Okay, I think the statute of limitations has expired after 25 years. This is the story of how I picked 5. Buckle up, y'all... https://twitter.com/Jim_MullinTSN/status/1248002911021359104

June 1995. Birmingham's getting a CFL team. For those who don't know, Birmingham is where non-NFL pro football goes to die. We'd had in my lifetime the WFL, the USFL and the WLAF at that point. But this was the CFL! An established league! Wide-open football!

So I'm at City Stages, may it rest in peace, a HUGE three day music festival in downtown Birmingham. I'm home from Vandy after my first year of grad school, feeling like a big shot, and my friend suggests we try to blag our way into the VIP area, set up atop a parking deck

overlooking the festivities. So I said sure, and we managed to get in, but were told sotto voce that we needed nametags or we'd be spotted for sure. So I got a nametag, and wrote on it the name of our highly-touted free agent quarterback.

You guessed it... @MattDuniganTSN

Now they were serving everything at this VIP tent gratis. But it wasn't necessarily the best stuff. But I was a grad student, and the first rule of a grad student is "never refuse free stuff"

Even when it's Scotch in a box.

I didn't know they had such a thing as Scotch in a box

Reader, there is such a thing as Scotch in a box.

As I learned, to my great cost.

And then, a week later, on some message board - might have been USENET, might have been AOL, might have been some local BBS, I don't recall, was a post to this effect:

"I don't know how long this team has got if their so-called hotshot QB was throwing up off the top of a parking deck at City Stages."

(face reddens)

As it happens, the Barracudas did go 10-8, but lost the only playoff game to San Antonio, 52-9. And that was it for BHM CFL.

So I apologize, @MattDuniganTSN - you were a fine QB and deserved better than to have your name taken in vain by a callow 23 year old who was gone off a box of Scotch.

FIN.