Just consider it a headliners dream game. 

If everything plays out this weekend according to plan, on January 7th there will be a game for the NCAA National Championship between two teams whose quarterbacks are named White and Chase. 

If West Virginia and Missouri both take care of business on Saturday, headline writers will have one full month of pun happy names with which they can create magic. 

Touchdown.  (snappy!)

But before we get to that point, just like the teams they cover, headliners have to throw a few tune ups on the schedule so they can get prepped for the big game.  With Mizzou dominating the headlines after their win over Kansas and ascension to #1 in the BCS, it was time to break out some practice material in preparation for the potential BCS championship. 



If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the guys at Fox Sports are huge Mizzou followers.  Realizing that bigger things await the Tigers in the next month, they made the conscious decision to crack open their ‘C’ material for win over KU.  Why bust out the good stuff when you’ve got a month worth of headlines to make? 



Amazing Chase will do.  It’s quick, it’s snappy.  And best of all, it has ties to the TV show that won the Best Reality Emmy like six years running.   We’ve always found that headlines based on Emmy winners are medal worthy 85% of the time.

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Before you get too cocky Fox Sports, just know that you’re not the only one who can do a quality line around a picture of Chase Daniel.   ESPN has their best on it as well. 



If the Chase Daniel and Pat White both wind up in New Orleans on January 7, we could be in for a snappy phrase battle royal between the major sites the likes of which we haven’t seen since Vince Young took on USC in the Rose Bowl.   

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A good rule of thumb for the headliners - don’t overthink it. Maybe the best way to celebrate Mizzou’s victory isn’t to go the obvious route and have all hands on deck working on something to take advantage of the seemingly easy target. 

As the Detroit Free Press demonstrates, sometimes a gold medal is one letter away. 



As a bonus this week, the Headliners Ball wanted to point out to all those skeptical readers out there who doubt the headline writers place on the industry totem pole.  Sure they may not be columnists or even beat writers, but at least the people who write headlines are a few notches above the slugs who write captions.  Never has there been a better demonstration of this than this St. Louis Post-Dispatch caption referencing today’s primary topic:



Who knew that he was a long lost cousin of this guy.

Caption writers.  Freaking amateurs. 

Headliners Ball is written by Josh Bacott.  He loves it when Chase McDaniel hands it off to Tony Templeton.  E-mail him at josh@joesportsfan.com