Welcome to the Sickos Gazette

A publication brought to you by the Sickos Committee.

Well, we really don’t know where to start, but welcome to The Sickos Gazette - or whatever we’ll call it in our next post. Our Twitter account has grown tremendously in less than a year, and we wanted to give a little background on the Sickos Committee and how this idea was formed in our experiences watching college football.

The committee was formed mostly from dedicated listeners of the Shutdown Fullcast and Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody (PAPN) / Split Zone Duo. We found each other when we unknowingly joined something called the Moon Crew Discord in the height of the pandemic. We became a weird offshoot of both of those podcasts where we appreciated the absolutely absurd nature of college football, but also schemes, analytics, and blue chip ratios. This weird conglomeration of college football fans became great friends and began to form our own identity as the Sickos Committee.

On these podcasts and across Twitter, we started noticing games that were outside of what the usual outlets were talking about, and we were drawn to that.  Your normal college football Twitter timeline would be hollering about a ranked Michigan and Michigan State, while we were laser focused on Rutgers picking up a crucial 3rd down against Illinois to possibly maintain bowl eligibility.  We wanted to watch games that were off the radar for whatever reason. Our college football fandoms led us to this place. Whether a committee member was from a weaker Power 5 school or a Group of 5 school with no real shot at a National Title, these games were entertaining for a million reasons on their own. 

As for my personal Sickos origin story, I was always drawn to what is now known as the SP+ ratings from Bill Connelly, now at ESPN. While the normal college football fan would always focus on the Top 10 or Top 25, I would immediately scroll all the way to the bottom of the 125+ team rankings. Was the team where I attended school likely to be down there? Yes, but over the years, looking at these rankings, I would frequently see these schools down there with my school and form a kinship in my mind. I would keep tabs on them and watch their games hoping my school or their school could have some modicum of success. This could be just sliding into a bowl game at 6-6, or a miraculous 8-4 season out of nowhere. Maybe it was just winning 2 or 3 games after a winless season the year before. 

During the 2020 season, I began to rank the games to highlight the most unconventionally appealing matchups. I’d throw up a ranking of 10 games, and like-minded Discord members would discuss the order, using a combination of analytics and gut feeling. We were like a more transparent version of the CFP Committee. We’d reshuffle the rankings and finally settle on the order for the week. Our crown jewel was the #1 game - the Sickos Game of the Week.

When the 2021 season rolled around, I decided to tweet along with the games. A Twitter account meant to entertain maybe 50 - 75 people gained an incredible following over the season. Our beloved VP of Graphic Design, Jordan, began to play around with photoshopping the Sickos guy from the Onion cartoon (we have no affiliation but they are graciously allowing the cartoon’s use). He’d play around with the character and began putting the iconic face and eyes on every picture he could find. The Committee members would also photoshop memes, and we’d come up with stuff to make each other laugh each day.  Some of our followers began to submit edits of their own, and just as importantly, began to tag us when they noticed something crazy or fun was going on in games that few others were watching. We’re truly appreciative of everyone who gives us the heads up to these amazing moments, and the accounts who get clips up so fast. We wouldn’t be what we are without them. 

The committee began adding more pieces - maybe you’ve seen our top 25 games of the week, or our monthly poll where we ask our followers to vote for their most Sickos team, using whatever criteria they deemed fit. Maybe it was a big team that was underperforming; maybe it was a small team that was looking scary. We got shout-outs from the media folks that we, ourselves, enjoyed, including a great article by Brandon Marcello (Meet the Sickos Committee) and an appearance on The Transfer Portal Podcast. We even had one member who got credited as official media for a bowl game this year, which was both incredibly humbling and hilarious.

In June, we passed 18,000 Sickos Committee members (all of our followers are members, so if you didn’t know, feel free to add that to your resume). This is amazing and hilarious, but when you take a moment to reflect on it, we found many “Sickos” just like us that are invested in the entire sport of college football, not just the top 10 teams. We aren’t necessarily worried about just the College Football Playoff  - we’ll watch it, but c’mon, you probably already listen to several podcasts or shows where that’s all they talk about. We love the entirety of college football, from the top to the bottom. We are the Sicko Guy - we sit at the window, smiling, watching everything we can find. Are we going to stay up to 11pm Eastern Time to watch Mississippi State play at Arizona, a real thing that is happening in a few months? You bet. Why? Well, we’re Sickos, and we can’t get enough college football… and it’s going to be a night game in Tucson. The more insane a game becomes, the more we enjoy it.

As for the purpose of this newsletter, The Sickos Committee wanted to branch out a little bit and do some more long form things besides just the tweets. We’ve toyed around with the idea of weekly Sicko game recaps written in old timey newspaper writing styles. We’re working on some Sickos Metrics, including one new metric called DETMER which we will be releasing soon. Also, we are coming up with a program to have fans of the Power 5 teams find their team in the Group of 5 based on some fun decision trees. And yes, of course, we will still crank out the Sickos memes along with the Sickos Game and team rankings like always. Also, as you’ve noticed during the off season, we’ve branched out into some other sports, so we’ll see where that goes. 

As for the business portion of this newsletter, it will be free for the foreseeable future, because we’re not really a business or a company or anything officially organized. We’re just a bunch of Sickos college football fans who are doing this for fun. Maybe we’ll have some merch eventually, and maybe we’ll be traveling to games and doing other fun stuff, but that’s all down the road. Considering where this all started, though, who knows? 

Thank you again for your support, your encouragement, and helping us find a community that enjoys the fun bits that we do.

Sincerely,

Your Sickos Committee Chairman Escalante