How Kirk Cousins Almost Cost Me a Job: Games Following Thursday Night Football
Have you ever caught someone saying something that made you realize “This person is completely full of it”? Allow me to set the scene.
I was in downtown Chicago at one of these brutal information sessions for a Chicago company called [redacted]. As a senior in college, these were the types of things I was told to attend so I could get a job and not be homeless or something. Did I learn more about the company I hoped to work at? Nope. Was the information session enjoyable? Nope. Was it terribly inconvenient because I was missing a Thursday Night Football game in which my idiot roommate was starting Kirk Fucking Cousins over Tom Brady against me in fantasy football? Yes, yes it was.
So here I am at this information session, late on a Thursday night, for the sole purpose of this company noticing a checkmark in a box that says I demonstrated an interest in their company when they happen to look at my job application in a month. I had just finished a practice case interview (if you don’t know what these are, look them up, then never become a consultant because they are a terrible, terrible thing to learn how to do) and proceeded to strike up a conversation with who I thought was the token office bro. By that, he was the only normal looking dude there that maybe I could talk about sports with.
So I start talking to this guy. We’ll call him Jamaal (he was white, how dare you assume he was black). I bring up the football game that was just about to start. The Washington Seminoles versus the New York Giants. This was in 2014, so what do you bring up when you’re talking about the Washington football team? The train wreck of a quarterback situation they had.
Our conversation went something like this.
Ian: “Man, I can’t wait to get home and watch this game tonight.”
Jamaal: “Oh right, I forgot there’s Thursday Night Football on. Who’s playing again?”
Ian: “Washington versus the Giants. Yeah, I can’t believe this Washington quarterback situation. A gimpy RG3 or Kirk Cousins. What do you think?”
Jamaal: “Yeah it really is interesting. You got Kirk Cousins who, you know, is the veteran and guy with the playoff experience, but then there’s RG3. I don’t know.”
….Huh?
Now if this was one of my friends, I would immediately call them out on being an idiot, but this was a guy who I was hoping would help me get a job. Now looking back, I wish I would’ve freaked out on this fake football fan, because I didn’t get the job anyways. Instead, I hopefully covered up the confused look on my face, and said, “Yeah…”
Kirk Cousins, the veteran, playoff quarterback who was the same age as RG3 and had played in fewer playoff games, went on to throw four picks, as the Giants and The Blair Walsh Project (sweet fantasy team name I know) went on to win in emphatic fashion.
I hate when people talk out of their ass about stuff they don’t know. Just don’t talk about it if you don’t know anything about it. We see this a lot from the talking heads when they discuss the fantasy plays on Sunday mornings. Often times they’ll point to the amount of rest the player has had in the lead up to the game as a reason to play someone. Bye weeks are too obvious sometimes, so what they’ve recently pointed to is the nine days of rest after playing a game on Thursday night.
Well, I’m going to do all you loyal readers a favor, and let you have the opportunity to call out your friend, a senior consultant, or your television, the next time one of these people claim that a player is going to perform better because they played on Thursday night the previous week.
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