Last fall, I wrote an article trying to determine whether Oberlin’s sports teams were as bad as everyone believes. After extensive research, I found that these perceptions are only half true — no thanks to the football teams of the 1990s. Still, the gridiron squads of this era are the closest thing to an athletic dynasty this school has ever had, so I took the time to catch up with some of the players and coaches who played a role in a truly historic period of Oberlin football.

From 1993 to 2001, Oberlin football went on one of the most impressive runs in the history of organized sports, losing 40 straight games, beating Thiel College by one point, and promptly losing 44 more.

An offensive player from the 2001 team that topped the initial 40-game streak by losing 44 games recounted the team’s historical accomplishment.

“We knew that it took tremendous effort from the greats that came before us to lose 40 games,” he said. “To go out there, lose a 41st straight game, and beat that record was going to be tough. As an offensive unit we knew we had to be a bit more careless with the ball and miss a few more blocking assignments to get the job done.”

For the first three quarters of the record-breaking game against Pomona-Pitzer College, the Yeomen were caught sleeping. They carried a 14–7 lead entering the final period.

“I looked at the scoreboard and felt a pit in my stomach, and I immediately went over to my teammates to motivate them to turn the game around,” a defensive player said.

The player’s words made an impact as the Oberlin defense gave up 18 points in the fourth quarter, which proved enough to secure a 25–21 loss, despite a late miscue by Oberlin’s offense resulting in a Yeomen touchdown.

While the 2001 team staved off a few close calls early in the season to secure the longest losing streak in Oberlin football history, its streak eventually came to an end. On Oct. 20, 2001, the Yeomen beat Kenyon College, halting the historic run. One of Oberlin’s coaches was disappointed to see the streak end but carries a good attitude about it 20 years later.

“We were sad to see [the streak] end, but I’m proud of what we accomplished,” he said. “I also want to give some credit to Kenyon, which has since become one of the best programs in the nation at piling up losses.”

The most recent 20+-game losing streak by an NCAC team came from the Kenyon Lords, who lost 26 in a row from 2016–18.

These days, Oberlin football still loses a lot of games, but the team’s longtime tradition of being one of the worst sports teams on the planet may be fading. It went 1–9  last season, with four of its losses being decided by single digits. It is not clear whether the current coaching staff has the skill to come anywhere near the 44-game losing streak set by the Yeomen two decades ago.

A current third-year linebacker expressed frustration with the team’s new trend of winning one or two games each year.

“Clearly there are guys that should not be playing for a school like Oberlin that has such a rich tradition of losing,” he said. “I miss tackles, forget plays, and do my part, but I definitely have teammates who belong somewhere less serious about losing, like Ohio Wesleyan

– ILOVEMYLEGGINGS

Okay, this has totally happened to me before. When my South Campus boyfriend said this to me, I immediately took my leggings off and started wearing Dickies work pants with a carabiner. For the love of God, do not do this. Do not make my mistakes. You deserve to feel like a little sausage in that stretchy fabric! You just have to be like, “Hey bitch, I like my leggings! They make me feel cute, and my butt’s nothing to write home about, so my leggings make me feel like I’ve got something going on down there!” And if he tries to give you attitude, tell him that smoking cigarettes is really bad for him, or that his poster of Mao Zedong is kind of weird and fucked up. That’ll put an end to the whole legging debacle. But if he is really pushing the whole anti-legging propaganda, leave him for some North Campus stud with a Jeep Wrangler!

I just found out everyone has been calling this guy I like “teeth guy.” What does that mean?

– ToothLvr18

Oh, I know him! He was my roommate’s friend’s housemate’s sex ex. 

I watched three hours of Jersey Shore with a girl I liked once and she didn’t even kiss me. Now I really like Jersey Shore and she has a boyfriend. What did I do wrong?

– JerseyUnsure

Here at Farts & Cults, our motto is: “The real relationship was the Jersey Shore we watched along the way.” Girls who understand the power of Jersey Shore are obviously unattainable. Give up all hope. You definitely don’t deserve her. 

