This was the greatest two minutes of televised college sports commentary ESPN has showed since June!
— Noah Bieniek (Bee-Nick) (@NoahB77_) January 2, 2026
pic.twitter.com/VHGYgBEraf
"America sending a message to the world" — if the world watched the Rose Bowl — "We got a B2 and you don't."
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66 comments:
Maybe he has a thing for men in uniform, but that's too much information, dude.
On that subject, I prefer "Mead's Sunrise", don't you?
Sorry, for cutting off your "e", but no man needs that many.
Darius Rucker is now an NFL reporter?
Bragging language about toughness reminds me of a losing boxer entering the ring before being TKOed.
"Greatest country on Earth, no questions asked"
Any country can be the greatest, if you don't ask any questions.
B-2 is too quiet for a flyover. I always enjoyed the F-16s over Lambeau. (Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunts.) Yes, I know they have the F-35s now. But I haven't been to a game since before COVID.
Mark said...
Darius Rucker is now an NFL reporter?
Darius Butler. Played mainly for the Colts.
Was at a game at Camp Randall where they did a B2 flyover. It flew so slowly all your instincts screamed that it was about to fall out of the sky. Awesome.
"B-2 is too quiet for a flyover. I always enjoyed the F-16s over Lambeau."
Those make me want to surrender immediately.
I never thought I'd pine for the days of Howard Cosell and Chris Schenkel.
Honestly, every sports announcer today on TV is either obnoxious or an idiot. I have to watch sports with the sound off.
Football is gay.
B-21 is supposed to be even better.
Where oh where is Ros Gold-Onwude now? We need her!
Be cool if it opened up and dropped millions of daisies carried by tiny rainbow parachutes.
"I never thought I'd pine for the days of Howard Cosell and Chris Schenkel."
Woah, Nellie!!!
Loyal Hoosiers didn't need the plane to get the... reaction.
*clicks on game replay recording*
It's been a great year so far.
What channel was this on? I see "Traditional telecast on ESPN" up in the corner of the screen.
addendum: if you can find the "SkyCast" feed with no narration, you can hover in the sky listening to the crowd and watch the game like a bird with extremely good hearing. The biggest games will have this option available if you are paying through the nose for it like I am. I like to put on headphones and listen to the game/crowd/bands without all the Bob Loblaw.
LOL.
Awesome.
Mamdamni(D-Islamic male) would like to ban that.
I was watching that guy over the holidays at my sister's in Tampa. ESPN keeps sensors very busy broadcasting Pat McAfee's podcast LIVE. They don't bleep him. They go for the dead-air a few seconds and then the sound comes back on again.
40% of CA is Republican. But with mob loser hair gel(Loyalist to his mob masters) not only did he ban voter ID - only 5% of CA will be allowed to have R representation. with the corrupt and illegal gerrymandering.
’*clicks on game replay recording*’
I won’t be watching the replay, but congrats on a dominant win. A great performance on both sides of the ball…
Wes Neighbors III, older son of a friend, and former Bama player is now an assistant coach at Ole Miss. His father and grandfather (Hall of Fame) were both standouts at Alabama and in the pros. Might be a little tough for the family to yell Hotty Toddy, but I’m sure they’ll try…
the best part is - this occurred in Pasadena.
Toxic masculinity.
@Beasts of England
My Grandpa helped build Martin Dam and turned a lot of the trees it would have drowned into lumber. My Mom's side is about 60 WDE/ 40 Bama, but she bailed out of Bama in the 30's to cut hair in the big city in Florida. I went to IU for the music school. The whole experience of watching the game was like seeing a fantasy come to life.
50 years ago IU went undefeated in basketball, and I watched it happen in Philly from the band. I credit regression to the mean from the football gods, in both directions, for yesterday's events. It's an underrated force.
"America! Fuck-yeah!"
A bit embarrassing in terms of ToT.
This is the other kind of warm collectivism. CC, JSM
I was waiting for the Rose bowl to start yesterday, and I hear the public address man intone "We now invite those willing and able to stand for the national anthem". I thought, well it's obvious those who can't stand won't, and I wouldn't force anyone to stand who hated doing so for whatever reason (why are you at a college football game?), but why bring that up unless someone with authority over what the PA man says is all for everyone not standing, because Trump.
