The insights here are courtesy of Mark Dent at The Brew House. His entire analysis can be found here. As someone not particularly into sports, I still found Dent’s detective work interesting.
I came across his post while in the process of unraveling the timetable for the events starting with Zod’s ultimatum. I don’t know whether the game is meant to be a live one diegetically, however, even a rebroadcasted game would not represent a story-breaking plot-hole. Notable games are rebroadcast on select channels, and Dent concludes that this was a “hell of a game” perhaps worthy of rebroadcast. The fact that CNN’s feed is shown when the breaking news interrupts is not an issue. Branding from other channels is permissibly and often carried over for breaking news, particularly with exclusive footage.
Enough apologetics, on to Dent’s conclusion….
I saw “Man of Steel” last night. It was an OK movie by regular standards. By “holy shit they mention Kansas like 13 times” standards, it was spectacular. As many people have noted since Friday, Clark Kent watches a Kansas football game on TV during the movie, and it no doubt has taken super powers beyond those endowed to regular mortals to watch KU football the last three years.
But what game was Clark actually watching? I wasn’t able to take a screenshot considering I didn’t want to be arrested for bootlegging, but I remember all the details. The score was 0-0. KU was ranked No. 12 and the opponent was “LTU.” The score and the teams were listed on a horizontal bar at the top of the screen, which is how Fox Sports used to (and maybe still does?) televise their college football games. KU was the home team, apparent because the team’s initials were listed on the right and because they wore the home blue jerseys, a royal blue. I couldn’t tell if the letters on the helmets were Trajan or Garamond or whatever the hell font Kansas had before Trajan.
Let’s begin the deductions, starting with the ranking. As college football and certainly Kansas fans know, Kansas football has not been ranked very often. For instance, since the first Superman movie was made, in 1978, Kansas has been ranked during six of its seasons – 1992, 1995, 1996, 2007, 2008 and 2009. And most of the time KU has been ranked it has hovered somewhere in the 20s. In 1995 and 2007, Kansas reached the top 15 toward the end of the season. It began the season in the top 15 in 2008.
Now we move on to the opponent, LTU. Is it Louisiana Tech? That would make the most sense, but generally Louisiana Tech is abbreviated as La Tech on sports broadcasts. I googled “LTU,” and the first university that popped up is Lawrence Technological University of Detroit, which sounds like the school Papa Doc aka Clarence may have attended in 8 Mile. Clearly it’s not LTU-Detroit so we’ll stick with Louisiana Tech for now.
Kansas has played Louisiana Tech three times. The first time was in 1987, and Kansas lost. It won just once that year and obviously didn’t touch the rankings. They next played in 2005. Kansas went to a bowl game that year but were never ranked. Scratch 2005.
On to 2008. Kansas and Louisiana Tech played on Sept. 6 at Memorial Stadium. Kansas was ranked No. 14 in one poll at the time, and yep No. 12 in another. And there’s more: this KU-Louisiana Tech game was broadcast on national TV, on Fox Sports. Everything checks out.
Clark watched a hell of a game, too. Todd Reesing threw for a then career-high 412 yards on 32-of-38 passing. I’m pretty sure this might have been the game where he did some crazy improv-style move and rushed for like 30 yards and a touchdown or something. Or that might’ve been every game Reesing played.
Either way, we know: Clark Kent can not only fly, toss enemies through buildings and burn things with his laser eyes, he also enjoys watching Todd Reesing and Kerry Meier.
Superman and football have long running ties which continue through Man of Steel and the DC Cinematic Universe. Whether the footage is still used or not, a year ago, the next film in the DCCU at the time included a game between Gotham and Metropolis.
