"Foe"Rensics: William and Mary

Hello and welcome back, faithful readers. Last time out, the courageous heroes were venturing down into the hot, humid, and dangerous swamps of Florida to do battle with a bunch of five-star circus performers. The intrepid combatants would defend their honor in the midst of thousands of hostile adversaries, striving to write their names into legend, tip the balance of power against evil and make the world a safer place.

1. I'm assuming you're talking about the football game. What happened?

A. Well, I am a humble man. Being a Fuller, which brings with it all the awesomeness of Fullerdom, this is more difficult than you can imagine, but Mama Fuller raised her Fullers right. So it is difficult for me to point out that per the pre-season preview, I am technically in the lead as the most best prognosticator since I have correctly predicted the number of losses incurred by your beloved Hokies, that is, to say, zero.

2. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? But I thought this was Lethal Simplicity, this was the Five Star University, this was the start of a new era that would be littered with National Championship Trophies?

A. Uh, I mean, it MIGHT, but all Monday night was littered with was bodies that Hezekiah Grimsley caught. My only conclusion is that Bud Foster is an enormous Atlanta Braves fan, just found out that FSU had appropriated their thoroughly original and not mildly-uncomfortably-racist chant and unleashed holy hell on Deondre Quebecois and Cam Akers, who managed to go nowhere or backwards more than they managed to do anything right.

Hezekiah means "Brings the Thunder of the Heavens and Unloads It on Some Poor Sap Who Should've Never Gone So Far From Home." It's biblical. Or his fury is.

To capture some of the highlights from Monday night:

• My cat-obsessed daughter saw a dude named McKitty who, despite being a Seminole, immediately became her favorite player
• I think if they'd have continued to feed the rock to McClease, the Hokies would never have botched away so many points and he would have finished with 300 yards and Tech would have won by 42. This is just Cornelson messing with my Breakout Player prediction
• This is the first football season for two of our cats¹ who spent Monday evening hiding under a bed and now fear me and the television
• That may be related to my son, the loudest human being on the planet, asking me to please be quieter more than once. Whatever, I don't work for him.
• Let us never speak of that third quarter again, unless it is solely to praise Oscar Bradburn

3. So what happens next?

A. This week, the Hokies face the team that regularly rivals James Madison for the second best team in the state although, to be fair, Old Dominion has been making a push into this conversation recently. William and Mary was named for that infamous extramarital tryst between William Wallace and Queen "Bloody" Mary. As any student of English history knows, Wallace broke into Camelot, stole the sword from Lancelot, used it to break the chastity belt off of Mary, and wooed her away from her evil husband, Henry VIII² and fled across Stirling Bridge to southeast Virginia. Henry launched 1,000 ships in pursuit, but they were sunk by the Spanish Armada, led by Captain Morgan and Achilles, and William and Mary were able to pursue their dreams of slaughtering all the Native Americans in the area and then peacefully higher educating the local populace.

I don't know what they're doing, why they are so fake happy about it, or why the lady with a camera strap is photoshopped into the background participating in their fake fun. [via The Peedmont]

Sometime later, W&M made the mistake of educating Thomas Jefferson, lending him a veneer of respectability, and ever since then have been cursed with terrible mascots. They've been known, officially or not, throughout their history as the "The Orange and White", "The Orange and Black", "The Northern Press", "WAMPO", "The Big Green Indians", "The Big Green Egg", "Iron Indians", "Colonel Ebirt", and "The Griffin". I barely made any of those up. They have since been making amends for their grievous error and are belatedly attempting to relate to the cool kids of today by naming themselves after A Tribe Called Quest.

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A post shared by ATCQ (@atcq) on Nov 9, 2016 at 8:20am PST

Though they've adopted the green and yellow in their uniforms, using ATCQ for their warm ups has inspired more philosophical introspection than aggression on the football field.

4. Who leads these young men into battle?

A. A guy named Jimmye Laycock. He's been coaching at W&M longer than Frank Tha God coached in Blacksburg, and the unusual spelling of his name and his lengthy tenure are actually related.

It turns out that Mama and Papa Laycock were huge fans of the Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons and named him Jimmy Ethelbert Laycock³ in honor of their hero. Furthermore, Jimmy was raised to believe that elaborate gimmicky traps in order to catch birds is the only reason life is lived. As he grew into a young man, he was embarrassed by his parents' obsession with Chuck Jones and their life's work, and went into football coaching to escape the dystopian future in the American Southwest they had dreamed for him. He even appended the 'E' to his first name so people wouldn't find out about the Ethelbert, deciding Jimmye was less embarrassing.

However, we can never truly leave our past behind us, not completely. So, Jimmye has a hidden desire of crushing all bird-related mascots he plays, which explains why their rivalry with the Delaware Blue Hens is so fierce. This will be his 9th and final attempt as a coach to knock off those rascally Hokies, and he will do so as is his wont, with vast amounts of Rube Goldberg-like trick plays with little hope of success that will more than likely backfire on him. Since their 2011 inception, Laycock's unrequited dream is to drop an anvil on the Alamodome to crush the UT-San Antonio Roadrunners, preferably while they are playing the Rice Owls.