At best, it just seemed unnecessary to me. I'll leave the at worst to others.
I quit watching ESPN's Saturday morning Game Day because I can't stand McAfee.
Mezzrow, the 75-76 Hoosiers were great (being the last undefeated NCAA champion demands that adjective) , but they had an even better team the year before, but that 31-0 team lost in the Elite Eight to Kentucky by two points. A starter, the following season's National Player of the Year Scott May, was out with a broken arm.
Thanks for the post, Althouse. I am aware ESPN exists; is good to know what, however disgusting, goes on over there.
@Wilbur
100% agree. I was in Dayton, too. If we were given 3 for every Steve Green corner rainbow, that would have added 5 points a game. I did the arrangement for Scotty's hype song (based on "Watching Scotty Grow" heh)
I've watched this cycle from outside, because I don't follow the spectacle of college sports anymore. Indiana won this year, not because they played great ball, but because they hired a very expensive coach that has kept up with the system, and games it well. He bought his team, completely revised the player rosters in the middle of the season, according to my S.I.L., which can be done now that college football has gone professional. Players now sometimes make career changes mid-semester, changing schools for a better deal - the school's academic schedule is just an afterthought that is coincidentally aligned with the game schedule, the more important thing.
Why would anybody be surprised that the play-by-play announcers and color commentators are dressed like, and behave like clowns? What else would you expect except an intentional dumbing-down of the product? That's all it is now, airwave commodities, the generic entertainment of sportsball.
Team logos mean nothing when there is no sentiment of identity, no attachment on the player's part. They're there for this game, but maybe not the next one - they've got their feelers out and are entertaining a move.....
What would these clowns say if the flyover was done by a B-1 Lancer? The B-1 is a lot noisier and the service nickname for it is the "Bone". Which is a contraction of B One. But it would drive these guys crazy. You can't go wrong betting that some announcer or guest on ESPN will say something stupid before the game is over.
Pat McAfee has a gutter mouth. That he is on ESPN is no surprise.
Red, White and Boner …. a real knee slapper Pat!
The US has fired off as many B2's as the rest of the world combined.
ZERO.
Phallic symbol?? The B-2 is V-shaped, silly lady.
"Team logos mean nothing when there is no sentiment of identity, no attachment on the player's part. They're there for this game, but maybe not the next one - they've got their feelers out and are entertaining a move....."
+1
So Pat McAfee can say anything he wants on national television. Even men who understand what a boner feels like cannot understand what a B-2 could possibly do to cause it. We viewed a nuclear bomber for Christ's Sake and that should scare people. That is "nucular" if your name is "G Dubya" Bush.
’I credit regression to the mean from the football gods, in both directions, for yesterday's events.’
Ha! And Cignetti’s experience working under Saban probably didn’t hurt; he certainly has the game face!! I’ve spent some time on Lake Martin and at Willow Point CC. Beautiful area!
Cuneiform, that ancient writing system used by dozens of Bronze Age cultures, started out as a library of simple yet evocative symbols representing specific things Bronze Age agriculture people needed, wanted, and used, such as barley, beer, and babes. Later it evolved into a syllabary, the symbols presenting phonetic elements, usually a consonant with a vowel -- pa, fa, ma, mo, etc. However, most of the earliest symbols retained their logographic meanings. Here's an example, the first one in the upper left. It means slave girl, three of them, actually. Don't think too long about what it looks like, because it's a representation of exactly what you thought it did when you clicked the link. Most Bronze Age dudes wanted an attractive young slave girl, that's why the symbol was invented and persisted for 3000 years. That triangle with the little tuck at one apex was intended to kindle the reader's prurient interest, and it still does, you dirty-minded scoundrels. The why McAfee says, "boner." The B2's shape recalled one of the things he thinks about a lot.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but a B2 is never a phallic symbol, but its exact opposite.
Why can't gadfly understand. Perhaps because he never learned anything about the ancient Near East. Or his brain isn't very nimble today. Pause the edibles, gadfly.
