pat fitzgerald featuring the vince guaraldi trio

BiSB: So... how was everyone's March?

Seth: Well the Michigan internet's doing well at College Football Risk again, so there's that. Pay no attention to Ohio State doubling up on us in that too.

Brian: Our backyard has a lot of loose pavers and such that I haven't thought about since we moved in seven years ago. I'm digging them all up, putting some more dirt under them, and then re-seating them. I feel like the old guy in a movie who has crucial information but doesn't want to be disturbed by the protagonists.

At some point I'm going to be doing this in the front yard when a delivery guy drops something off and I'm going to spontaneously moan "I never wanted to think about The Incident again. I TOLD THEM THAT WHY ARE YOU HERE."

BiSB: Weirdly, I watched two hours of the American Loose Paver Moving League National Finals on ESPN2 this week. It's actually pretty competitive.

Brian: I've pointed at the ones I've already done and yelled DOESN'T THAT LOOK SO MUCH BETTER to my wife.

Ace: I considered adopting a cat. The only holdup is it’d mean my brother’s dog probably couldn’t visit again, which is a dealbreaker.

Brian: Does your brother's dog eat cats or fear them?

Seth: You believe yourself safe from the headaches of lawn ownership with your fancy yard of stones and weeds, but you've only traded one application with an extensive troubleshooting background for one with very little. Yesterday I patched the parts of the lawn that various workers ran over this winter with soil and seed and a nice layer of peat moss so I can look out my office window and literally watch grass grow.

Ace: To be honest, it could go either way with her.

BiSB: I feel like this is where Seth tries to jump in with the prompt to keep us on task.

Brian: There is no task!

BiSB: But we ignore him, because NEW SOCIETY NO RULES.

Seth: Um: jump?

[After THE JUMP: Sensible advice from bearded people in comfortable pants]

[Bryan Fuller]

When you get a prompt this good, you use it.

@AceAnbender can we have a special "A Look Back" GIF History section this week of different times Pat Fitzgerald has gotten ostentatiously and annoyingly pumped up in Michigan games he then lost in extremely sad-trombone fashion

— Ben Mathis-Lilley (@BenMathisLilley) October 1, 2018

As we've covered this week, Pat Fitzgerald has everything going for him to be difficult to dislike—local kid returns to alma mater in time of turmoil, runs a program that's historically bad, is funny and charming in press conferences when he's not saying batshit stuff about RPOs and communism, etc.—and yet, when you see him on the opposing sideline, it becomes pretty easy to find the guy obnoxious.

The feeling can be acute when Northwestern is unexpectedly winning and Fitzgerald goes full-blown cheerleader. Which is fine. It's fine. I'm not mad. This didn't bother me at all after one of the more miserable opening quarters in recent memory.

Definitely not mad, he said, while squeezing the remote until the battery case snaps.

Anyway, we never have to stay mad at Fitz for long, because his teams always find a way to gack it away to Michigan, usually in exceedingly comical/painful fashion.

[After THE JUMP, one man's emotional rollercoaster.]