My partner has been insisting that gaslighting isn’t real and I’m crazy. What’s wrong with me?

– YellowWallpaper

Sounds like you have memory problems. You should see a specialist.

I blacked out at Long Island Night last week and I’m freaking out. Did I do anything embarrassing?

– DrunknAfraid

Dude… yes. You were like, all over the place. I mean, what’s the last thing you remember? Because at 9 p.m., you were already standing up on a table and screaming at everyone about how there were too many freshmen there. And they couldn’t kick you out because you were on the table right by the stairs, and you, like, immediately fell. You landed on all fours like a cat and just walked out. Like… what were you on? Aren’t you bruised? Then, half an hour later, you were back again, outside, waving around a glass cup and telling the Feve guy who told you not to do that that you “would never die.” By 10 p.m., you were standing at the line for the bathroom and telling everyone around you that you’re “like, a really good kisser.” Weirdo. 

When I went home after my freshman year, my ex from high school didn’t even try to bone me. Is Oberlin making me uglier?

– FromHot2Not

Ah! The plight of the Oberlin femme! I think the question you need to be asking is not, “Did Oberlin make me uglier?” but, “Did NYU make my ex think he’s hotter?” You grew, you changed; you became a bisexual goddess aware of her divine energy. He became a Washington Square Park hypebeast snoozefest! Just try to give yourself the “ick.” Imagine his reaction if you scuffed his Jordans by accident, or imagine him scrolling through Supreme on Grailed… in 2022!? Who cares about this Tisch loser. He sounds awful, girl.

College second-year Crapps Goodensmith, better known by his stage name, Flatulence Sentience, is one of Oberlin’s leading noise musicians, performing across house shows on South Professor Street and Elmwood Place. His style blends fart-based avant-garde with other sweet melodic gastric noises. His newest song, “Holeeeehollehole goleleHOLE holehohohohoholllllee ho,” has been transcribed here for readers at home:

BFFTTTT FRRPPPP RP RP RP RPPPPPPPP FPBRFTFTTTT 

FFFTPPPHHHHHHHFFFFFFTTTTT

PFFFTTTTT FRRRPPPPP RRP RPPPP PBSTFFFVVTTT

PRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRFPRF BRAPFT BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAFTTTTT PROABBBATFFFTTT FRTTTT PRRR FRRRRFFRFRF

Don’t you feel something right now? I definitely feel something right now. The sonic soundscape created by “Holeeeehollehole goleleHOLE holehohohohoholllllee ho” is unbelievable. I mean … wow. I have chills.

We caught up with Goodensmith after his performance Saturday at his own house, at which we were the only attendees. While describing his artistic process, he poured red paint all over his body, which he says he does “all the time” and “not just for the interview.”

“Usually, I get in the stu’, and I just lay down some really nice, natural farts of my own first, to add a sort of ambiance to the track,” he said. “Obviously, this takes a lot of prep, so a song takes a long time to make — even just step one, building up 30 farts, is a really arduous process. I’ll then create some nice layered work by adding in whoopie cushion sounds and utilizing brass instruments in unusual ways. When I perform live, I replicate those lush layers of farts by having a full band of guys who sit down, one at a time, in chairs equipped with whoopie cushions. So yeah, that’s what you heard when I played ‘Holeeeehollehole goleleHOLE holehohohohoholllllee ho’ just now.”

Another student artist, College first-year Worms Hooperbag, is certainly one to watch. Although they just arrived on the scene last semester, their latest work “Imagine if You Were a Crab and I Came Across You on the Shore and You Had Flipped Onto Your Back on Your Shell and Your Little Crab Legs Were Kicking Up in the Air and Stuff” totally blew us out of the water here at the Review. The project, which was five years in the making, focused on a series of three poems, all in a traditional “Roses are red, / Violets are blue” format. The poems were printed on copy paper in Mudd Center during the artists’ previous performance-art show, which consisted entirely of the artist using a computer to print things out in Mudd. The pieces were hung on a wall behind the artist, who half-spoke, half-sang the poems aloud in a very bad British accent. The event was three hours long. 

