The Big Game

This year’s national championship game is of no small interest to the LGM community. On the side of the Washington Huskies we can no doubt count Scott and DJW as firm adherents. Paul is of course an enthusiastic supporter of the Michigan Wolverines, and obviously the golem of bile, vicious resentment, and scorn that we affectionately call “Loomis” will cheer against the Huskies under nearly any plausible set of circumstances.

As for my part… I’ll confess it’s tougher than I had anticipated. I share Erik’s raw hatred of all things Washington (probably more rather than less so because of my time at UW) and I have no particularly strong anti-Michigan feelings. My feelings are colored, however, by the impending and altogether undeserved death of the Pac-12. The Pacific conference has been made the target of fun by folks in this region of the world (the border between Big 10 and SEC country) largely because its teams have quite justly scheduled one another for nine games a year, usually meaning that the best squads have eliminated one another from championship contention before the playoff selection window. To have a Pac-12 team win in the final year of the conference was my most sincere hope at the beginning of the season, and while arguably a Huskies victory is more nightmare than dream, it does tend to put an emphatic exclamation point on the idea that Pac-12 football was something important, something that mattered, and that it’s a shame that we let USC and UCLA kill the conference in an effort to shut Oregon and Washington out of the southern California recruiting market. Weighed against this, of course, is the fact that if Washington wins Washington fans will never, ever shut the fuck up about beating Oregon twice this year.

Tough call. Tough, tough call, so tough that I myself may not actually watch much of the game. Still, notwithstanding the withering denunciation sure to spill forth from Loomis… I think I have a slight preference for the Huskies in this particular contest. May the toll of this treason weigh heavy on my everlasting soul…

Let’s this serve as an open thread for the national championship game.