Reporter Spends Night in Mississippi Waffle House After His Fantasy Football Team Comes in Last; Twitterverse Cheers Him On

Sarah RumpfJun 18th, 2021, 12:34 pm
 
waffle house

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.

As Covid-19 vaccination numbers continue to climb, we are seeing more signs that life is getting back to normal. Sports arenas are selling tickets for full capacity crowds, government officials are lifting restrictions (and celebrating with fireworks), and dudes are getting their buddies to engage in embarrassing and gastronomically uncomfortable waffle-based ordeals as punishment for making lousy fantasy football picks.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Waffle House Challenge is back. 

Lee Sanderlin, a reporter with the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss., was the latest to to endure a marathon of honeycombed dough, and to the delight of tens of thousands of online insomniacs, he live-tweeted his travails, starting at 4:07 pm CT.

“I, a total loser, came in last place in my fantasy football league,” tweeted Sanderlin, before explaining the rules of the challenge: he was to spend 24 hours in a local Waffle House, and each waffle he consumed would shave one hour off the clock.

Sanderlin is far from the first to undertake this challenge. Arkansas sports broadcaster Cyrus Wittig went viral in Jan. 2020 (pre-pandemic) for his own fantasy football failure waffle experience. Sanderlin would have benefitted from studying Wittig’s tweets before he made his own attempt. He would have at least been warned that — no disrespect meant to Waffle House, but this is science — the waffles become exponentially less appetizing as they get colder.

Unfortunately for Sanderlin, he made the rookie mistake of ordering multiple waffles at once. He did not have a good time. “Please, somebody, launch me into the sun,” he pled, describing himself as being “dead on the inside” and “in immense discomfort.” A few hours later, he pronounced that he was “Full of waffles but devoid of life.”

For those curious about how bad Sanderlin’s fantasy picks were, here’s evidence of the carnage.

Sanderlin finally won his freedom from his carb-laden purgatory Friday at 6:37 am CT, declaring that he was “never eating waffles again.”

“This was horrible and I recommend no one ever do this,” he concluded.

Nature is indeed healing. This isn’t the only time that Waffle Houses have been a sign of recovery from catastrophe. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has used a “Waffle House Index” for several years to track how well a community is doing after a hurricane or other natural disaster. The restaurant chain’s announcement in March 2020 that it was temporarily closing hundreds of its locations was a sign that the coronavirus pandemic was getting serious, locking the doors to 24-hour eateries that had previously weathered severe tornados and hurricanes.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.