The Ballad of Saw Man: How to Tear Down (and Steal*) a Goalpost
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I am the master of tchotchkes. I think that's great. I agree. I think stuff, objects, physical objects in digital time. Yeah. Mickey, you're an artist. You get it. Big time. This is important. It's important to commemorate our history. in front of us in real life, tangibly.
You know, it's very in vogue to have a minimalist aesthetic. Right, Marie Kondo. Yeah, I'm totally against that. I am clutter core to the core. I like to collect objects. Yes. And having them around me or on me or in my pocket, it just, I don't know, it makes my life feel richer.
Yes, and I would say that the episode we're here to do together is effectively about this concept as embraced by college football.
Definitely.
It is about the tangible objects that people are striving, whenever possible, to risk so much, it turns out, to acquire and keep for themselves.
So for the uninitiated, tearing down goalposts is really the supreme celebration for a college football underdog when they pull off an upset victory at home.
Oh, they're inching closer.
The hometown fans storm the field. Their own field. Their own field.
Here we go. The place is about to explode. It's all Iowa.
They jump over the barricades, they get out onto the field, and they celebrate with the players and the coaches, and they just go nuts.
There's going to be some fun on this campus here tonight.
In moments of great historic victory, they take the extra step and tear down their hometown goalposts.
And what a scene at Bobby Don! There goes the goalpost.
And this is essentially the most valuable pelt that you can take down as a big game hunter.
Absolutely. It is a tradition that is hard to compare with anything else in the world of sports.
The goal post is going. Do they have enough? Come on. Come on, get it down. I love it. I love it. So good. Carry him out. Take him downtown.
It is self-destruction. It is your own stadium that you are ruining. It is illegal, highly illegal, objectively dangerous. And you have commemorated this on the sweatshirt you've brought us today in studio.
It says, you're going down. You're, Y-R, going down. And with a little felt goalpost underneath it.
There's a certain partisanship in your reporting, I dare say.
Pablo, I feel like you focusing on the vandalism and the destruction. I just have to say that legally. Yeah. I mean, you're coming off as a real square because this is not only a great celebration that has gone back generations. This is really a folk tradition that I've come to learn and appreciate recently.
I should also say that, again, for just purely self-protective reasons, it is theft, technically.
So college administrators and law enforcement, they would agree with you. They tend to frown upon, you know, the vandalism of stadiums and so forth. This goes far beyond just a conventional celebration. Not only are these things kind of paraded around, but they are also oftentimes chopped up into little pieces and distributed among the hometown fans who are celebrating this upset.
Yes, which is to say that this is an unusually and very special ecstatic revolution that that involves all of this property destruction and theft that you describe. And the crazy thing about this season, of course, is that I believe that this tradition has been clearly the theme of what we've been watching.
Lee and his Commodores looking to make some history. They haven't knocked off Bama since 1984.
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