BYU Comes to Cleveland, and Teddy Gets His Number Back
Cleveland State56
BYU21
- Game
- 2030 Week 5
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 5-0
Vikings 56, BYU 21, at home. Five and oh!
The last two years we went to Provo and scored sixty-three and seventy-six. This year BYU came here, to a gray Cleveland afternoon off the lake, and we scored fifty-six. I’ll be honest, folks: I felt bad for them. Those are nice people from a very clean city, and they came to ours, and it was raining sideways, and we were rude.
Saturday morning I stopped at the West Side Market, and Teddy at the kielbasa stall, who went speechless last year before Utah, has his gift back. He wrapped my links, looked at the sky, looked at the line of customers and said, “Fifty-six, Mick. Maybe fifty-five.” I said, “Teddy, that’s very specific.” He said, “The pierogi lady sold out by nine. That’s a fifty-six morning.” Fifty-six. On the dot. I’ve asked the Market to put a plaque on his stall. They said no. I’m going to make one myself.
Okoronkwo, our redshirt freshman running back, rated 87, a five-star kid from Missouri, keeps doing things that make me grab Donna’s arm. She’s started wearing long sleeves.
Four pierogi.
A thirty-five-point home win over BYU. Five and oh. The Vikings have won their five games by an average of more than forty-five points. I’ve stopped saying “rude, but legal.” It’s become simply “the situation.”
The thing I keep watching is the defense. Five games into Lonnie Arnold’s tenure, his unit hasn’t allowed more than twenty-one points in any of them. Teams that do that in the Big 12 usually make December interesting.
Spin Cycle Records got a new shipment, and the owner, who has set aside records for me since 2026, set aside another one: a jazz trio record from 1961 called, I promise, “Undefeated.” He’d written a note on the sleeve: “Don’t play it yet.” I haven’t. It’s on the shelf, face out. Teresa asked about it. I said, “It’s for later.” She said, “That’s what Sal says about the pennant.” She’s been listening to Mickey’s columns. I’m surrounded.
The Doom Model has started a new tab without me. It’s called “Perfect?” With a question mark. I didn’t make it. It’s blinking.
Back and forth
Teddy said fifty-six! On the dot!
I’d like to see his methodology. The pierogi lady selling out by nine is not a model.
It’s better than yours.
That’s unfortunately true. My model just made a tab called “Perfect?” and won’t explain itself.
BYU caught in a sideways rain, a sausage oracle back on his game, and a record called “Undefeated” sitting face out on a shelf, waiting.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.