For the Glory of the Empire: Week 5

For me, there were exactly two good things about the 2017 college football season: 1.) Alabama’s 17^th National championship, and 2.) College Football Imperialism on Reddit. Obsessively checking the new map with friends every Monday was usually the highlight of our Wills Drafting class (hope you’re not reading this, Professor Lopez!), even though BYU being shut out of the game for most of the season was depressing.

For its second season, the game has been brought over here to SB Nation and retitled College Football Empires. You can find an explanation of the rules of the game, here. For those of you who didn’t click the link, I’ll provide a quick rundown of the Empires game:

It’s the board game Risk, but with college football teams.

Every week, teams battle not only for bowl eligibility, a potential Playoff berth, or respect; they also now seek the most coveted prize of all: Imaginary territory on a map that looks like one of those annoying “fandom” maps you used to see on Facebook all the time. If your team wins, then it gains any territory that the opponent possessed before the game. The losing team is taken off the map until it can acquire more territory.

Here’s what the map looks like after Week 4’s games:

This week, BYU-Washington is one of only six games between two teams that hold territory. BYU has the land it grabbed from Wisconsin (which includes New Mexico’s and Western Kentucky’s original territory), while Washington (who lost all its original land, including Alaska, to Auburn [who lost it to LSU]) is only in possession of one territory, though it is one BYU fans would be very happy to have—Utah’s.

Other Week 5 games of note for BYU’s potential future imperialism:

• Oregon @ Cal: If the Cougars want to reclaim their original territory that the Cal Bears captured, they will likely need to win it from the Utes on Nov. 24. But the Utes will have to win it themselves, first. If Oregon beats Cal, then Utah will have a chance to take Provo from the Ducks on Nov. 10. Stay tuned.

And… That’s it, really. Kind of a boring week to start what will hopefully be a weekly series. There should be some very exciting possibilities in the next edition. And after BYU beats the Huskies tomorrow, I promise to find a place in the Salt Lake Valley to plant a BYU flag in our newly conquered territory. Washingtono delenda est!