Good Day Grover Pickers,

It’s week 12, a fun week of games to watch if you can get them on a TV somewhere. The Commissioner offers an apology for continuing the “In Memoriam” section of this blog. I didn’t want to do it, but stuff keeps happening and I don’t make the rules, but I should, as you know.

In Memoriam

An Official, Recurring, but Temporary Grover Picks Special Report

College Football Playoff Committee Chairman

The gentleman leading the College Football Playoff selection committee, Baylor AD Mack Rhoades, is taking a leave of absence from the school and therefore he cannot continue to lead the committee. Oh, no, what will we do?

According to the article from ESPN,

“Baylor told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg that the university received allegations involving Rhoades on Monday. The allegations do not involve Title IX, student welfare or NCAA rules and do not involve the football program, indicating it is a separate incident from Rhoades’ alleged altercation with a football player during a September game.”

Holy crap. If it’s none of that, what did he allegedly do?

Is he on the list?

Was he buying alcohol for high school students?

Are his mattress tags missing?

And what will his missing leadership mean for the playoff selection committee? Will they forget to include Ohio State in the playoff? Will it prevent the SEC from filling 10 of the 12 spots? Who will get the coffee and donuts before the morning meeting now?

Interim Coaches

“If something needs to be done eventually, it needs to be done immediately.”
attributed to Florida AD Jeremey Foley, modern concept originally created by Henry Kissinger.

Time to fire all the interim coaches. They suck. We’ve seen enough.

Billy Gonzales – Florida – Useless
Tim Skipper – UCLA – Hopeless
Alex Mortensen – UAB –Clueless
Frank Reich – Stanford – Aimless
Robb Akey – Oregon State – Worthless
Bobby Petrino – Arkansas – Functionally Decorative
Philip Montgomery – Virginia Tech – Human Hair Clog
Terry Smith – Penn State – Value Subtractor
Doug Meacham – Oklahoma State – Shamblefactory
Frank Wilson – LSU – Wreckscape
Mike Kafka – New York Giants – Failboat

Our fans deserve to win THIS WEEK!

Where is the leadership? We, the lowly fans who can’t even watch our team on TV lo these several weeks, WE DEMAND each school’s “Men of Action”, those tax dodging, Travis Matthew wearing, big-butted, trophy-wife chasing, Psilocybin micro-dosing, bourbon swilling, double cheeseburger gnawing crypto-criminal boosters, get off their wallets and fix this! Now!

There are plenty of ‘Angry Looking Leaders of Men’ chaffing in their coaching shorts on a golf course somewhere who would LOVE the chance to yell at our team for a few weeks or even through the bowl season! Slide those bad boys some hookers and blow and let’s get this train rolling!

Brian Dabol – New York Giants

Another branch of the Belichick coaching tree is sawed off and repurposed as a stack of bundled firewood for sale in front of your local Piggly Wiggly.

Adhuc Vivit (Still Alive)

Brian Kelly

Now, LSU says they did not fire Brian Kelly, but they will now. Since he hasn’t been at work for weeks, LSU believes it can fire him for cause and therefore not pay his buyout.

Kelly’s lawyers insist he will settle with LSU as soon as they pay him every single dollar required by his contract.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry does not appear to be a proponent of contract law, and he certainly does not want to give any money to Brian Kelly, even though Landry is purportedly a lawyer and definitely a Kevin Spacey cos-player.

Don’t worry Tigers, it’s all going to be OK. (I’m lying, so is the guy in the photo.)

Stadiums Named For Presidents

I have an original thought that is not at all influenced by something stupid I saw on the internet.

America is in crisis. There are too many stadiums named for commercial sponsors or old people we’ve forgotten about. We, the free and independent people, should refresh these stale stadium labels with new monikers that better honor the real heroes of our age: U.S. Presidents and/or Similar Great Men of the Time.

I have some Ideas. Keep in mind, the current stadiums named for U.S. Presidents have one requirement: the President must be dead. That leaves 5 men, Clinton, W., Obama, Trump and Biden, who are currently ineligible. I assume they prefer it that way.

Professional Amateur Football

Notre Dame v Pitt – Acrisure Stadium

Gameday goes to Pittsburgh, McAfee’s hometown, because this is the biggest nothing-burger game of the week according to Pitt Head Coach Pat Narduzzi who says,

“It is not an ACC game. … I would gladly get beat 103 or 110-10 in that game. They can put 100 up on us as long as we win the next two after that.”

Yep. If you are not playing an ACC Football game, what’s the point in even taping your ankles. The thrill, the heat, the intense ferocity of regular season ACC grudge matches can’t be topped by a mere Top 20 battle between grimy, midwest adjacent, poorly uniformed galoots.

