A Step-by-step With Helpful Diagrams, For Clarity’s Sake:

A step-by-step with helpful diagrams, for clarity’s sake:

The Michigan State version of the scoreboard before and after the lateral:

Extrapolating from there:

↙Before|After↘

It should be noted that Georgia Tech pre lateral is distinguished from Georgia Tech post lateral (GT/GTECHPRE vs. GT/GTECHPOST)

Using any of the various methods mentioned in deduction 4 of the previous post, we get:

Thank you for listening to me infodump! 💫

I posted this on a discord a while back, but I decided I should post a version here too. That being said, I present to you:

I HAVE GAZED INTO THE ABYSS AND THE ABYSS ASKED ME IF I WANTED TO WATCH A GAME

or

The culmination of a feverish night of theory crafting after a sudden epiphany like a vision from an angry god, which may or may not be pertinent to the plot of “20021, a Football Story” by Jon Bois, whenever that comes out

See, okay, the whole deal with this thing is; If either Nick and Manny get caught and fail to bring the footballs home, or succeed and bring the footballs home, it will become a big story that it was only two guys who stole the footballs from Georgia Tech. This tells Michigan State that the locomotive lateral was performed by two guys, and thus, it would have been almost impossible for them to split the balls up, meaning the 9 balls that MI ST went up by at the end of the locomotive lateral would have been all the balls that GTECH had (given that it dropped in rank to the 0 ball teams at the same time as MI ST increased by 9). If someone from MI ST took a screenshot of their scoreboard before and after the lateral they would be able to tell that by the time the lateral was completed:

1: MI ST has 24 balls

2: GA SO has at most 14 balls because they were a place below MI ST before the lateral when Michigan had 15 balls

3: SC ST has at most 8 balls because they were a place below GTECH, which (based on the number of balls MI ST increased by and GTECH’s ranking afterward) had 9 balls before the lateral

4: CIN, HOW, and TEX likely have 3 balls each, and if they’re not sure MI ST can collaborate with one of them. Additionally, if you know that a certain team has a certain number of balls at any point in the game, then if the ranking group that team is in never drops below 2 teams, then you will always know everyone in that ranking group will have that same amount of balls even if the original team drops out of that ranking group, due to the sheer unlikelihood of every team in a ranking group gaining or losing exactly the same amount of balls at the same time. Remember, it can be days between scoreboard changes. There is a good chance that every team already knows the tied for 5th ranking group have 3 balls each.

5. If you know CIN, HOW, and TEX each have 3, then MO through to UTEP must have 2 balls each

6. There are 28 teams with exactly one ball each. The 1 ball teams extend into the remaining teams section, where you normally would not be able to see rankings and wouldn’t be able to tell which ones are 1 ball teams and which ones are goose egg (0 ball) teams. However: all teams in the same rank are organized alphabetically, and you can see that the alphabetization resets between Washington State University and Air Force Academy. Therefore a MI ST player would be able to know there are 28 one ball teams.

So: 24+14+8+3*3+2*5+1*28=93

111-93=18 balls hidden off the field, one more than the number UAB is hiding in Stannard Rock Lighthouse

Will Michigan State find 18 missing balls alarming? I don’t know. Depends on the kind of story Jon Bois wants to write. I want to believe they will, starting a frenzy that uncovers UAB’s hidden dynasty as the most powerful team in the entire college bowl, which somehow forces UAB to resurrect their steamroller play One Last Time.

Maybe that’ll give Val something to talk about, other than loathsome mosquitoes lurking in limestone quarry ponds, which may or may not have contributed to the construction of the Empire State Building.

I can only say one thing for certain:

Stay in school, kids. It makes you better at cross-country football.