The worst game of the FBS schedule is upon us. Massachusetts and New Mexico State are about to wage war.
The two independents were left with little choice but to schedule home-and-homes with each other. It’s not like teams are clamoring to make road trips to Amherst or Las Cruces. Each provides the other with valuable oxygen as they attempt to pry some breathing room from the very depths of Division I college football.
In honor of this game, I’m going to use all the worst things in my beer fridge. My worst beer? Capital Brewery’s Lake House lager. It’s a light beer that was never very good, but lately Capital’s entire operation has taken a nosedive, so it’s gone from below average to *awful.* The worst liquor in my freezer? Wild Cherry Stolichnaya.
Shut up, I know.
How are we gonna pair those? With a classic summer-day-at-the-lake mix we called “Skippy” but you might know as a hop, skip and go naked. It’s basically just beer, vodka and lemonade. But since I’ve got some stuff lying around, I’m gonna add an extra step to the process and see what we get.
The goal is to turn two terrible base ingredients into something better. Welp, let’s see if I end up poisoning myself again.
The UMass-New Mexico State Disaster Bowl
- 2 12-ounce light beers
- 3 oz, whatever terrible vodka you have lying around (flavored or otherwise)
- lemonade mix
- one 8 oz Little Hug fruit barrel drink (fruit punch)
Mix all your ingredients together in a vessel capable of holding them all along with your shame at making this in the first place/acknowledging UMass as a football program. I used a dog bowl, but with the lingering pride to at least wash it thoroughly first. It belonged to my old pit mix Rainey, who I once saw casually eat an entire wasp nest on a walk.
Spiritually, this is the right attitude to have for UMass-NMSU. Stir up that lemonade mix thoroughly or else it’s going to look like a vengeful tree sprinkled pollen in your beer.
The end result is more than the sum of its parts. The cheap beer blends nicely with the lemonade. The wild cherry Stoli, bought a decade ago from a $5 bargain bin, normally overpowers anything it’s mixed with and makes it taste like cough medicine. Here, it blends with the fruit punch you loved as a child and haven’t thought about in a decade so it doesn’t really make an appearance.
It tastes sweet and extremely drinkable. It’s beer and liquor and sugar substitutes and it’s got a little fizz. I shouldn’t be super surprised — Skippy is a tried-and-true staple despite its objectively weird ingredients — but this actually worked out. I kinda regret putting this in a dog bowl. It’d probably be pretty good over ice.
Actually wait hold on lemme get a ladle.
OK yeah I was mistaken. This is somehow worse. Confining it to a small space appears to have angered the beverage.
Still, this is better than it should be. Does this mean Saturday’s least anticipated FBS-FBS matchup is going to rise to the occasion? I mean, maybe! These two combined for 71 points when they played last season, so anything’s possible, right?
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