For the record, Notre Dame is only scoring 38 points per game this season, which is less than 100. Notre Dame has not scored 100 points in a football game since their memorable 116-7 win over St. Viator in 1914.

The last time ANY college team scored 100 points was 13 days ago. Snow College Badgers defeated Community Christian College Saints 101-6 on November 1, 2025 at Terry Foote Stadium in Ephraim, UT.

Acrisure is an insurance company. Boring.

There are no U.S. Presidents who are graduates of Notre Dame or Pittsburgh.

Greg Williams is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO, essentially ‘President’, of Acrisure Insurance. He’s alive. Can’t name the stadium in his honor.

We need a dead Greg Willams. We can’t use the Greg Williams from the Brady Bunch, he’s both alive and also named ‘Barry’, but his character was ‘Greg’.

We can’t use football coach Gregg Williams because the name has two ‘G’s and also Bountygate.

There is one guy who was the unofficial President of College Football before Lee Corso, who graduated from Pitt, and always, always, always, supported Notre Dame.

The Carroll Hoff “Beano” Cook Memorial Stadium, aka, The Beano Bowl. 
If we can’t do that, we are not a proper nation.

Michigan v Northwestern at Wrigley Field

Michigan likes to run the ball and fumble. Northwestern is more of a “Can’t we just go to the library? It’s cold out here” kind of vibe.

Any teams that play in baseball stadiums on purpose should be banned from bowl-eligibility. It’s like putting a watermelon in the microwave. 

Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is already named for a dead President, William Wrigley of the Wrigley Company. Good work, Chicago!

USF v Navy – Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium

This game matters! There is an open spot in the playoff for one Non-SEC Group of 5 team. Right now it’s 7-2 USF’s to lose, but Navy is also 7-2, and so is Kennesaw State, San Diego State, and Tulane. North Texas and James Madison are 8-1! It’s almost as if the Group of 5 needs its own playoff.

From 1960 through 1980, every President of these United States was a retired United States Naval Officer. If we expand that through 1992, it was 6 out of 7 Presidents in a row. Go Navy!

This game should be played at John F. Johnson-Nixon-Ford-Carter- H.W. Bush Memorial Stadium of the Navy-Marine Corps at Oo-rah! Field. Meets all the requirements.

LSU v Arkansas – Tiger Stadium

Right now as you read this, LSU is trying desperately to weasel out of paying off a weasel. The school needs cash right now. JG Wentworth won’t take their calls, so maybe a stadium naming rights deal is in order. I can’t imagine that “Tigers” are paying a lot to have their name on the stadium.

Monogram Foods is a privately held manufacturer and marketer of “packaged and value-added foods.” Specifically, in English, Monogram manufactures private-label corn dogs.

“Private Label Corn dogs” is the best argument I’ve ever heard for free enterprise.

Fully 80% of the world’s deep-fried, cornmeal-battered hot dogs-on-a-stick are Monogram products. That makes Monogram the biggest corn dog concern in America, and therefore the world. Perfect sponsor for LSU’s stadium.

The President of Monogram Foods is currently, and appropriately, named Jeff Frank. He is a living person, so we can’t put his name on the stadium.

Let’s dig deeper. There are at least six different people who claim to have invented the corn dog.

• Carl and Neil Fletcher brought “Corny Dogs” to the Texas State Fair in 1942.
• George and Vera Boyington invented the “Pronto Pup” in 1939 by accident.
• Stanley S. Jenkins patented a machine in 1929 that could dip, cook, and hold wieners on a stick.
• Cozy Dog Drive-In in Illinois claims to have invented the corn dog in 1946.

Picking one ‘corn dog inventor’ would be controversial and LSU hates controversy.

There’s an easy solution. Rename the stadium “Governor Huey P. Long Memorial Stadium at Justin Wilson Memorial Field.” Monogram pays $30 million per season to put their logo on the 20 yard line, just above a catch phrase: “I gar-on-tee you gonna smell like this corn dog!”

USC v Iowa – Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

These are ranked teams? USC is racking up 500 yards a games and sometimes they score points, too. Iowa wants to limit the game to just one offensive possession for each team and they are fully capable of it.

I did not realize that then city of Los Angeles was dead in a way that it needed a stadium memorial to itself, but, here it stands. OK.

The natural Presidential renaming candidate for the historic Coliseum is Ronald Reagan who, in addition to being a dead President, was also the former leader of the Screen Actors Guild, a labor union for actors based in Los Angeles.

Ronald Regan Memorial Coliseum at Defeated The Big Studio Machines and Communism Field.

Alternatively, George Lucas, the man who created Star Wars, is a USC (California) graduate. We should consider the leaders of the Galactic Republic.

• Sheev Palatine Memorial Coliseum at Darth Sidious Field.
• Bail Organa Memorial Coliseum at Princess Leia Field.
• Mon Mothma Memorial Coliseum at Andor Field. 
• Finis Valorum Memorial Coliseum at Field Named for Yoda It Is. 

