The Pregame Meal: Toledo 2012 Part 1

The Pregame Meal is back in Buffalo enjoying global warming. The goal of the pregame meal is to Hydrate, Nutritionate, and Player Hate. It is your bulletin board's bulletin board material. The Pregame Meal also delivers 11 factors that will decide the game, and over 50% of those factors are actual football facts. After the game, I revisit it all, during the postgame meal. The Pregame Meal is the White Ranger to Toledo's clearly inferior Blue Ranger.

Overly optimistic Pregame Song: "Gonna Fly Now" - Bill Conti In Rocky mythology, the UGA game is the game that shows we were the scrawny never say die type. The Morgan State game is us getting overconfident. The five straight losses gives us the conflict, will they fight back to the top and attain bowl eligibility? Hopefully within the last five days UB went into montage mode and Saturday, the Bulls will be ready to do the impossible. (YO ADRIANN I DID IT!!!)

Hydration: Start the day with Cafe Toledo finish with Pink Power Ranger.

Nutritionation: Most of the nation thinks UB is the sacrificial lamb this weekend and you are what you eat so we're having Cuchfritos: roasted lamb fried in olive oil and served hot, a traditional dish of Toledo, Spain.

Player Hating:

• I have been to the Glass Bowl once. Hated it. It's not a bad venue, just why the castle? Why no Glass? I hate misleading stadium names: The Rubber Bowl lacked rubber, BC's Alumni Stadium lacked Alumni, (and any other fans in general) and the Carrier dome lacked air conditioning.
• Bruce Gradkowski, I have been on the wrong side of a lot of UB beat downs, and usually the victors win graciously. Omar Jacobs was great, Bruce Gradkowski, not so much. He was arrogant, and really over-enjoyed a pretty meaningless win over Buffalo. I usually root for MAC Alumni, but I have never rooted for the Big Gradkowski, despite his success in the field of highly paid clipboard holding and backwards cap modeling. I personally experienced only one MAC player worse than him, it was a Miami Redhawk, it wasn't Ben Rothlisburger, and I'll save that story for the Miami game.
  
• Coach Matt Campbell, born in 1979, I don't like that. I like my coaches old and stingy.
• David Fluellen yes I'm going there. C'mon man how do you end up at Toledo. I get Jehuu or Mike Williams or Gronk, they went FBS, but Flu, you went MAC. If you are from Buffalo and you go MAC, go to Buffalo man! How do you pass up South Transit Road, long drives down Bear Ridge Road and Reid's hot dogs with a shake? You can't get that in Toledo. Only in Lock City!
  

A Little Love:

• David Fluellen, that said, glad you are representing Western New York well in the middle of Ohio and Michigan country. I wonder if Toledo message boards demand someone else run the ball "because I'd rather have an Ohio back in there instead of some New Yorker."
• The Rocket The coolest thing about my trip to the Glass Bowl, is the rocket permanently aimed at the 50-yard line of Bowling Green's Stadium. That is hateful and awesome. I have plans drawn up for mutually assured MAC destruction codenamed: MAC MADness:
  1) Remotely detonate the rocket to take out BGSU (sorry Hustle Belt)
  2) Frame WMU for the detonation, re-ignite border war between Western, Central and Toledo, they destroy each other.
  3) Send NIU to the Big 12
  4) This leaves Ball State free to go undefeated, they self-destruct (like 2008)
  5) Name Miami #1 "Party School" in the nation, Ohio attacks to retrieve the title.
  6) Hide the Wagon Wheel in the Sahara, Kent and Akron go after it, neither team returns. Unexplained pyramid with the head of Dri Archer on the body of a cheetah pops-up overnight...becomes 8th wonder of the world.
  7) Send UMass after Calipari, they take out Ohio on the way, what the Minutemen lack in football skill, they make up for in Minutemen Militia skills.
  8) I leave EMU as they are, cause look at them, they are harmless.
  9) Buffalo wins, in 8 easy steps.