Important Bagels Information

Coaches around the country have been on the road lately for the November recruiting period. From November 1st through November 25th (with the exception of November 10th through November 13th), Division I is officially in a "Contact Period," which I can only assume means that coaches will sit in old timey World War I fighter planes with goggles on their faces as they scream "Contact!" when they turn on their propeller engines. (I could be way, way wrong on that one, but if I'm right, recruiting got a hell of a lot more dog fight-y.)

The most important thing when you're on the road is not the talent you're evaluating. Rather, it's all about the grub you're shoving down your neck. Did your best commit vomit on the field against halfway decent competition? No problem; tonight you're going to eat a steak the size of a trash can lid. Did you forget to pack a jacket? Who cares; you're going to eat a hamburger made with three different meats and two different kinds of cheese. Did your phone die halfway through a conversation about a diamond in the rough that's cut, 6'5", and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine as a high school sophomore? It doesn't matter; there's a place down the road that scoops ice cream made from unicorn tears.

Which brings us to this:

(Full disclosure: I have no idea if Byrne was recruiting last weekend or was in Long Island for some other reason. Whatever. This post is happening anyway.)

If you're eating a bagel from somewhere other than New York metro area, you're wasting your life. You cannot find a halfway decent bagel anywhere in the country -- well, maybe in highly select bakeries -- other than in the New York metro area. I don't know why this is true -- get to work on this, science -- but it's an absolute fact: A "bagel" from St. Louis is crappy bread; a bagel from the New York area is among the heights of human achievement.

And it's not only that the New York metro area has the best -- only? -- bagels worth eating. There's a hierarchy to bagels. If someone tells you that the best bagel is cinnamon raisin, you should pull a machete out of your bag and cut that person in half. Just because a bagel looks exotic doesn't mean that you have to try it. It's kind of like toilet paper: There are all kinds of different plys, but that doesn't mean that you should try one-ply when it will clearly ruin your day. The hits are the hits because they are the only ones worth caring about.

Thus, this is an official ranking of bagels:

1. Everything -- Undefeated bagel national champion
2. Onion -- You want the person you're talking with to know that you had a delicious bagel
3. Blueberry -- 9 out of 10 doctors agree that the only fruit you need to live is a blueberry bagel
4. Egg -- The egg bagel when used as part of an egg sandwich stops time
5. Plain -- It's a bagel

Everything else is just noise. Salt bagels are trash, slightly above cinnamon raisin. Poppy seed and sesame seed bagels should be shipped to Canada to make our northern neighbors suffer. I don't even want to know what they're making in Los Angeles on the bagel front; I'm assuming it's all useless.