Here's the song ESPN will beat us over the head with this college football season
The fever hit me a few weeks ago. Chances are, it got you around the same time, too. We're all well aware of this viral illness that gets passed around each summer. The symptoms are irritability, longing, yearning, and an irrational urge to hit something. The only cure is the passage of time, and the consequences include... well, not death, but something that feels like death.
The illness is known as College Football Fever (CFBF). You'll know it when you have it, because you're ready for every single thing a college football season brings: the good, the bad, the annoying. Especially the annoying.
I tweeted this out back on July 13, and 164 of you agreed.
I bring this up because, as a sure sign of my ongoing CFBF, my reaction to hearing Yungblud's "The Emporer" wasn't, Oh my word, I can't believe I have to hear that song 3,000 times over the next five months. It was, I can't wait to hear that song 3,000 times for the next five months.
In a true marketing miracle, it just so happens Yungblud has a new album out Sept. 2. He says "The Emporer" was written eight years ago, and played it at shows for five years, all the while he waited for the right time to record it and officially release it to the world.
Turns out, Yunglbud (given name: Dominic Harrison) was waiting for Georgia to begin its national title defense. "I wrote this song when I was 17; it was just an outburst of unfiltered energy that I knew would have its moment one day,” he said.
ESPN senior director of sports marketing Curtis Friends said this of the 25-year-old Doncaster, England, native's song.
“In previous years we’ve selected music that matched the tone of college football. This year, with ‘The Emperor,’ it feels like a custom built song for college football from Yungblud. The chants, hype, and tone match perfectly to what we expect to feel around and inside college football this season. The up-tempo pace and energy of the song feels like the release of all the bottled up energy and intensity fans, players, and teams have had in anticipation for the upcoming season. It’s the perfect fit thematically for the ebbs and flows of the season that will end with one team being crowned the next Emperor of College Football.”
How does "The Emporer" compare to Fall Out Boy's "Centuries"?
Or Imagine Dragons' "Natural"?
How about "Can't Stop Me Now" by The Score?
Or "Come & Go" by Marshmello and the late Juice WRLD?
Or, finally, DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian's "Run It"?
Actually, don't answer that yet. The answer will become obvious some time between the two thousandth and three thousandth listen.
