I will go further than that. I think they need to overhaul the entire program. If I’m the athletic director at Georgia Tech, I cut every player on my team. I pull people in from off the street. I rebuild and spend the next five hundred years training them up into a team that can win. Because you know what, the sun has set on this era. It’s over. No one in Atlanta wants to hear it, but it’s over.

Clark: And now, of course, the important questions for the rest of the country, is who has those footballs, and where are they? Speaking of that, I believe Stacy has a forecast for us. Stacy?

Stacy: Yes, Clark and Marty, thank you. We were expecting to see one of the biggest logjams we’ve seen in college football in decades, and we are certainly seeing that right now.

If we could get the scoreboard on screen, yes, thank you. If you look at the scoreboard, you can see the movement we saw in the rankings yesterday.

Stacy: You can see here as WKU absolutely vaults up the scoreboard, from nearly the very bottom all the way up to sole possession of the #3 ranking. Naturally, we can conclude here that however many footballs Georgia Tech lost, most if not all of them were taken to the WKU field.

And for those who are perhaps not as familiar with this region of the field, Georgia Tech’s field intersects with WKU’s right here in southeastern Tennessee.

Stacy: That’s where they crossed, so that’s where teams from all around the country are converging. And already, guys, this is unlike any scene we’ve witnessed in a long, long time.

Stacy: We have Alabama A&M with 100 players combing the area, looking for these footballs. Duke has more than 30. Vanderbilt has sent 68 players. Georgia is just southeast of the intersection with nearly 40 players.

Stacy: Tennessee is sending dozens. Wake Forest has a hundred here now, combing the mountains. A hundred from Virginia Tech are arriving.

Guys, within this stretch of field we already have nearly 800 players, and many, many more are on the way. I wouldn’t be surprised to see half the players in college football on or near the Western Kentucky field in a few days’ time.

Clark: Stacy, what kind of search area are we looking at?

Stacy: Well, Clark, it’s reasonable to believe they’re within a stretch of field of around 10 miles. Teams have been closing in on them from both sides, and in such number that it would be impossible to hide.

Juice: lol

ORRRR they made a shortcut straight to michigan state and watched y’alls sorry asses walk right by em

y’all are falling for a trick in the book that admittedly is brand new, but you fell for it hard

lady you found Nick and Manny yet?

Ten: Got ‘em!

Juice: HA FUCK

they’ve been haulin dick. what’s that, 75 miles in a day?

Ten: Just about.

Juice: through woods and hills and everything

those two’ve been training for this for so many centuries, i’ve been waitin forever to see what they could actually do on the field. goddamn

Ten: They’re doing exactly what they planned, too. I’d imagine they’re about to cut left on the Oklahoma State field within the hour, then ride that west as far as they can.

Ten: What do you think happens once they step foot on Oklahoma State?

Juice: well, i guess other teams can start making some good guesses. they’ll know whoever took is is headed west

but Nick and Manny faked the hell out of the 1000 players or so who had the best shot at makin a tackle. they have a 75-mile head start and they are two extremely fast dudes. the other teams are in groups of 25, 50, 100, made up of players of varying speed. they ain’t gonna catch em

there are still some teams out west that could intercept em. i still think it’s unlikely they’re gonna pull off this whole thing

but to see them even get this far is incredible

funniest part about it all is that Nick and Manny aren’t even all that good at actual football

Stacy: Now of course, we still have no information that indicates which team has the ball. But you have to figure, guys, it’s a matter of hours until the balls are recovered. The only question now is what, exactly, it’s gonna look like when upwards of a thousand players fight for an armload of footballs in and around the Tennessee Valley.

Gunner: You see, son, THIS is the sort of opportunity we’ve got ahead of us if we properly execute Trojan football.

Nine: Why does he keep calling him “son”? They’re both 18,000 years old.

Ten: Looks like Gunner’s 18,040 years old and Bryce is 18,016 years old. You’d be surprised how much that still matters.

Bryce: So why ain’t y’all up there then

Gunner: Well, I’ll be honest with you, we weren’t positioned properly. We have our players real spread out right now, all over the country, and we couldn’t make a play on the ball this time. But you know, that’s something we hope to change as we rebuild this program.

