The Bye Week Viewing Experience: A Comprehensive Breakdown

With the college football season winding down (it feels painful just typing that), you would be forgiven if you assumed bye weeks were a thing of the past.

However, plenty of prominent college programs have an off week today, like Texas A&M, LSU, Alabama, and Notre Dame, just to name a few.

My own team just had their second bye week of the season last Saturday, so I thought I would be able to commiserate with my fellow fans experiencing the bye week blues.

Let's walk through some scenarios based on the outlook of your team's season moving forward. 

CFP Contenders

A wave of sadness washes over you as you wake up and click the TV on to GameDay or Big Noon Kickoff, because you remember your undefeated or one-loss team has to sit this weekend out.

Fear not, though, as the national landscape is entirely relevant to your seeding in the College Football Playoff, so a lot of these games matter in some capacity or another.

You can also point at laugh at the other contenders, who inevitably slip up with virtually zero consequence.

This is the definition of stress-free football.

On The Bubble

Much like the true title contenders, your college football viewing during the bye week still has implications, but on a much larger scale.

While the CFP contenders are jockeying for a top seed and/or a first-round bye, you're fighting for your life just to get in, and you need help.

A win or loss by a school not even in your conference could be the difference between a home playoff game in December and freezing your ass off at the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

Tell your wife she's going to have to go solo to the pumpkin patch, it's white-knuckle time.

Fighting For Bowl Eligibility

This is truly the purgatory of bye week viewing, as your team has nothing to fight for other than a bowl game in Tampa and a trip to Busch Gardens.

Nothing any other team does impacts your program's fate as a perfectly mediocre football product.

The good news is you can watch the games without any stress, but the bad news is that you will feel nothing.

If you start to experience an existential crisis, just take some deep breaths, fire up YouTube, and watch highlights of your team from the last season they won a championship (unless you're a Texas A&M fan, in which case maybe microfiche or an old-time projector would work better).

Coach Watch

If you're a Florida, LSU, Penn State, or UCLA fan, then this section is for you.

So, your team is largely irrelevant this season or fell flat on its face after sky-high expectations to start the year, but worry not, my fellow interim coach compatriots.

Now you get to watch teams with successful coaches and fantasize about what they would look like in your team's hoodie, like a girl who gets cold on a first date.

The downside is all the mental gymnastics you have to do when they win or lose.

A loss and you have to hand wave it as he is distracted by your job opening.

A win and you have to start worrying about what the timeline looks like if he makes the playoffs.

It's exhausting but equally exhilarating.

Utter Dumpster Juice

Okay, so your team resembles a landfill being sprayed with sewage, but your AD is either too cheap to pay your inept head coach's exorbitant buyout (FSU this year), or he thinks he's smarter than everyone else and thinks a breakthrough is just around the corner (Florida last year).

Either way, watching your team play football causes you physical pain, and this bye week offers you the sweet release of temporary freedom from torture like a detainee at Abu Ghraib who's been let out for his 30 minutes of daily exercise before his second of waterboarding.

Enjoy it and make it count, because next week, it's back in the dungeon for you.

Maybe a normal life of farmer's markets and walks in the park sound appealing to you, but you know this can't last.

You are a prisoner to your team and any relief is fleeting.

Anyway, happy bye week to all who celebrate.