Saw Men

EPISODE 177: The art of tearing down a goalpost.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself XXIV”

Nobody tears down goalposts after NFL games.

It’s happened just a couple times ever, as far as I can tell, and the basic premise, in this era of post-9/11 stadium security and billion-dollar franchise valuations, is unthinkable anymore.

Which says quite a bit about the institution that is college football.

This century-old tradition of celebration by self-destruction — an underdog ripping their own stadium’s doors from their jambs, as Whitman once wrote — has happened multiple times on the same Saturday, on multiple Saturdays, this season: The Fall of Goalposts.

We just saw it at Lehigh University last weekend, as you’ll see, and at Vanderbilt and Arkansas, on the same glorious Saturday last month, and none of our correspondents could have been more eager to dive into this subculture than Mickey Duzyj: an animator and documentarian and illustrator who was last seen here sharing his secret life as an underdog goth tennis champion.

Because beyond what one power-conference executive suggested to us, here at Pablo Torre Finds Out — that the sport is deeply concerned about “the safety of participants and spectators alike” — this tradition is also, truly, an artform.

An endangered and unhinged artform, about literal unhinging, that some people are fighting to preserve.

I can’t wait for you to meet them.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Innocently,

Pablo