The G5 Jackson Arnold: Signs of Extraterrestrial Life on America's East Coast
I see possible futures all at once. Our enemies are all around us. And in so many futures, they prevail. But I do see a way. There is a narrow way through.
- The Lisan Al Gaib, Dune Part Two (2024)
At the beginning of this offseason, the VP interns and I conducted a post-mortem meeting of the results of last year’s CFB campaign. An unfortunate runner-up finish in CFFNate’s 24-team dynasty league still permeated the atmosphere.
The interns and I took stock of the remaining vestiges of the roster. Caleb Williams, Rasheen Ali, Malik Nabers and Dallin Holker, all moved on. Other supporting features such as NC State’s Brennan Armstrong and Georgia Southern’s Davis Brin were out of eligibility. Yea—I know these guys suck, but you have to understand that in a 24-team, 45-man roster league with industry experts like Eric Froton, Jared Palmgren and others, QB is a premium position.
To make matters even worse, one of the VP interns misread the rules and didn’t realize that LSU’s Kyren Lacy had to be rostered by the end of week nine to retain him, thus, an eventual first round supplemental draft pick was out the door too.
There I sat, my hat in had. Ashamed—I had promised my partner that I’d take us out for an extravagant dinner if I won the league. Spurned on by the last minute failure I took to online sports betting Japanese women’s soccer at two in the morning—an unfortunate tale of how to lose what minuscule winnings I was left with in a matter of minutes. Alas, it was not to be, the world had all crumbled into pieces around me. My mother walked into the meeting room at this moment.
“I’m sorry about Sara…”
“She’ll come to understand.” I replied.
Simultaneously as the VP interns ask me how we’re going to get out of this mess—a team that was left with JC French, Cardell Williams, and Grant Wilson as its only QBs (you have to start two each week)—my phone lights up with a message from Nate: “A lot of casualties, I’m interested to see how you rebuild this year”. Keeping a brave face for the sake of branding, I reply “my teams don’t rebuild, we just reload”. I then proceed to panic in the meeting room.
“Yea, I don’t know what the **** we’re going to do. We’re cooked.”
We manage to negotiate a fairly one-sided deal in Nate’s favour (a phenomenon that appears to happen quite frequently in this league), sending a future first round supplemental pick in return for Curt Cignetti’s presumed QB1—Kurtis Rourke, as well as an exchange of a few other picks to help balance it a little more. This was in January and it wasn’t even clear yet if Rourke was going to be the starter.
By the time the draft came around in June, Rourke appeared to have locked up the starting spot, and there was a clearer picture of the QB landscape. Myself and the VP interns assembled in the meeting room before the draft.
I open the meeting:
“I’ve been experimenting with ayahuasca this offseason…”