Hooperbag, who is also known for being that one person who always asks to sit with you at Stevie even though you barely know them, said of the piece that it encapsulates the entirety of their first-year experience.

“Um, yea basically i just thought it was super swag and lit and like fire emoji yknow,” they wrote in an email to the Review. “like idk it was just like so crazy to be like a frosh and like everyone kind of hates you. And also my mom and I are likeeee fighting a lot lately LOL so yea it’s like kind of about her a little bit ig.”

Another piece we’ve been really fascinated by is, in fact, totally anonymous. It appeared in the Allen Memorial Art Museum on Sunday and has yet to be claimed by any artist, though it shows obvious talent and incredible understanding of its medium. The piece itself consists of little more than a small pile of dirt, left on a blank sheet of copy paper, but it shows complete mastery in its use of negative space. 

The form lends itself to discussions of border conceptions of identity and finding bliss within the self. The simple mound of dirt on the blank sheet of paper signifies the complex relationship we have with the earth. Steeped in 19th-century hegemonic perceptions of femininity, which cast the female body as an extension of the natural world and as the manifestation of truth, purity and beauty, the work holds a singular, sexualized view of women. Ultimately, the dirt promotes a vision of the earth which is predicated upon its submission to the male gaze. She is “Mother Nature,” of course.

The pile of dirt did not reply to our request for comment.

My many times great-grandparents first moved to Oberlin in 1970 after their old home, a nice red oak in a human family’s backyard, was demolished so the humans could build a new garage. The premiere real estate agent in Lorain County at the time, a very kind but ancient chipmunk, convinced them that a college campus would be a nice place to live. Students would feed them, the College would be less likely to demolish a tree spontaneously than were other property owners, and college-aged people were less likely to torment them than were small children. There was a tree for sale in the middle of a green expanse called Tappan Square, which was supposedly a mostly secluded place to live, save for the few students doing homework outdoors on particularly nice weekends. They bought the tree, and my family has lived here ever since.

In the time since then, we have found the College’s students to be significantly more irritating than we initially thought. Apparently, white squirrels are quite uncommon, and it wasn’t long before all the Obies started realizing that we were right here in their backyard. They started coming to Tappan in droves specifically to see us, keeping track of how many times each one of them had seen a white squirrel, and taking photos of us at inopportune moments. I won’t give details, but there are some rumors going around of a rather… suggestive photo that was taken exactly 44 days before my dad was born.

We did not appreciate the unwanted attention, but we were willing to put up with it until 2011, when things started getting out of hand. The College started making stress toys in our image branded with their logo. Shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and mugs started appearing. A book was published by a former president of the College about a white squirrel who struggles at hide and seek because he is conspicuous, a major insult to my brilliant camouflaging skills. A comic has made its way onto the internet saying Oberlin students can relate to us because of our being “scrawny.” 

In 2014, the Athletics department decided that it was no longer happy with just the Yeomen and decided to add a second mascot of — you guessed it — a white squirrel. In 2019, the students finally voted on a name for this monstrosity of a character. Between options like “Albie,” “Stevie,” and “Macademia” — I am not certain whether that was a typo or a sorry attempt at a portmanteau of “Macadamia” and “Academia” — it was decided the mascot would be named “Yeobie.” Since then, everyone has insisted upon calling me Yeobie. My name is not Yeobie. My name is Frederick. Please stop calling me Yeobie. 

The final straw came when the College started getting people to dress up as the mascot. According to the College website, Yeobie is 7’10 and weighs 285 pounds. How would you feel if someone over 200 times your size, whom you had never met, was walking around campus dressed as a creepy version of you? I cannot imagine you would be too pleased. 

It is important to note that this was all done without my family’s consent. At the very least, I would have expected that we would be asked for permission and paid a reasonable royalty. We bring in thousands of dollars in revenue to the College each year, and it is only fair we be compensated adequately. Gone are the days of accepting the acorns that drop from the trees as our only payment. We want pistachios. 

