Run the Damn Ball

Spencer Hall is one of the best college football commentator in America. You won't see his work on a major network (for the most part, though he occasionally pops up on ESPN), but he's managed to build a brand around his singular combination of deep cultural insights, keen observation, lightly-breaded cynicism, and above all, a love for the uniquely American institution he follows.

This is what the best college football brain
in America looks like

We first knew him from his work at Every Day Should Be Saturday (EDSBS). That site has long since gone dormant, but you can catch Hall now at Channel 6, the multi-media empire he runs with fellow journalist Holly Anderson. He's also a frequent guest on Bomani Jones' podcast, where the two unlikely pals are as likely to talk about Steve Wonder as they are Lane Kiffin.

I say all of this as preface to a more important endeavor Hall and his Channel 6 cohorts have just completed. The team has been running an annual giving drive for nearly two decades to support New American Pathways, a refugee resettlement non-profit in Clarkston, GA. The event is called the Charitibundi Bowl, and it pits alums and fans of college football (mostly) teams against one another to compete to see who can raise the most money.

This year's event just ended, and as has been the case for the past several years, the University of Michigan and its prodigious alumni base topped the Money Cannon standings with a total $181,310 in donations. Your scrappy William & Mary Tribe came in a very respectable 29th out of 468, with just shy of $9k. Only Washington & Lee (?!?) and Virginia Tech gave more out of all of the schools in the Commonwealth, going to prove once again how much UVA people suck.

All told, the EDSBS community raised a record $1.3m this year, a remarkable achievement. In celebrating the final tally, Spencer Hall gave us some useful wisdom.

Run the damn ball. Advice for football, and for life, when life means resisting fast-running authoritarian takeover of your country. Three yards and a cloud of dust. Move the sticks. Run the clock. Riggo Drill, over and over. Make a little progress today, then a little more tomorrow, then blast your way into the end zone. Metaphorically. 

We can do this. Be like Spencer