By Aidan Callahan, Back page Editor

To all the football fans reading this, consider the following scenario.

Imagine that once a year, around this time, it became Broadway season. During Broadway season, Broadway musicals are broadcast on a large number of TV channels from early in the afternoon to late at night every Thursday, Sunday and Monday. Sometimes there are shows on Tuesdays; on Saturdays, they show college productions. This starts during the fall and lasts until roughly February. 

You have a diverse group of friends, so I’m sure there must be a few theater kids among them. Imagine that during Broadway season, these friends are glued to the TV. Every time you go to hang out with them, there’s a musical on. Sometimes they even flip between two at once; I mean, they can’t miss Little Shop of Horrors on Fox, but they’ve also got to see Wicked on NBC. 

This becomes your routine. Every time you go see your friends, one of them has a musical going either on the TV or a laptop. The moment the conversation steers away from the show, those watching it erupt in a sudden cheer, as whoever’s performing just delivered a sick monologue or something. Suddenly, the conversation has shifted and the talk is focused entirely on this actor: “Ooh, it’s his first season, isn’t that exciting?” “He’ll get rookie of the year for sure!” 

You can try to avoid your friends, but Broadway fever seems to have seeped its way into every aspect of your everyday life. Every TV in Gallagher Student Center has a musical on it. The Caf is serving Broadway-themed desserts. You go into work, and people are asking you who’s on your fantasy theater team. “Oh, you got Aaron Tveit as your leading man? That sucks, I got Matthew Broderick.” Meanwhile, you picked your team randomly. 

There’s no escape from it, and there’s no end in sight. Broadway has been around since long before you were born, and it’s very possible it will be with you until the day you die. You very well could have grandchildren who have tickets to the Tonys scheduled for the same day as your funeral, and that is going to be a tough decision for them. 

Oh, and don’t even try to flee to another country. You think we invented being obsessed with musicals? Try living in England! There, it’s all year round. People over there get in physical fights over which city puts on the best production of Annie. 

So, football fans in the audience, I propose a question: What would you do in this scenario? I have no grand point to make here, I’m genuinely just curious: What would you do in Broadway world?

Now, there may be a select few readers thinking right now: “Ha! I am into both football and musicals, so I’d have no problem with Broadway world!” To those readers I say: You dirty, dirty dogs. Thought you could pull a fast one on me?

Well, what about anime world? What would you do if you lived in a world where every fall, weeaboos took over the world?

Are you an anime fan too? Well, how about pimple popping videos? Are you a fan of those? What would you do in a world where every fall is pimple-popping season?

You get the idea, football fans. When you casually throw a football game on in the background of a party, you are essentially holding your friends down, pinning their eyes open Clockwork Orange-style and forcing them to watch eight-hour pimple-popping compilation videos.