The year? 2023. The blog? The Barking Crow. Here’s what’s what:
MilkTime
I’ve been told I can’t have any milk until September, and while I’m sneaking sips, I don’t want to upset the dairy bar. We continue to aspire to podcast, but we need to handle it responsibly. I’ve lost far too much money (misplaced it, mostly) to be trusted with a podcast launch right now.
The NIT!
Speaking of being trusted, don’t trust the NCAA, which continues to hide its best postseason men’s basketball tournament in the shadows. Is this the year we bring it most fully into the light? Well, relatively speaking, yes. Because I intend to not only be in Las Vegas for the NIT Final Four but also make the trip over to Houston for that other Final Four to speak hard truths to the masses.
Also!
I don’t know probably some TikTok content. The state says TikTok’s a Chinese asset, and to that I say, “Well let China know that I love the NIT.” Will this lead to China taking down the NIT? Maybe so. Maybe so. But would you rather the NIT be taken down by the incompetent, murderous NCAA? Or by the sick but kind of competent, murderous Chinese regime? And who’s to say the NIT won’t win this geopolitical struggle? Maybe we’re framing it wrong. Maybe I’m the guy who’s going to liberate China, and maybe I’m going to use the NIT to do it.
Joe Kelly
I don’t have much to say here besides that Joe Kelly rocks, but I thought he deserved his own section.
General Nonsense
We need more of this. More stunts, too. We’re trying to do more stunts again. The haters are saying we’ve gone soft, but little does Xi Jinping (our primary hater) or Seth Davis (our secondary hater) know that we have stunts up our sleeves. If you liked our haphazard campaign to re-nickname Weber State, you’re going to love it when we [redacted].
But yes, more general tomfoolery. Plenty of silliness, too, but we need to get out from behind the screen. And then record what we do out there. And then put it on the screen so you can see it. Unless we do a die-in at NRG Stadium in which case we need you to be there.
Clickbait
I’m sorry but we’re getting better at playing the Google game ever since they added us to their News results (it was a good year for us) and we’re going to use that to make money (ads are coming soon) which will then fund our broader movement. Basically, I want to build a cult. A cult following. Or, you know, just a cult. Though what is a cult without its following? Anyway, this is what finances it, so when you say to yourself, “Why is NIT Stu spitting truths about the overcovered NFL when he could be bringing the NIT to greater LIghT (that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but you said it)?” the answer is that one feeds the other. The legs feed the wolf. As they say.
License Plates
And broader Americana.
License Plate Brackets III and IV will happen this year, or so I say without any repercussions if they don’t happen. Current plan is to use LPB3 to test out our chosen software for running this year’s NIT Bracket Challenge ahead of said NIT Bracket Challenge.
But yes, broader Americana as well. We’ve come to realize we know the interstate system a lot better than most, thanks mostly to those three months on the road in 2016 that will be their own movie or two when we start releasing prequels in a decade, but also because we bought Fargo that car a couple months ago and the girl loves to poop on grassy parking lot islands at Chick-Fil-A in the rain. Or at least, she tolerates it. Fargo’s a good girl. Anyway, there’s probably something we can do with that. We’re just figuring out what, exactly, that something is.
Other Things I’ve Been Putting Off
Crap. I need to call our merch guy. Get those hats made.
Buying the NIT
Fifteen million dollars is what we currently think it would cost, but it might be more expensive if the NCAA knows what we plan to do with it, which is: Make it even more awesome. It could also be less expensive, of course—the NCAA may be in bankruptcy and they might do an auction where someone bids on Mark Emmert’s collection of scalps and someone else (me) bids on the NIT—but we’re planning on doing our job really well and making the NIT prohibitively expensive for even ourselves. That’s the challenge.
**
So, yes, 2023 will be our grandest year yet. In a dramatic voiceover in the independent documentary Hulu makes in 2029 about our rise, you’ll likely even hear an AI-generated Morgan Freeman imitation say, “2023 was the year The Barking Crow…took flight.”
Buckle your seatbelts.
Bark.