And I think, you know, if you put the work in, and you put it in for long enough, you could be a key component of that rebuilding process.

Bryce: Y’all suck

Gunner: I

I, heh, you know what? You know what? That is a very fair thing to say of us right now. We suck. But you know what the exciting thing is, is that you get to help us write the next chapter of Troy football. A lot of players on these other teams, they don’t get to say that. But you’re gonna have ownership in this process, son.

It’s like I tell everyone. If you buy in, it’ll pay off.

Linda: You tell ‘em about the monster?

Gunner: Oh yeah, no, the Dewey Lake Monster! We didn’t get to that.

Linda: Well! Of course, I’ve never seen it, I’ve just talked to a whole lot of Troy players over the years who have. At least, they said they did.

Linda: Lots of eyewitness accounts. All the way back to the 1960s. People say it’s like a Bigfoot or something.

Bryce: That’s bullshit

Gunner: Well, you say that! And I don’t blame you for saying that. But I saw it with my own two eyes. It was big, huge, bigger than any person. But it walked around like a person. It wasn’t a bear.

I’ve seen it twice. Both times, it clearly didn’t mean no harm.

Linda: What’s funny to me is that y’all have only seen the one.

Gunner: Only the one. And never up close.

Who knows? Maybe it was the last of its kind, and when everybody stopped dying, it was the only one left.

Nine: Is this thing real?

Juice: yeah

Ten: No.

Nine: Have you seen it?

Juice: nope

Nine: Well, do you have any proof?

Juice: no

Nine: Well then, how are you so sure?

Juice: yep

Gunner: But you know, that’s just one of many legends of this field. All kinds of crazy things.

You know, our stadium is actually just a block away from where our basketball team scored 258 points in a single game. Against DeVry! 258 points in a regulation, 40-minute basketball game!

Linda: I thought it was 253.

Gunner: Oh it’s 258. Guarantee you it’s 258. Anyways, you know, there’s lots of storied history around our field. Stuff you’ll never find anywhere else but Troy.

Ten: God I love that game.

Juice: it’s beautiful

Ten: There was so little reinvention in those days. I mean, that was in the 1990s?

Juice: yup

Nine: You know that game made it into my residual memory? I was about 25 years old at the time. Of course, I wasn’t awake yet, but I can search my memory and it’s there.

For whatever reason, angry things had a much better chance of sticking. That made so many people so mad.

Juice: LOL CALM DOWN JESUS CHRIST

like pick a hobby instead. any hobby. take up checkers. get really good at the cup and ball game. anything but this

Ten: People weren’t ready for a game as revolutionary as Troy State-DeVry. It was essentially a cooperative game. DeVry did try to score. I mean, they scored 141 points themselves. But they agreed to run down the floor and shoot as fast as they could. They worked together with Troy State to push the pace and help them accomplish their stated goal of 200 points in a game.

Since then, there have been all kinds of games like that in every sport, with both teams working together toward some common goal or another. That game was centuries ahead of its time. Back in those days, “sports” and “rules” were almost the same thing.

Juice: god

i’m glad i wasn’t alive then

maybe that’s why i’m so well adjusted

Gunner: Now, there’s one more thing I gotta tell you about.

How familiar are you with the Lake Auburn? You been out there? You know what goes on out there?

Bryce: Huh

Gunner: Lake Auburn. The Southern Great Lakes. You familiar with the geography?

Bryce: I guess

Linda: Uh-ohhh. Here’s where you learn about the Sharks.

Gunner: Yeah.

See in these lakes, and in the Mississippi Sea to the west, there’s a lot of fields. It’s legal to cross those fields in the water, provided you’re not using motor power. You could use a rowboat or a kayak or a canoe or something. Or if you really want a workout, I suppose you could swim.

Teams used to use those fields a lot. Lots of important throughways there. Real important strategically.

Then about five hundred years ago, the Sharks showed up.

They’ll come get you any time, day or night. But right around sunup or sundown seems to be their favorite.

