Football Counter-Programming 2026: Week 6--Dotting the i

I have a few ideas written down that I could use as a starting point for this week's Football Counter-Programming, but I’m not super inspired to actually use them. I won’t say what they are because I hope that I will find the motivation to use them for a future week. 

I also noticed, while scrolling through my old posts on the Why Won’t You Grow?! blog that I have an unpublished draft of an idea from last year's FC-P that I hope will someday get fully written and posted. But I don’t think it is appropriate for this week either. I think that unpublished draft is also best served if it is posted on a certain date. And I’m not certain if that date even falls during the college football season. So that might be something of an issue.

All of that preamble aside however, I’m still left with a blank screen right now. And that can’t be . . . because it is my job to distract you from watching football. And if I can’t come up with a suitable distraction, then you’re going to quite naturally turn to football to fill your time. So that leaves me in a difficult spot.

I do have an idea, but it (counter-intuitively) sorta relies on college football's existence. And that is not the best look for a counter-programming effort that is explicitly TRYING to get you to think about things other than college football. But when cool things happen, well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

As you can tell from the title and the photo, today's subject is the Ohio State University Marching Band Script Ohio tradition of "Dotting the i." In which a fourth-year or fifth-year sousaphone student (or students if there are multiple Script Ohios being created) is singled out to break the formation and provide the final i dot maneuver, strutting alongside the drum major to the lower case vowel. 

Script Ohio is a 90 year tradition (as of 2026) and I'm happy to say that today, a Westerville North Marching Band alumni--Matthew Sliwinski--is the i dotter in question. (Also . . . and I just learned this yesterday . . . Brandon Reed--another WNMB alumni--I think gets to give Matthew the final fist bump before the sousa player is separated from the rest of the formation and joins the Drum Major. (See the full POV of this 2025 i dotter through the formation--starting at 9:40 but getting the final send off at 12:36.)

Anyway . . . it's certainly a big day for Matthew and for the Sliwinski family. And I'm also happy to say that many of Matthew's old High School friends are going to be there in attendance today to cheer on their friend. When they knew that Matthew was going to be attending OSU, they all promised that they would be there when (hopefully!) his moment came.

And it finally did. 

And they are there, as promised.

So . . . hurrah once again for Marching Band. The best thing to come out of college football since the creation of college football!