When we field the B-21, it will be smaller, have a much smaller RCS, and also be quieter.
There have been a few flyovers where the pilots violated the rules and got grounded. Sometimes permanently. I recall hearing about one where the pilots had to "stroke the burners" to avoid catastrophe. It was supposedly epic, and the crowd felt the heat.
Football is so R/C. I bet the white football fan base is 75/25 R/C. Football is America.
Big Mike said...
“B-21 is supposed to be even better.”
It will be. As impressive as the B-2 is, it’s a 1980s design, basically 3rd generation stealth. The avionics have been upgraded, but there likely wasn’t much they could do to significantly improve the stealth technology. The B-21 is smaller than the B-2, but it is 6th generation stealth. Things may change, but the plan is to build at least 100 B-21s, and there is discussion on building many more than that.
CIgnetti wasn't an expensive coach until he signed his new contract following last year's success and all of the high powered vacancies in college football coaching this year. He never coached at the top tier until last year. He had success but was slow to move up the ladder. I hope they manage it as it adds another chapter to the "Hoosiers" story arc. Re: McAfee. As a fellow WVU graduate, I do wish he'd tone it down, but it's what has made him his money and he's been very. generous to the university. All the being said, I can fall back on the all purpose escape of "he's originally from Pennsylvania."
Agree with Anthony. College Game Day was once one of the best shows on television. I looked forward to it every Saturday morning. McAfee has ruined it, other than the occasional side-eye he gets from Saban. I just don’t bother watching anymore.
That vulgar commentary is disgraceful. Their appearance in t-shirts is disrespectful. Broadcast standards have really gone into the toilet.
I've been to the Rose Bowl in prior years when they had a B-2 flyover. The video doesn't really do it justice.
You really get a foreboding and impressed feeling seeing a B-2 in person. They are awesome and terrible in the original meaning of those words. For one thing, they aren't very loud for a jet. They seem to practically glide in like an enormous bat. There's also a sense that the B-2 could kill everyone in the stadium (which it absolutely could if it was fully loaded). That palpable sense of fear readily turns to excitement if you are a fan of the American military - I know I shared both emotions when I saw the flyover.
It really is much more impactful in its quiet and eerie way than F-16, F-15, or F-35 flyovers, all of which I've seen multiple times at other football games. It's no wonder that even the jaded pro announcers were affected by it.
BG said...
"B-2 is too quiet for a flyover."
Decades ago, in Los Angeles I was walking my dogs one morning in a Koreatown neighborhood. It was Spring and birds were active, flying around, thrashing in the branches, chirping, whistling, making their sounds non-stop. I was passing a tree full of sparrows raising a racket when they instantly went silent. The whole noisy neighborhood of birds went dead quiet, not a peep. I looked up and a Stealth bomber came into view right above me, huge, wide, and orange on the bottom. I don't remember that plane making any noise at all as it passed overhead, which actually made it much more ominous seeming, as if something deadly passed close but hadn't noticed me. There was definitely an awesome aura about it, and I watched it glide over the westside and head out toward the ocean and disappear from sight.
I've always wondered about the orange-colored bottom and assumed that meant that it was for pilot training or war games or something. Maybe one of our military savvy commenters could explain why the bottom of the bomber was painted orange.
“B-21 is supposed to be even better.”
I expect it to be invisible.
(won't make for much of a flyover)
Quaestor nailed it, re: Not a phallic symbol.
It happens every year at the parade and the Rose Bowl, people. Every year.
No. Really?
What's your point ... other than being a condescending twit?
invisible to radar, because of materials and design, not actually invisible,
No, I want invisible.
The Klingons can do it.
Mezzrow, I was there too. What an experience for a 20 year old. Two weeks later I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Really. I was the yellow blur in the background of the picture of coach Knight.
better than a v-2 for sure
is football always that assholey
HOO HOO HOO
Better than a Che-boner or a Mao-gasm. Better than offering Bill Clinton a blowjob. Better than kissing a politician's feet. Better than ejaculating over a pants crease.
"Indiana won because they played great." FIFY, Aggie.
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