The SEC Network Yule Log Is Our Nation's Greatest Contribution To Avant-Garde Cinema

My family only has a few Christmas traditions, among them cinnamon rolls, trips to the dog park, bike rides, and yard work. But the most important tradition—one that gets us up early on Christmas morning—is the SEC Network Yule Log, which is just like other yule log broadcasts except that the orchestral renditions of holiday classics are squeezed between every SEC team’s fight song.

This year, ESPN took the broadcast to a new and visionary level. Instead of a static camera pointed at the fireplace, we were occasionally invited to explore the rest of the room—into which SEC Network talent wandered and did... things.

Up top you see Dari Nowkhah, shuffling in while eating a marshmallow and then spending five minutes arranging football helmets. To what end? For what purpose? Vanguard cinema needs not answer these, so I must urge you to watch it for yourself. Nowkhah later engaged in a checkers match with Peter Burns (using chess pieces) which culminated in Burns storming out of the room; other scenes featured multiple pointless conversations between Paul Finebaum and Laura Rutledge, as well as this bit of musique concrète by Greg McElroy:

McElroy and his Mississippi State cowbell eventually contributed to the work’s tour de force finale:

Like most visionary art, written language cannot adequately express either the value of the work or the experience of consuming it; I thus must confess this post is insufficient at communicating its sublimeness. I can only urge you in one year’s time to rise at 8:00 a.m. Eastern to experience it for yourself.

[SEC Network]