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Fantasy Things

last_updated
2026-08-22
discussion_volume
medium

Fantasy Things is The Solid Verbal's annual draft of college-football situations, tropes, broadcast oddities, clichés, and rare moments that would be fun to see during the coming season. It is not fantasy football and it is not a prediction contest; the format gives the hosts and listeners a shared watchlist for the sport's most specifically college-football forms of absurdity.

Current Show Posture

As of 2026-08-22:

Fantasy Things works because it treats weirdness as a feature of college football rather than a failure of seriousness. The hosts draft items such as passive-aggressive coaches, fan-designed plays, strange broadcast incidents, weather chaos, commercials, and GameDay personalities, then invite listeners to decide which items resonate. There is still no formal scoring system after more than a decade; the payoff is the act of watching the season with an extra set of things in mind.

The 2026 draft also shows the format's range. It can hold harmless broadcast nonsense, genuine cultural oddity, recurring coaching behavior, and long-shot football outcomes in the same playful frame. The durable rule is that the best pick is specific enough to recognize when it happens and weird enough that the sport might still outdo it.

Evolution Timeline

Running Takes

Episode Appearances

  • Kickoff Yearning — adjacent pre-season joy frame focused on what makes fans want the season back.
  • The Wiggum Scale — another recurring segment built around a named lens for watching college football.