By Holly Anderson

The greatest beauty and cruelty of college football is the brevity. The short seasons are here and gone before we feel we’ve fully grasped their import, and, at most, we are granted only a few years to appreciate the players we most admire before they’re shipped off to be homogenized into the NFL. It’s only natural, then, that draft season is the bleakest time of year for us. We wish all departing players well, but it always chokes us up a bit.

Jarvis Jones (right) and a chicken-salad bust of Jarvis Jones (left) at a Manhattan Subway. #DraftWeek!!! http://t.co/t8hzrRuvN9—
Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) April 23, 2013

Never does this hit home harder than when Subway gets ahold of promising draft prospects. Was it just a few short months ago that we were marveling at Jarvis Jones’ Cocktail Party performance? He was an apex predator, an eater of Gators, and now he’s chicken salad. So wags the weary world away.

The latest wave of realignment as it stands of 4:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday. God be with us.

A felicitous March Madness to all! The NCAA round of 64 commences today, and we’ll gladly cede the floor to hoopyball for its duration. While there is much we do not understand about basketball, including but not limited to its history, rules, strategies, players and coaches, the tournament does come along at a dreadful lull in the calendar for our beautiful game, and it gives us something to watch on television that is not the Cakes And Skanks Channel.

We harbor a particular fondness for the first day of March Madness, for it was on this date five years ago that we first journeyed to Las Vegas to take in the massive multi-day basketball betting spectacle, and it was there on March 21, 2008, that we spied an Illinois fan wearing a commemorative Rose Bowl shirt in public:

At the time this photo was taken, less than three months’ time had elapsed since Illinois faced utter obliteration at the hands of USC, falling 49-17 to the Trojans in Pasadena. This anonymous gentlemen is the bravest football fan we have ever met, and without college basketball, we’d never have known he existed. For this we give thanks.

The story of a bowl game, as told through social media.

And now, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir lets loose: “Lark the herald Cougars sing / How will James the pigskin fling?” #BYUFootballCarols

— Matt Zemek (@MattZemek_CFN) December 21, 2012

Sometimes you’ve just gotta let Lark fly.

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) December 21, 2012

And other times, Lark slams into a window.

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) December 21, 2012

Adam Dingwell is a decent quarterback and a disastrous air traffic controller.

— edsbs (@edsbs) December 21, 2012

Simultaneously violating four different components of the BYU Honor Code while BYU is playing. I used to be better than this.

— Ramzy Nasrallah (@ramzy) December 21, 2012

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We can’t believe it either, Dread Captain. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE)

In one day, our battle captain returns. Glory be. Let there be football. 

What is it about social media deals and ACC football and unending waves of sadness? Last summer, in the first week of this site’s existence, we examined the true value of Boston College’s Groupon deal, and now @thekeyplay alerts us to this new devilry from LivingSocial:

LivingSocial’s sales pitch begins: “Bicker as you might about whether the Big East or ACC is the better football conference, when it comes time for kick-off there’s only one thing that matters …” The end of this sentence is not “If these two teams combined their win totals from last season they could’ve gone to the Belk Bowl,” but we all know it for truth in our hearts.