The Weekend Read

Crystal Ballin'

Twenty-four hours from now the first half of BCS Championship Game will be well underway. This we know.

The next couple hours are all speculation but as soon as the game ends we can pretty much predict how things will play out, regardless of the winner:

• 15 minutes after the game: Hoards of fans from the winning team (lets say, Ohio St.) descend upon Bourbon St. to celebrate the win in high fashion, all looking ridiculous to various degrees, depending on their age. Locals are completely un-fazed by the sight of grown men crying, showering each other in domestic beer.
• 20 minutes after the game: FOX Sports analysts run out of things to say, keep "sending in back to Urban Meyer" who, at this point, is convincing a recruit who committed to the loosing team to come play for his Gators.
  
• 45 minutes after the game: Mark May and Lou Holtz disagree over who was the game's "X-factor." Reece Davis giggles and, just for the sport of it, asks Lou Holtz to do a Sylvester the Cat impersonation.
  
• 1 hour after the game: An ESPN.com columnist publishes the first retrospective of the game and either claims that A.) The Big Ten is years behind everyone else in terms of speed and offensive schemes or B.) A plus-one format or play-off is only fair because of the demanding SEC schedule that didn't allow Georgia, the real #1 team in the country, to meet LSU in the title game.
• 2 hours after the game: The Skybus flight from New Orleans to Columbus departs at an obscure hour, leaving almost everyone behind. Subsequently, these stragglers learn that the hospitality and amenities at the local 24- hour convenience store are more generous than those on their scheduled flight.
• 12 hours after the game: Les Miles announces he is leaving LSU to pursue his life-long dream of becoming the head coach of his alma mater, Michigan.
• 16 hours after the game: At a press conference Jim Tressel is vocally "very proud of our young people" and feels that both teams "played some of the best football he's ever seen." It is unclear whether Coach Tressel is presently aware of the game's outcome.
• 24 hours after the game: 2008 pre-season predictions from at least 50 experts are published along with 10,000 reactions to those predictions that insist Ohio St. is ranked too high.