Gunner: The water’s real still. A lot more still than you’d figure lakes this big to be. Real quiet. You’ll be canoeing along and the only noise you hear is your paddle when it dips in the water. Maybe some wind.

It’s real empty. Gives you lots of time to think about the world, and you, and your place in it.

Once in a while you’ll come across something peekin’ out the water. Something the water couldn’t quite cover up.

Gunner: And you almost kinda feel good for what’s still standing, in a way. I don’t know if it works like this, I mean Hell, I’m no architect or, you know, engineer or anything like that. But you look at it and think, well, standing so high all those years must’ve been hard work. They don’t have to stand anymore. They get to float now. They did their job and now they don’t have to work so hard.

Gunner: Anyways, point is, it’s a nice little boat ride for a little while. And so you’re floating along, making your way along ...

Gunner: Nobody ever sees ‘em comin’. You never do.

Gunner: We don’t know who the Sharks play for. Nobody does. Nobody’s got a good enough look at ‘em.

We think there might be as many as twelve of ‘em. Nobody really knows that either, but it’s at least four or five.

What they do is, they wait under the surface for a long time. I guess they got scuba gear or something. Out of nowhere, you’ll see a bunch of hands reach up and grab the side of the boat. They flip you with so much force there’s nothing you can do. You’re just in the water.

If you’re dumb enough to try to sail a football across the sea, they’ll take it. Even if you’re just tryin’ to pass through in peace, though, they’ll come after you anyway. Just to scare the Hell out of you. It doesn’t even matter that your life’s not in danger. Because every second you spend in that water, you’re just waitin’ on it to happen.

People don’t go on those seas much anymore, for any reason. They’re scared off. All because of them. And nobody even knows who the Hell they are.

Bryce: Fuck that. I fuckin hate boats

Gunner: Well listen, son.

There’s a reason I told you all this. And it’s a thing that, you know, it comes along with playing Trojan football.

In order to get to any other field, you have to cross the water. No way around it.

Gunner: We have to do it all the time. And it’s not like you get flipped all the time. I’d say I get flipped in the water every fifth time I’m out there or so.

I’d say you get used to it, but I’ll tell you the truth. I really don’t.

Troy’s the only field that’s like that. Every other team around here can take a detour around the lake, not us. It’s a cross we have to bear.

But you know what, I think that only makes us stronger. We’ve got to go through a lot on this field. But that’s gonna only make us tougher and more resilient as we continue to rebuild this program. There’s a lot of–

Bryce: Hey wheres the bathroom

Linda: Oh, it’s right around the corner there. Just down there and make a left.

Bryce: OK

Linda: Hon?

Hon it’s not over there! That’s the front door.

Gunner: Where are you goin’? You’re gonna step off the field!

He’s gonna step off the field!

Son, you’ve only got 10 seconds to make it back before you’re kicked out of the game!

Son, what are you doing?

Gunner: Well hell.

Linda: I’m sorry, Gunner.

Gunner: Happens more and more now.

Linda: You’ll get this program going. I know you will.

Gunner: I hope so.

Juice: whewwwwwww

hold on, i gotta make a phone call

this is always the hardest part of being a commissioner

Ten: Oooooh, official business!

Nine: Can’t wait.

Juice: ahem

Phone: RING

RING

RING

RING

Bryce: Huh

Juice: Hello, is this Bryce Shaffer I’m speaking to?

Bryce: Yeah

Juice: Number 17 for the Troy Trojans?

Bryce: I don’t know man

Juice: Mr. Shaffer, this is the bowl game commissioner. I’m unfortunately calling to inform you that you have been ejected from the game due to an out-of-bounds violation. As you had no OBT accrued at the time of the incident, you are required to surrender your roster spot and leave the game.

Bryce: I don’t give a shit

Juice: Now, as commissioner, I must inform you that you are permanently prohibited from rejoining any team or participating in any–

Bryce: Fuck you bitch

Phone: *CLICK*

Nine: ahahahahaha

Juice: HA

man

i mean, good for him for walkin off the job

fuck jobs