On his show Thursday Josh Pate told a story, a parable of Christmases and College Football Saturdays past.
"Boy oh Boy," Pate began. "Sometimes the Sarah McLachlan Special sneaks up on you."
In Pate's lexicon, the Sara McLachlan Special is a college football matchup so one-sided that it elicits the strains of "The Arms of an Angel," the crystalline-voiced Canadian singer's tender ballad about the weak and vulnerable, famously used as the backdrop for images of forgotten animals in shelters, victims of animal cruelty.
Pate continued, "Other times you can see her from a mile away.