Weekly Roundtable: The Ghost of Charitibundi Bowls Future

This week it was my turn.

This is what I did:

Gabey Lucas: With the Everett Flabbergasters having such a roller coaster season— Just kidding.

Mark Schafer: Aw man… I wanted to talk about obscure minor league baseball teams from the 20s, which may or may not have existed.

Gabey: Kay no, but: The Charitibundi Bowl is currently on, with the theme like always being A) Donating to prove your school’s superiority over your rival (currently Washington is at 14 on the leaderboard, beating both Oregon and Wazzu but sandwiched between Cal and Split Zone Duo University Gold Trans Am) and B) Donating an amount commemorating something either embarrassing for your rivals, glorious for your school, or some combination of the two.

These have included such amounts from Dawgs as $127.01 (one dollar for every year Oregon has gone without a national title plus one cent for Marcus Mariota’s Heisman by @i_am_bread_dad), $190 (one for each mile Moses parted the Red Sea, through which Wayne Taulapapa ran to beat Oregon by @jyolteon), and $625.40 commemorating the Washington Men’s V8 6:25.4 gold medal-winning time to beat the Nazis right in front of Hitler’s big dumb face. And of course, the classic: $70.21.

So, my question is: What will happen this season — whether by an individual or the team — that we will next year be commemorating via Charitibundi Bowl donation?

Mark: You know Max’s 70-35 prediction of the Oregon game last year? That’s what’s going to happen, only for the Dawgs this time!

Michael Penix will throw for 425 yards, 5 touchdowns and add one more on the ground.

Or how about $63.00? That’s the score of an Apple Cup whipping we’ll give the Cougs. Cam Ward will throw 6 picks before being benched, and his backup will throw 1 more.

(To my friends who are Coug fans reading this, I apologize.)

Or how about future Biletnikoff winner Rome Odunze? $12.00 for 1200 yards?

Gabey: $12 is too even, should probably be like 12.36 or something.

Mark: Let’s go $14.54, in honor of Reggie Williams. Don’t know if Rome will touch that, but he’ll be close, $13.65.

Andrew Berg: I think the most obvious one has to be something to do with Penix setting passing records.

He already beat the immortal Cody Pickett’s passing yardage record (4641-4458) last year and $46.41 would be a good number. He also set the single game passing record at 516. The single season passing TD record is Browning’s from 2016 (43) and it would take a large leap to go from 31 to 44 to break that record. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Penix through for more than 31 this year, but clearly the offensive coaching staff likes to pound the ball into the endzone in short yardage.

He’s not going to throw for the ~7,000 yards it would take to set the career passing record, but if he matches last year’s total, it would amazingly put him third on the school list, just ahead of Keith Price and behind Browning and Pickett.

Due to a slightly more difficult non-conference schedule, I’m going to knock a few yards off of the total and put it at a nice, round 4,500 for the year, which would bring Penix’s two-year total to 9,141 for a donation of $91.41. And that is in two years. Brock Huard’s 6,391 is the largest total for anyone with less than four years in the program. Very generous.

Mark: I’d take 9k in two years.

Andrew: Another good donation would be $75.33 for the all time Apple Cup series record. Or $76.33 after this year.

Gabey: Ooh that is a good one. How have none of us done that yet? I mean the answer for me is “that's more than i can afford,” but semantics.

Max Vrooman: Since we’re talking donations to make after this year, let’s get optimistic with how next year is going to go. First entry: $41.40. Which is the difference in win percentage after 2 years between Kalen DeBoer and Jimmy Lake after DeBoer wins the Pac-12 and makes the CFP to finish 12-2 in 2023.

To show my work: Kalen DeBoer 23-4 (0.852) minus Jimmy Lake 7-9 (0.438). And yes, I’m going to go ahead and count the games after Lake was fired as attributed to him. That seems fair.

For those donating on a budget: $16 to mark the all-time record of USC/UCLA in the Pac-12 title game (1-6) before they bounce to get their asses kicked in the Big 10 for the rest of time.

It’s currently a 1-5 record with UCLA going 0-2 in the first two years and USC going 1-3 but I’m projecting the Trojans to fit in one more before the deadline. And I’m a little late in responding to Andrew’s note that Penix would move into third place in UW passing history with an identical season next year. Currently, Penix is in 10th. In ninth place about 200 yards ahead of him is Cary Conklin (the player most recently QB before I was born). They have thrown for the same number of touchdown passes and Conklin is slightly ahead on yards. However, some slight differences in how they got there. Conklin threw about 200 more passes than Penix has and had 36 INTs compared to 8 for Penix. Conklin also has 130 more listed rushing attempts to end up with 1 more rushing yard (I’m assuming the vast majority of those were sacks but still). In honor of Cary Conklin let’s give a last entry of $31.36 which is his career TD/INT ratio.

Gabey: “For those donating on a budget” Max thinking of me.

Since we posed this question, Washington finished 10th in the final Charitibundi Bowl standings, just beating out our annual rival of Washington & Lee:

Woof baby woof.

Do good things, don't do bad things, and bow down to Washington.