5. Do they have players?

A. Yes. They have Joe Nameth, a poor spelling, panty-hose wearing linebacker. They have Griffin Gilder, which is his actual name, who only got in because Griffin was their mascot at the time. It was a very lucky break for him since he was in hiding after being framed for the attempted murder of Princess Buttercup. They recruited Simeon Brown out of Christiansburg High School RIGHT FROM UNDER TECH'S NOSES. THIS IS UNCONSCIONABLE. Finally, in honor of their humblebrag of being a "Public Ivy", they've been sure to fill out their roster with dudes named Lachlan, Gage, Tucker, Bryden and other various lacrosse names.

6. Should I go to the game?

A. Yes! The game is being played in the Mecca of college football, Blacksburg. As a matter of fact, this will be the next generation of Fullers' (The Sixth Fuller and The Seventh Fuller) first in person game, which I'm sure will result in me getting to watch approximately 5 minutes of actual play which will be filled by similar stimulating conversation to watching the FSU game with my son:

The Seventh Fuller: Who's number 8?⁴
The Fifth Fuller: I don't know.
TSF: Who's number 16?
TFF: I don't know.
TSF: WHO IS THAT GUY?
TFF: That's Josh Jackson's dad.
TSF: Who is Josh Jackson?
TFF: He's the quarterback.
TSF: What number is he?
TFF: 17.
TSF: What's his dad's name?
TFF: I don't know.
TSF: They just showed it on the screen, his name's Fred.
TFF: Then why did you ask me?
TSF: Is Fred sitting in the VIP section?
TFF: He's probably sitting in the players' family section.
TSF: Is that the VIP section?
TFF: (Contemplates explaining that the VIP section is probably the boxes where the truly wealthy are sitting in climate controlled comfort getting waited on hand and foot, thinks about the list of questions that'd provoke...) ...Yes.
TSF: Who's number 17?

When not playing 20 thousand questions, I'll be taking at least two trips to concessions, two trips to the bathroom as a direct result, and at least a quarter spent in the gift shop before leaving sometime in the third quarter.

7. What if I'm ACTUALLY in Williamsburg this weekend?

A. Then you should eat! You may want to think about skipping China Max at the Williamsburg Premium Outlets, though. Let's hear from Jon:

I didn't know nail polish remover was used in cooking these days. . .Finally onto the "delectable" Bourbon chicken. You can get it two ways; boring, or more boring

I'm pretty sure nail polish remover is poisonous and should not be consumed. Also, if this is a Chinese restaurant, why are they serving Bourbon chicken? Isn't that a Cajun thing? Are there Cajun Chinese fusion restaurants that I'm not aware of and are now popping up in outlet mall food courts nationwide? How IS the Bourbon Chicken, aside from boring? Todd?

Rice tasted burnt and they scooped around the chicken to give me more of the fillers. Bad for even mall food court Chinese food standards.

That's...wow. That's like a bathroom review pointing out a ditch was terrible by latrine standards. That's gotta be a TERRIBLE ditch.

8. Do they barbecue in Williamsburg?

A. They do! I may have pimped them before, but go to Pierce's and get the Pork Shanks. I don't even want to make jokes about their reviews, GO EAT THE PORK SHANKS.

9. Anything else to cover?

A. Folks, this is a Division I-AA school coming off a 2-9 season, so I hope you understand I don't want to open up the entire "Foe"Rensics playbook this week. We need to keep some things under wraps preparing for a top quality opponent. So I will leave you with some things to watch this weekend:

• Quincy Patterson AND Hendon Hooker both making their collegiate debuts, setting the stage for Twitter and message board meltdowns as soon as Josh Jackson throws a meaningless pick in a few weeks.
• I would love to see McClease break 100 in the first quarter, then placed in bubble wrap so we can see Holston and Wheatley go off the rest of the game.
• Seeing if I can slip a Nyquil Mickey Finn to my kid so he sleeps so I can watch.
• Don't let Ricky Walker on the field at all. Seriously. Florida State already tried to de-knee him, can they not let him get hurt before Notre Dame?
• If you see a guy in line to get popcorn with the kid wearing a full Hokie uniform alternating between complaining about not being allowed to wear his helmet and asking loud, rude questions about people in line near them, offer him some bourbon. I will need it.

¹Go ahead, ask me how many cats I have. FOUR. Because they are better than letting my wife get the chickens she really wants and then I have to clean up chicken poo every day.

²So named because he was her eighth husband, and every one was a Henry, HENRY, she wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam, NO SAM

³Ethelbert is Wile E. Coyote's middle name. THIS IS CANON.

⁴I was asked about the name of every single player who made it onto the screen with a visible jersey number. And I don't know who anyone is yet.