A Message From The Bridgewater Underground

It was a fitful sleep, the kind where you fall asleep and then awaken; 20 minutes here, 45 minutes there.  There was a feeling of uneasiness across the land, and plans were in motion should the Thing We Feared Most come to pass. At times like this, when a man is alone with his thoughts, it's tough to not play events in your mind again, over and over. Am I doing the right thing? How will history remember us? Can I make it until morning before I have to get out of bed to pee?

Just as I was falling back to sleep, the phone rang. A phone call this late at night/early in the morning was rarely good news, and as the phone reached five...six...now seven rings, I knew that there was nothing left to do but answer it.

"Please, let this not be what I think", I thought to myself as the word hello passed my lips.

For a moment, just enough time to make me think that this was a wrong number, or even a butt dial, there was silence on the other end.  But then, just as hope began to rise in me, it was dashed. Dashed like a Brett Favre pass over the middle in the NFC Championship game.

"The long sobs of Spergeon Wynn wound my heart with a monotonous languor."

Click. I didn't even get a chance to acknowledge.

No. It's happened.  They did it, didn't they?

I waited for a second to let the phrase that would key the revolution sink in.

The long sobs of Spergeon Wynn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.

No. Please, no.

It happened. Matt Cassel is the starter, and Teddy Bridgewater will ride the pine. The great thing about the Teddy Bridgewater Underground is that no underground cell can be traced back to another.  My phone, as were all of the phones in The Underground, was encrypted to the point that even the NSA would have problems locating and tracing it. As long as calls were kept under a minute, and code words were used, messages could be passed freely, almost defiantly, the the rest of The Underground.

I dialed my assigned number, to notify the next person in the chain. A groggy, possibly drunk partisan answered on the other end. He could barely croak out a hello before I informed him of what I knew.

"The long sobs of Spergeon Wynn wound my heart with a monotonous languor."

"Uff Da", was all that said before hanging up.

Throughout the land, the rebellion began to grow as The Bridgewater Underground stirred.  First on message boards, then on to main newspaper comment sections. Soon, the Revolution spread to other social media platforms, like Facebook, Google Plus, and maybe even Snapchat.

I don't have Snapchat, but I was told it was pretty cool, at least for five seconds at a time.

Defenders of The Cassel fought back hard, defending their quarterback fiercely. For every comment that proclaimed Bridgewate the future, the Old Guard struck back, fierce and fast. Battles raged, comments quickly devolved in to vicious hand to hand posting and re-posting in some areas, and the only victory was a Pyrrhic one.

And for a brief time, The Flag Of Godwin's Law flew over the land, and who would ultimately prevail was very much in doubt.

Ultimately, the revolution took to Twitter, and the battle went international.  It got rough at points, as the old guard tried to proclaim that there never even really was a competition. That seemed to be an ineffective attack though, and for a little while it seemed like the Revolution was winning the hearts and minds of the people. Could the yoke of the Old Guard would be swept away, into oblivion? For awhile, it seemed like it might be possible. Oh, those were a heady 20 minutes, to be sure. Thoughts of a new future were almost too much to think about, it was so exciting. Just as it seemed we were winning, we decided to unleash the Super Weapon: Pro Football Focus, and end this thing once and for all.

"Look, look at what Pro Football Focus has to say" The Underground proclaimed, unleashing what we felt was the ultimate weapon of online war, and uniting under a new rallying cry.

YES! Pro Football Focus!  This is the ultimate weapon! Many teams use it, Cris Collinsworth is buying part of it, it must be accurate, and The Underground can show where Teddy Bridgewater was better in the all important pre-season game three, and therefore should start. The swaying of hearts and minds was about to begin.

But alas, just as this new super weapon was poised to make a difference, Field Marshall Zimmer struck with a blinding counterattack, crashing into the Underground's left flank with a precision and speed not seen in modern on-line rhetorical war.

"Take what you find in PFF with a grain of salt. Fuckers."

And with that, the PFF super weapon faltered, and then failed. The revolution began to fall apart, and great swaths of territory, along with the rebels in that territory, were re-conquered by The Old Guard.

We in the Bridgewater Underground are now in retreat, and it isn't pretty. The finger pointing and back biting has begun, and we're trying to make it back to our Louisville stronghold to regroup and reorganize. This was a crushing defeat for the Teddy Bridgewater Underground, but we'll be back. We'll bide our time, re-arm, and wait in the shadows, ready to strike again.

We are the Bridgewater Underground, and we're not going anywhere.