Well, it is fair to say that last night made for another rather depressing open thread, but then these are the sorts of things that we look at in order to see some of the data which backs up our grief. If nothing else, someone did post the thread which signifies bargaining about six hours BEFORE the game, so we are making progress towards a very efficient way to chart our course through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief this season. Indeed, we are apparently now at least at "bargaining" before the game, and I will admit that I rather was in that, like so many of us, I was hoping for a win but expecting a loss somehow. I simply didn't expect it to get that bad that early, of course. 

I'll say it again - the threads this year have been somewhat muted and short in comparison to past years, and for a number of reasons which we have discussed - the pandemic, a truncated season, fan apathy and so on. Last night was not an exception. Last night, in fact, there was a noted disparity in the rate of post creation between the first and second half, meaning that many of us probably switched to other games, or if you were like me, you began to do things around the house - that's my old standby for a bad game anyway.

As for the numbers themselves, this game - in terms of apparent intensity as measured by the open thread itself - was essentially a carbon copy of Indiana, although on the screen, it looked much worse, and that takes some doing indeed. There were 171 fucks given against 155 for Indiana and 72 shits given against 75 for Indiana. Other numbers trend similarly - 22 damns (23 for Indiana) and 42 instances of "suck" as opposed to 40 for Indiana, although I am sure many more were said out loud. 

Last week, we talked quite a bit about "fire", and there were 89 mentions of that, and yet again, the vast majority of them were directed at Harbaugh (whos name appears 185 times in the thread) and Brown. Now, it is important to note that 147 instances of "fire" were present in the Indiana thread, so it will be interesting to see if that game was "the moment of decision" for a lot of people. This phenomenon played itself out in the 2014 Miami game, where "fire" reached a relative fever pitch, then tailed off, but given other indications of the board, that was the moment when most people had finally had enough of Hoke. We shall see if the same thing happens here, although like the season itself, 2020's data will forever have a large asterisk by it. 

There were 765 instances of tracked words in a thread of 1,670 posts, which makes for an overall efficiency of 2.18, only marginally less than Indiana. So, another shitty game basically, but obviously, you don't need me to say that - for those that believe in the eye test, the wash station is just to your left. Expect to spend a while washing this one out too. 

Next week, Rutgers. This one has the capacity to suck....a lot.....at the current rate.