“At around 2 am this morning, police in Los Angeles, Lincoln, Austin, and Columbus were alerted to a disturbance in the already muted spring agenda for college football activities,” said FBI’s Deputy Chief Melissa Overton during a briefing held on Zoom early Monday morning.

“All of the spring games across the country are falling, one-by-one, and so it’s safe to say, the spring game is dead at this point,” Overton confirmed to audible gasps from those left unmuted on the Zoom call.

Was this an isolated incident? And did the assailant act alone, or were there co-conspirators? Details were scant, and Overton was only willing to speculate.

“At this time, and based on the evidence that we have accumulated, we can say with certainty that NIL and the transfer portal are the prime suspects. We received a tip that perhaps the duration of the modern college football season—which has been significantly prolonged due to the new CFP format—might have been involved, but our initial probe has cleared duration of any wrongdoing, which has a solid alibi for its whereabouts during the time in question,” Overton continued.

So what’s left? And what will replace the spring game during the month of April for most college football programs?

“Ohio State is experimenting with a ‘Spring Showcase,’ the contents of which are not clear at this time. Most programs are dropping any kind of spring football activities whatsoever. We can say with 100% assurance that Deion Sanders won’t be using the open Saturday to conduct a recruiting visit,” Overtone concluded before ending the call.

“People don’t know this, but Matt was a No. 1 pencil guy for his entire tenure in New England. He dabbled with a No. 4 for a hot minute in Detroit, but now, coming back to college, he’s finally making the move to No. 2. Which, of course, is no indication of where he hopes to help the Buckeyes finish this or any season he’s a part of the program,” said Jerry Emig, Ohio State’s Associate Athletic Director of Communications via Google Hangouts early Thursday morning.

What’s informing the change, then? Emig said a number of factors played into the decision.

“First things first, he had to think about availability, he had to think about supply. No. 2 pencils are the definitive required pencil for scantron tests across the entire university world, and so with his return to college, shifting to No. 2 felt natural. He knows there will always be an abundance of No. 2s on and around campus on game days,” Emig said.

“Beyond that, the No. 2 pencil is kind of the perfect hybrid pencil. Nice mix of graphite and clay, so it’s sturdy enough to be reliable, but it can be used for some light sketching, were there ever a game situation that demanded it,” Emig concluded.

“Early on, we can talk about how much noise Bama would have made in the 2024 CFP, and then later, after the Crimson Tide have suffered a few surprising losses, we can discuss whether they should be included in the 2025 12-team playoff. It’s that in-betweeny time that I’m worried about,” said Joe Tessitore via Apple FaceTime.

Kirk Herbstreit even had a chance to weigh in, adding, “How much is Bama paying for their roster in 2025? We got quite a bit of mileage out of that for Ohio State last year, so maybe we can explore that a bit?”

“What if we just didn’t talk so much?” said Greg McElroy via iOS message early Sunday morning.

Regardless of which announcing approach is taken this fall, the task of filling the air left by the absence of comments like, “Reminder, folks: Ryan Williams is only 17,” is a challenging one. A CFB News Now analysis of Alabama telecasts found that a full 41% of comments made during Bama games last season in some way pertained to Ryan Williams’ age. The repetition was so consistent that, by season’s end, about as many people could name the current United States president as could tell you that Ryan Williams was 17, one YouGov poll showed.

“First he skips out on the national championship parade, then he puts on the hat? Does this guy just want to fear for his personal safety when in the state of Ohio?” said Dana Popky, Associate Panel Manager at Pew Research in Washington, D.C. via Zoom remote conference early Tuesday morning.

“These types of surveys are usually pretty mundane, and Arnold has held the #1 spot in most U.S. states for close to 240 years. So to have someone new dislodge Arnold from the top of the list—a freaking college football coach, no less—was a huge surprise for us. If nothing else, it goes to show just how seriously the people of Ohio take football,” Popky said.

“‘Jim Knowles’ wasn’t even on the list of options, he was written in so many times as an ‘Other’ choice,” Popky went on.

What would it take for Benedict Arnold to reclaim the throne? Not possible, says Popky.

“At this stage, I just don’t see it happening,” Popky concluded.

“Let’s run it back,” Bobby Mullins, Associate Assistant Manager of Hydration Dispersal tweeted early Tuesday morning, punctuating the statement with a water droplet emoji and a nut emoji.

“With this many defections, we’ll take what we can get,” said Ryan Day said during Monday afternoon’s media availability.

“He was one of those guys that drew a lot of interest from other programs, even got a couple of conversations going at the next level. But we sat down and had a long talk with him about his future, and really tried to figure out where he wanted to be. At the end of the day, his heart was still here in Columbus, and we’re thankful for that,” Day said.

“Bobby is just one of those lunch pail guys who puts his head down and goes to work, every single day. This team wouldn’t have been able to put together the run it did without Bobby being so dialed in, so we consider this to be a key piece of the 2025 repeat effort,” Day said.

What about both coordinators and all the lost roster depth? Day played those matters closer to the vest.

“First thing first is hydration. We’ve always said that, if you don’t have a water-first football philosophy, you don’t have a chance. So, we’re going to take it one day at a time, and build from what we have,” Day said before concluding the press conference.

“You might as well have told the whole program there was as serial killer in the locker room watching them from inside one of the lockers. That’s how shocked everyone was,” said Neal Broom, Computer Forensics Lab Director at Technical Resource Center Computer Forensics via Google Hangouts on Tuesday afternoon.

“We’ve been working on the technical forensic analysis of this particular case for a while now, and we had a breakthrough recently. Needless to say, the revelation was…chilling. What a twist,” Broom said.

Early speculation surrounding the nature of the whistle-blowing seemed to focus on arch rival Ohio State, but Michigan’s own response to the NCAA released on Monday slashed that narrative for good. The Columbus Dispatch was quick to emphasize that point and absolve the hometown Ohio State Buckeyes of any sabotage or wrongdoing in the turmoil surrounding their arch rivals.

Broom, for his part, speculated on what this terrifying twist means for the Michigan football program.

“This development is a scary part one, but if the NCAA decides to take away the natty? That’ll make for a horrifying sequel for Michigan fans everywhere,” Broom concluded.