2014 College Lacrosse Preview: The ESPN Song of Ultimate Death

Those knuckleheads in the picture accompanying this piece? That's Imagine Dragons. You may remember them as the mercenaries that ESPN employed to try and kill you last year during lacrosse broadcasts. Their song "It's Time" was played so often during games that I, not unlike Alex from A Clockwork Orange, submitted to the Ludovico Technique. This is an odd way for ESPN to keep a strong viewership, but I'm assuming that ESPN's scientific method of bombarding viewers with the same song over and over has shown in focus groups to do something other than make people throw their televisions out the window and meander over to the kitchen to put their heads in the oven.

And it wasn't just in 2013 that ESPN attempted to torture an unwilling audience with 10,000 refrains of 10,000 pounds of hot garbage. In 2011, ESPN unleashed some kind of chemical weapon called Thirty Seconds to Mars on the nation, using a highly dangerous chemical cocktail called "Closer to the Edge" as a means for potential lacrosse viewership genocide. 2012 was the nuclear disaster that was Seether's "Tonight." These actions are somehow protected under the Geneva Conventions, which is disturbing.

This has all created unmitigated misery, and the beatings will likely continue morale improves. (Or maybe until morale devolves? I don't know. I don't have feelings anymore.)

I have no inside information on what song ESPN will use this season as a means to make your brains leak out of your ears, but the network has established a bit of a protocol in its tool of death: (1) The song must be fungible pop-rock manure; (2) The song must be popular but not too popular because making people insane requires a cost-benefit analysis around royalty fees; and (3) It needs to have a sustainable hook that matches the landfill life of Styrofoam.

Based on those realities, here are three guesses at what ESPN may blare out of your television's speakers this season:

Imagine Dragons -- "Radioactive"

Could ESPN go to the well and revive a lost form of capital punishment? It's possible. This song is sufficiently terrible, the perfect vehicle for making people want to kill children after five consecutive listens.

Key Lyrics:

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age

You know some schmuck heard that and thought, "That sounds like the lacrosse revolution!" That person should be fired, but he will probably be promoted to the head of his department.

American Authors -- "Best Day Of My Life"

I don't even want to think about all of the vomit this could create:

Key Lyrics:

Oo-o-o-o-oo
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ife
Oo-o-o-o-oo
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ife

"Clean up, Aisle Everywhere."

Fall Out Boy -- "Alone Together"

I honestly don't understand how Fall Out Boy hasn't ended up as bumper music for ESPN's lacrosse efforts. They're the perfect mix of blood streaming out of your eyes and wishing for sweet relief from existence.

Key Lyrics:

Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
Scream it from the top of your lungs
Say yeah
Let's be alone together
We could stay young forever
We'll stay young, young, young, young, young

[shakes head forever]

So, that's what I'm guessing. What do you guys think? Any other steaming piles that I didn't consider but should have?