As such, I demand that the College halt all production and sale of white squirrel merchandise and lock away the fur suit until we can convene and negotiate a mutually agreeable contract. Stop stalking us, stop photographing us, and stop trespassing in our backyard. Otherwise, you will most certainly be hearing from our lawyers. 

 Additionally, what the fossil fuel empire doesn’t want you to know is that any liquid will operate a car in a pinch. It is simply not necessary to fill a car’s tank with gas, especially with prices these days. A car could run on just about any other liquid at a far lower price. For those who claim that cars are a necessity of living in Oberlin, I suggest filling one’s gas tank with milk, then basking in the savings of avoiding gasoline.  

Another complaint the faculty have put forward is the change to their recent health insurance plans now resulting in higher copays. The idea that complicated health insurance plans with copays and expenses are necessary is just that — an idea, pushed by corporations through highly effective marketing campaigns and political lobbying. These costly and complicated plans are completely unnecessary. Allow me to introduce a health insurance plan as old as time: apples. Available at local grocery stores (when there aren’t supply chain issues) for less than one dollar apiece, they are a simple and affordable replacement for pricey, complicated, and frankly unnecessary health insurance packages. Tried and true, this is not so much a health insurance plan as it is preventative care, but I digress. There is nothing more effective than eating an apple a day to prevent sickness, injury, and medical personnel.

These so-called “necessities” are not as important as we may think. Humans have lived without motorized vehicles and whatever the American health care system is for hundreds of years. Academia must return to its roots in simpler times. Would Plato have insisted on compensation that would allow him to partake in such frivolous luxuries? Giorgio Vasari certainly wouldn’t have demanded better pens and paper to record his life just as Leonardo DaVinci did not request better cadavers than the bodies he dug up from local graveyards at night. The pursuit of academia has always been knowledge, not luxuries. It is time that Oberlin faculty open their eyes to this reality and act accordingly: after all, the College’s motto is “Learning and Labor,” so professors should start putting in the labor.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Bear Crawls (Illustration By Clair Wang, Staff Cartoonist)

Editor’s note: This op-ed mentions abuse and discussions of body image.

Before I begin, I want to emphasize that while exercise can be healthy and empowering, working out for other people or because you have bad thoughts about your body is not fun. Similarly, seeing people romantically is not necessary or always good. Love yourself and love your body.

Dating at Oberlin is a notoriously tricky enterprise. “Dating” is also hardly the right word for this shitfest of thousands of horny, awkward young adults trying to satisfy romantic and/or lustful urges. For you, maybe this materializes as a secret, simmering crush on the tenor in your a cappella group, or a White Claw-fueled makeout session with your friend’s roommate. Maybe it’s spending a disproportionate amount of your income on Slow Train, making Google Calendar invites for casual sex with your Economics teaching assistant, or sexually-charged eye contact with members of your Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

No matter the path you choose, some degree of heartbreak is inevitable. And if I’ve learned anything in my time at Oberlin, it’s that the tried and true way to heal from romantic injury is working out. Rigorous exercise that leaves your muscles screaming and your lungs heaving is a surefire solution for soothing sexual frustration. Who needs emotional validation when you can wake up early and squeeze in a 5K run before most students have squeezed out their morning wank? 

To help with your romantic struggles, we at the Review (it’s just me — no one else wants to take responsibility for this) [Editor’s note: Lustkow no longer works for the Review] have taken the initiative to prescribe exercises for those whose desires are unfulfilled elsewhere. Hopefully, these workouts can suppress the gnawing emptiness metastasizing within you.

So, your romantic life hasn’t been going great. How did you get here? Maybe you were dating a cute, laid-back Obie man until he admitted that he enjoys hurting you (after some confusion, he clarified that he meant “hurting” in the toxic verbal abuse way, not the kinky, light choke play that you were hoping for). Or maybe you fell in love with your best friend. It happens, especially at Oberlin. Except it turned out that drunkenly shared childhood trauma — and your mutual obsession with Mitski — is not a solid foundation for a relationship, and you found yourselves crying in a hallway in Burton Hall at 3 a.m. while innocent students scurrying by for a late-night piss whispered words of encouragement.

