Top Excuses to Get out of a College Football Saturday Wedding This Fall

Congratulations! Your friend or loved one has asked you to accompany him or her to a wedding. They only get to bring one guest, and you were the easy choice—way to go!

Just one problem. The date reads: Saturday, [insert weekend between September and December], 2013. And your team kicks off its biggest game at noon, right in the heart of all the nuptial action.

What are you supposed to do?

A day of drinking and dancing is usually great, but Saturdays in fall are supposed to be sacred. Your friend or loved one should have known better; you haven't missed a game since 2002. And they expect you to break that streak so you can watch two people you barely know get married?

Fat chance.

My Team Needs Me

Take a page out of the Bud Light playbook: Superstitious rituals, no matter how bizarre, are only weird if they don't work.

You can't be expected to follow the score on your phone, hunched over in the pew like some sort of troll, pumping your fist at inappropriate times during the service. You need to be sitting in your lucky chair, wearing your lucky boxers, holding your lucky remote.

Robert De Niro's character in Silver Linings Playbook would never miss a game to attend a wedding. And that helped get him nominated for an Oscar.

When in doubt, always do as De Niro would do. That's just basic life advice.

I Already Put Money on the Game

Betting on a game then not watching it? Heresy. 

That's like buying a scratch ticket at the deli, but scanning it on the Lotto machine instead of whipping out a coin. What's the point? Your odds are the same, sure, but the thrill of watching is your own personal vigorish. Even if you lose, at least you got to chase the high.

Game of the Year lines are already out, and there are ones for every week. Your bases are totally covered. Just say you placed your bet before the Save the Date arrived—smart bettors hop on early lines, anyway—and you've got yourself a built-in excuse.

Then, just so you're not as much of a liar, maybe head to Vegas and place a bet for real. If the team you're rooting for wins, the person you ditched at the wedding will expect to see some money.

Gambling on football and establishing an alibi at the same time? Talk about two birds with one bet.

I'm Doing "Business" with a Client

I had a friend in high school who didn't know his dad's occupation. We asked him once and his answer was just "businessman." That's all he could come up with. His dad was a man who did business, and there was nothing more to the story.

His father knew better than getting too specific. "Business" is the ultimate Get Out of X Free Card; it's just straightforward enough to sound important, but just vague enough to apply in diverse situations.

And a sports bar on a Saturday is the perfect place to conduct your fake business. It's intimate but social, with plenty of drinks to go around. How could you pass up such a prime opportunity to schmooze a fake client?

People who aren't part of the business world have a romantic notion of that milieu. So far as they're concerned, Mad Men is a documentary; any deal that's not done over food and drink and sport is a deal not worth making.

Do what any good, loyal, morally ambiguous fan would do and take advantage of that.

I Can't Take My Eyes off This Video

I applaud Mr. Wells for his gusto, but he might be drinking a LITTLE too much Bielema Kool-Aid. So just to keep him in check, I wrote a new, equally corny but much more honest verse about his coach's offseason:

Bie-le-ma wants less plays in each football game.

Said it's too unsafe, kids could get hurt.

But that's not the reason.

What a bogus show.

Like himself, he's scared his team's too slow.

I'll digress, though. This video is one of the greatest things to ever hit the Internet. Even with a wedding to conflict, I could never, in all good conscience, tear someone away if they needed five or six or 40 more viewings.

Just look your loved one in the eye and say you literally can't stop watching this. There's no way they won't Bieleme you.

I Can't Miss Saturday Afternoon Twitter

Remember that one Holden Caufield quote from ninth grade English?

"

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

"

Nowadays, with Twitter, you don't have to hope and wish for a phone conversation with your favorite writers. Just stick by the computer on a Saturday afternoon, and you can basically watch every football game with them.

The snarky, irreverent sideshow to college football has become integral to its viewing process. Sad as it may be, merely "watching" football, at this point, feels kind of antiquated. Following along with Twitter is often just as entertaining as the games.

Adam Kramer can turn Big Ten media days—I repeat: BIG TEN MEDIA DAYS—into Friday night at the Laugh Factory with one or two well-placed tweets.

Just imagine what he can do with actual football.

I Don't Feel Well

Sometimes it's best not to overthink it.

Truants have played the sick card, with varying degrees of success, for centuries. It's tried and it's true, so it has to be one of your options.

That said, the friend/loved one inviting you to this wedding will sense something fishy. How convenient of you to fall sick just in time for the game. You're bluffing with a 7-2 off-suit against the chip leader, so pulling this off will require delicate poise.

Suggested mentors: Ferris Bueller and Kevin Malone. Discouraged mentors: these guys.

I Can't Avoid Seeing the Score

I was never old enough for it to matter, but apparently, allegedly, recording live sports used to be a thing. 

There were nights when you could miss an entire game, proceed with your normal life, come back home that evening, pop a tape into the VCR (whatever that is?), crack open a beer and watch it from start to finish unspoiled.

It sounds idyllic, like a distant memory that's too convenient to be true, but in 2013 the concept is moot. We live in a time when even eyeglasses get WiFi. Those days might have existed, but with no way to avoid seeing the score, they're definitely gone.

Don't fall for your friend/loved one's rhetoric when they tell you to record the game. Ask them to imagine watching Psycho if they knew Mrs. Bates was dead, or Fight Club if they knew the truth about Tyler Durden. I guess there would still be a point, but certainly not as compelling of one. 

It's the journey, not the destination, that makes football so special. And in 2013, the only way to take that journey is live.

Fanships Last Longer Than Marriages

According to the CDC, America's marriage rate is 6.8 persons per 1,000. The current divorce rate is 3.6 per 1,000, a little more than 50 percent of that number. Those are harrowing statistics.

I'm not saying this marriage will end in divorce, but it's certainly possible. How can you be expected to ditch your team—your definite lifelong commitment—for something so transient?

The burden of lifelong fanship isn't easy. My freshman year at Maryland, the Terps went 2-10. And one of those wins came against James Madison. An FCS opponent. At home.

In overtime.

Almost every single night that season (and last season, when a freshman linebacker started at quarterback), a part of me wanted to cut the ripcord. At times, it was all I could think about. But "'til death do us part" means "'til death do us part."

At least when we talk about football.

Follow Brian Leigh on Twitter: @BLeighDAT