“Finis Valorum” is an excellent choice. It sounds glorious, but translates loosely to “End of Values”.

Bama v Oklahoma- The Jalen Hurts Bowl at Bryant-Denny Stadium

These are ranked teams with losses to FSU and Texas, which sounds impressive but is definitely not.

Bama QB Ty Simpson has a chance to enter the Heisman Hype Machine if the Oklahoma defense does not sack him 10 times, which the Sooners are fully capable of.

Denny was the University of Alabama President responsible for building the stadium. Bryant was the coach that won 6 mythical national championships in the stadium while wearing an ugly hat.

Look at that! Alabama did something right!

Jalen Hurts is the quarterback who played at both schools. He led Alabama to two national championship games (finished second both times) and was a Heisman Trophy Finalist at Oklahoma (finished second).

Competed but did not win? Hmmmm… Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for President a few times and did not win. I wonder why it’s not called George Wallace Memorial Stadium at Bull Connor Field?

Ole Miss v Florida -Vaught-Hemingway Stadium

Why is Lane Kiffin still coaching at Ole Miss? Did he see enough talent on the tape prepping for the Gators and decide to take or not take the Florida job? Is he packing an extra bag so he can travel back to Gainesville on the UF team plane? If Florida wins the game, will the Ole Miss boosters force him to leave for Gainesville?

This stadium is named for a coach, Johnny Vaught, and a professor, Judge William Hemingway. Time to move those names to the softball stadium. We are here to refresh the vibe with some ideas the young folk will respond to.

If we need a dead President, the stadium in Oxford has to be named Jefferson Davis Memorial Stadium at Robert E. Lee Field, right?

Well.. not right, but maybe naturally? Historically? Heritage-wise? Those two didn’t win, so that part fits at Ole Miss.

Yikes! Based on this suggestion and the one for Alabama, LSU is starting to really like that Corn Dog idea. LSU will LOVE the corn dog idea when they read the suggestion for UGA.

UGA v Texas -Vince Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium

Arch Manning versus Gunner Stockton. Two names that could be the fighters in an old west shootout, or, two names that could be the opponents in the 5th grade spelling bee finals in Buckhead. Winner goes to the playoff. Loser goes to the portal.

Georgia already named the stadium for a University President, Steadman Sanford, the guy who dates Oprah. Sanford also helped start the SEC and oversaw the original UGA athletic facilities. He was a better choice than the segregationist UGA President O.C. Aderhold.

UGA named the field for coach Vince Dooley, who led the Bulldogs to successfully recruit Hershel Walker. Solid work here.

In this exercise, President Jimmy Carter from Georgia already has his name on the stadium in Annapolis. Former Georgia Senator Richard Russell is already memorialized on the Russell Senate Office Building in DC.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mayor/Ambassador Andrew Young were never Presidents of anything.

John Lewis, the former Congressman from Georgia, was a President AND he died in 2020. Lewis was the President of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and led the very patriotic sounding “Freedom Summer”.
Lewis could be a fiery orator who left us with several quotes that fit for football including:

“You must be bold, brave, and courageous and find a way…”

“Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble.”

John Lewis Memorial Stadium at Over O.C. Aderhold’s Dead Body Field.

Too much?

Professional Professional Football

Dolphins v Commanders- Spain’s Super Bowl at Santiago Bernabeu

The stadium is named for Santiago Bernabeu Yeste, who was President of Real Madrid from 1943 to 1978. Also, the stadium is in Spain, so it’s really none of our American business to rename it. Luckily, we don’t care about that.

If we insist on our patriotic duty to rename Spanish stadiums for real Presidents, then let’s go with the United States President who defeated Spain with his bare hands and a horsey brigade, thereby securing freedom for Cuba, Estadio del Memorial Theodore Roosevelt at En el parche de césped donde solíamos jugar al soccer. 

This photo taken outside of a Buffalo Bills fan bar in Miami last Sunday afternoon, after the Dolphins blew out the Bills, appears to show Miami Head Coach Mike McDaniel in a car, trolling the Bills fans. This is GREAT coaching.

Bills v Bucs – Highmark Stadium

Highmark is an insurance company. Boring.

Speaking of Highmark, it looks like both of these teams hit their high mark of the season weeks ago. Neither is capable of defeating the Patriots. If this was college, fans would be pooling pennies to buyout some coaches and dreaming about Lane Kiffin.

The Bills are constructing a new stadium that is technically open-air, but has a canopy to cover the weaker-willed fans. If we name that for a President, we have five choices.

Millard Fillmore Memorial Stadium– U.S. President Fillmore hails from Summerville, just 90 minutes south of Buffalo. He’s best known for being named Millard Fillmore.