For recovery from these extremely generic scenarios, I’d personally recommend bear crawls. You begin bear crawls in a modified plank position, with your knees under your chest but hovering off of the ground, and then walk forward or backward on your hands and feet. Start the bear crawls with enthusiasm and keep moving until you collapse face down in a pool of your own tears, much like you did in your last relationship. Bear crawls are also a great way to build stability — a characteristic notably absent from all of your romantic endeavors.

The foundation of any exercise program for the recently single is the hammer curl, a variation of the dumbbell curl that has the dumbbells turned 90 degrees from their traditional starting position. With a focus on straining your forearms, these curls are gonna come in clutch when you’re 17 minutes into a solo session and feel yourself flagging. You should aim for as many reps as possible at a relatively low weight. The objective here is building up endurance so that your strength never gives out before your willpower. You might also practice varying your speed and grip strength. 

There are a number of other great workouts for heartbreak recovery. My personal favorite is the deadlift, a heavy lift for training your lower body. Although the deadlift is known to cause persistent lower back problems, this actually makes it perfect for anyone who misses having their back blown out. As the weather warms up, you could also go on a run through Oberlin. While running with a friend is a fantastic motivator to keep up the pace, if you’re in dire need of friends, an effective substitute is imagining that you’re being chased by an apparition of one of your recent exes. If running isn’t your thing, and you’d prefer remembering what it’s like to have something other than your own hand between your thighs, you could hop on a bike. Either way, a little endurance training is a guaranteed method to get your face flushed and your legs shaking again. 

But let’s not forget the best reason to hit the gym once you’re single: pursuing the aesthetic. Why long for someone to hold you at night when you can gaze longingly at your own body in the mirror? No relationship can be as well-sculpted as a perfect pair of calves; no hump with your partner can satisfy you as reliably as a good pump in the gym. If you’re truly looking to increase the size of your assets, hip thrusts are a must. Done with either a barbell or dumbbell, they are underrated lunar champions for those desiring a full-moon look rather than a waning gibbous.

These exercises do not comprise a comprehensive program, but they can definitely be a start to feeling something — anything — again. I’ll end with two final pieces of advice for the perennially lonely.

First, when everyone else has left you, the gym remains. After all, no matter how many times you let the weights down, you can always pick them back up. Second, get a cat. I have a beautiful baby girl named Balthazar, or “Baz,” and her love is independent of how my body looks, how much I lifted in the gym, or how I feel about myself on any given day.

If you were there for Molly’s Game and This Is the End, you’ll know that Cera’s star has not always shone in the right places. He lost his ability to play the boyish sidekick, running the risk of falling in with the likes of Frankie Muniz, Topher Grace, and even Taylor Lautner. My dear Michael nearly fell off the radar as he struggled to find a place in Hollywood that could accept his newfound manhood. However, in Life & Beth, Michael Cera has finally hit his stride. As a mysterious, blunt farmer with a sense of humor to match, Cera has reached his full potential. He has maximized his boyish charm while leaning into his firmly masculine essence, turning a corner that can only guide him to becoming the leading man he was meant to be. His devilish scruff and tousled locks have transformed him from a goofy has-been into, quite literally, the man of my dreams. Michael, I see you, I support you, I … love you?

Yup, you guessed it. We have had ourselves another March Madness Tournament filled with complete chaos, and seemingly every consensus Final Four team lost before they even made it to the Sweet 16. We saw this happen with teams like No. 1 seed Baylor University and No. 2 seed Auburn University losing in the Round of 32. We also saw odds on favorite Gonzaga University lose to the University of Arkansas in the Sweet 16. A Sweet 16 appearance isn’t too shabby, but an exit that early for Gonzaga was very disappointing considering they were picked to win it all in a staggering 27 percent of ESPN Brackets, and had tons of hype going into the tournament with the dynamic duo of Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren. 

