The State Of Our Open Threads: After Bowling Green

I am sure that many of you were thinking the same thing I was around, say, 9 PM last night. That is to say, if we were going to have one of THOSE games, certainly now would be the time to have it. You know, the sort of game where you win, and then you think about all those times where someone said something to the effect of "winning breeds success", and your immediate thought is that you'd like to win, but not THAT way specifically, with the turnovers and the seemingly flat play at various points. 

All of it is academic on Sunday morning, of course - we did win, we are 3-0 and we get to face Rutgers this coming Saturday to start our journey through conference play. For now, however, we will talk about how we felt last night. 

The rise in fucks given from UNLV to Bowling Green was rather impressive, to say the least, even if it was at our relatively deflated non-conference levels. Only 25 fucks were given in the UNLV thread, and last night, this blossomed to 104 fucks given. I probably don't need to review the primary driver - turnovers, generally annoying play on offense, etc..., but then the point is that we are an observant lot and we noticed. 

We more than doubled the number of shits given - 19 during UNLV  to 47 in last night's thread, and again, for the same reasons. One thing about "shit" through this year's non-conference games - it is showing signs of a comeback after a few seasons of fading usage around here. When I first started collecting this data, there were numerous times where "fuck" and "shit" would almost match each other, but since about 2018, it has faded. Last year, through the non-conference schedule, we only averaged 21 instances per game across those three games (I know, average of three numbers - very telling), but this year, it's 30 instances. Well done.

There were 163 mentions of JJ in the thread last night as well, and again, you should all know why that is - he was being very not JJ, and it was rather concerning, but as I kept telling myself (and I am sure some of you did as well), now is the time to have this sort of game because we're about to play teams that would be able to eat those mistakes for lunch and that is the thing I would, of course, rather not happen. I don't mind looking flat against Bowling Green but winning if the payoff is that this is corrected, say, at noon this coming Saturday. I am fine with that. 

We also experienced 39 instances of "fire" - a few people wanted Moore gone, hopefully in jest, but this time, most of it was the positive sort of "fire", or rather, the wish that someone would light a fire under a few asses. I mean, that message worked here and there, right? It's just a matter of keeping the blaze alight, right? The problem is that FieldTurf isn't something that should be alight at all. 

Mentions of Harbaugh have been depressed because, of course, he hasn't been allowed on the field because of cheeseburgers and such. However, the tone of last night's mentions was that he is needed. Most of the 20 mentions spoke to his unifying influence on team messaging, and I agree, it will be nice to see him on the sidelines again. 

Overall, we had 552 instances of tracked words across 1,531 posts, which made for an overall efficiency of 2.77. That tracks historically with comfortable victories, and in a way, this one was in the end, but it wasn't exceedingly comfortable. 

Anyway, on to Rutgers. Well, not really - they are coming here. Also, as usual, charts return with the fourth game because there should be enough to make a reasonably interesting graphical representation of all this now. Maybe.