William Henry Harrison Memorial Stadium– Harrison is the one who gave a two hour inauguration speech in cold, wet weather, subsequently developing pneumonia and dying just a month after taking office. Feels like a Bills Fan Experience.

Pierre Trudeau Stade du Mémorial– not technically a President, more of a Prime Minister, also, more of a Canadian, but would be a nice nod to the neighbors.

Calvin Coolidge Memorial Ice Bath Stadium– Coolidge loved him an ice bath, or, as Bills fans call it, “Going to a pre-season game.”

Howard Green Memorial Stadium– Mr. Green, 1955-2023, was the founder and President of Iceberg Enterprises. His company is a leading American manufacturer of high quality blow-molded products, specifically, heavy‑duty resin‑top folding tables under the “IndestrucTable®” brand. This is the spiritual patron saint of Bills Mafia.

Rams v Seahawks SoFi Stadium

Rams v Seahawks is NOT boring.

The Rams debut “Midnight Mode” uniforms and their quarterback, Matthew Stafford, is a wizard, but he might turn the ball over at the wrong time. The Seahawks counter with Sam Darnold, who will definitely turn the ball over at the wrong time.

The key matchups are the Rams offense versus the Seahawks defense and the Seahawks offense versus the Rams defense. That sounds stupid, except, that’s what every properly matched football game should be and this one actually is!

SoFi is a banking company. Boring.

This stadium needs a co-president name because there are two current tenants- the Rams and the Chargers with a third, the UCLA Bruins, arriving next season.

Obviously, the most famous and formidable co-presidents of all time are Mark Antony and Octavian (later Augustus Caeser) of Rome, who shared power after the murder of Julius Caesar and after steamrolling the third member of their triumvirate, Lepidus (fair warning, UCLA).

The Roman Empire thing is not very LA and sort of played out and, anyway, USC (California) already has the corner on the ‘Antiquities’ motif and stole the Coliseum thing.

I think we have to be flexible on the President requirement here and lean into the threesome thing. It is Hollywood adjacent, as you know.

How about:

• The Jack, Janet and Chrissy Partially Covered, Open-Air Stadium at Stanley Roper Field
• The Moe, Larry, and Curly Partially Covered, Open-Air Stadium at Shemp’s Field
• The Huey, Dewey and Louie Partially Covered, Open-Air Stadium at Scrooge McDuck Field

That Three’s Company one is strong. Golden Girls don’t make the list. Maybe for Miami someday.

Eagles v Lions – Lincoln Financial Field

Lincoln Financial is a Financial Chicanery Company. Boring.

In financial terms, the Eagles are an Aging Asset– good market position, historically strong fundamentals, but declining demand.

The Lions, on the other hand, are a Growth Asset- strong fundamentals and, barring injury, a huge upside.

As to the stadium, “Lincoln” is a President’s name! I’m sure it is used here with permission and only the most honorable intentions of distracting consumers from any activities the company would prefer you “little note, nor long remember”.

I am right, again! According to the company history, Lincoln Financial started in Fort Wayne, IN and is named for President Lincoln so as to “evoke the reputation of honesty and integrity associated with Abraham Lincoln.” No less than Robert Todd Lincoln, the President’s son, provided a photograph of his father for use on the company’s stationery and advertising.

Since 2017, Lincoln Financial has paid out over $50 million in restitution for unfair claims settlement practices and is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit over material false and misleading statements in public discourse (Lincoln is the party being sued, not the class-action group).

How about Lincoln Financial Memorial Stadium at Rockview State Penitentiary Annex Field?

Cowboys v Raiders Allegiant Stadium

Allegiant is an Airline. Fun!

This game is for people who still buy physical albums and insist that analog is superior to digital. Whatever. The rest of us have moved on to something better, but, sure, album cover art is still cool to look at.

If we are looking for a ‘President’ of an airline to honor on this stadium, may I humbly submit for your consideration:

His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, and Great Benefactor of the United States Casino,Condo Community, Desert Oasis of America and Stadium.

The Sheikh is into large flying gifts, he’s desert-friendly, likes to gamble, is discreet when required, feels mafia adjacent and, lest you think that full moniker is too bloated, have you seen Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones or Raiders’ owners Marc Davis or Tom Brady lately?

CLARIFICATION: The Grover Picks is named for Paul Grove, the President and CEO of a major market public television concern. We are properly and presidentialy named.

Malicious rumors of a name change are hereby denied. Specifically, there are no current conversations to change the name of the Grover Picks to honor former Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov, who famously renamed the months of January and April after himself and his mother, respectively, banned items like gold teeth and car radios, and required his face to appear on every clock and watch in the country.

However, we do have a price in mind.

Happy Picking,

The Commissioner