The second-best favorite, University of Arizona, also had a shockingly miserable finish to their season after losing to University of Houston in the Sweet 16, and barely scraped by Texas Christian University in the Round of 32 thanks to a last-second-pointer by all-American guard Bennedict Mathurin. The bracket started with your typical 5–12, 6–11 upsets with No. 12 seeds New Mexico State University and the University of Richmond and No. 11 seeds University of Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, and Iowa State University all winning. This doesn’t exactly blow anyone’s socks off, as a No. 12 seed has won about 35 percent of the time going into the tourney, and a No. 11 seed has upset a six seed in every tournament since 2005. Nothing to report about, right? 

Well … not so fast. We saw one of the greatest upsets in the history of March Madness with No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s University beating No. 2 seed University of Kentucky. Kentucky looked poised for another big run in the tournament, with a deep, veteran group littered with future NBA draft picks. They were picked to go to the final four by ESPN’s lead March Madness analyst Joe Lunardi and in 31 percent of ESPN brackets. But a small, gritty team from Jersey City had other ideas and beat Kentucky 85–79 in the first round. You could make the case that this is the biggest upset in March Madness history, or at least on paper. Kentucky spends $18.3 million on its basketball program, while Saint Peter’s spends just $1.6 million. This is the biggest difference in expenditures in an upset since it began being tracked in 2007. The crazy numbers don’t stop there. Saint Peter’s undergraduate enrollment is just under 2,200 students and only 852 men. For context, Oberlin has over 2,900 students.  

Saint Peter’s Point Guard Doug Edert became America’s hero after scoring 20 points off the bench for the Peacocks while looking like your average frat guy. Social media bought into the juice quickly, and wasted no time hyping them up for a potential run in the tournament. Saint Peter’s did just that. 

College Fourth-year football player Matt Siff was a huge fan of the Saint Peter’s team. 

“They had such a strong passion and love for the game, you could see it in their eyes and the way they played, that they wanted to win so badly.” Siff said. 

They went on to beat Murray State University 70–60 in the second round, making them the second No. 15 seed to make the Sweet 16, along with the magical Oral Roberts University squad from last year. But just when you thought they didn’t have any magic left, the Peacocks somehow pulled out another improbable win against a loaded Purdue University team after being down at halftime. They traded blows for much of the second half and closed the game out with some clutch free throws by, you guessed it, Doug Edert. To put in perspective how unlikely this run was, if you bet $100 on each Saint Peter’s win, you would’ve won a total of $2,275. It’s safe to say Vegas got burned on these odds, as 82 percent of the dollars wagered were on Saint Peter’s in their Purdue win. 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the magic ended in an ugly fashion in the Elite Eight with a blowout to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even though it didn’t end with the unlikely Saint Peter’s championship we all wanted, we still have to appreciate the jolt of cheers and excitement that Saint Peter’s brought, and how a tiny school in Jersey City, that no one had heard of two weeks ago, had all of us rallying around a TV and cheering for every basket like we’ve been diehard fans our entire lives. 

“They really proved why March is the best sports month of the year, and truly anything is possible,” Siff said. 

Even though we knew their run would ruin our brackets, it didn’t matter because everyone likes to see David take down Goliath, to see a team of five stars lose to a team of underlooked but talented players who have had to scrap for every opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you have millions and millions in funding or little to none, at the end of the day you have to play on the same court, and March shows us that anybody can be beaten on any given day. 

Saint Peter’s Head Coach Shaheen Holloway said it best, “I’ve got guys from New Jersey and New York City, you think we’re scared of anything? You think we’re worried about guys trying to muscle us and tough us out? We do that. That’s who we are.” 

This kind of attitude led by Coach Holloway is why they were so successful in the tournament. They realized that seeding, or the hype of blue-blood talent and regular season accolades means nothing once the game starts. You have to earn your keep every game you play, and Saint Peter’s did exactly that.