INDEPENDENCE DAY 2: HAWKEYES VS. ALIENS

When we last left our heroes, this was happening...

Blowing up one alien mothership, of course, did not count as a decisive victory. In fact, it only strengthened their resolve to take Earth, and this time they would be prepared.

Scene: a rebuilt Washington D.C. in early July, 2013. A five-star general marches purposefully into the oval office.

Sir, you're going to have to see this.

(opening folder marked "Classified As Hell") My god, they've come back.

Yes, they have. And they're coming right for the United States this time.

RING RING RING

This is Mister President.

How are you gentlemennnnn!!

WHO IS THIS, DAMN IT

Thisssss is, as your people saaayyyy, the aliensssssss

What?! How did you learn our language?!

It'ssss simpllllle... we've been intercepting your satellite communications over the last few yearsssss.

My god.

We know the approximate locations of your world leaders!

You leave them alone, damn it!

And your legends!

Our... our what?

Don't play ssssstupid, human scum! We know from your "Big Ten Network" where all the leaders and legends are located! We are situating over their metropolissssesssss right now!

What you say !!

Sir, we have reports of spaceships over Omaha, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York, and... Washington.

New York and Washington? But Rutgers and Maryland aren't joining the Big Ten unti

A thoroughly one-sided assault ensues. While American fighter jet technology has improved substantially, it's still an unfair fight and the ensuing blasts over the major metro areas obliterate most of the Big Ten; the aliens, while assuming incorrectly that most of the "leaders and legends" would be located directly in the metro areas, at least had the common sense to incinerate everything within a 200 mile radius of them, which pretty much solved the problem. Penn State survived but was helpless after Pittsburgh's destruction left it without the one road out of central Pennsylvania, and Illinois instinctively forfeited at the first sign of struggle.

After the carnage and Illinois' reflexive cowardice, only the University of Iowa, in tiny Iowa City, remained. Owing to obscure local emergency contingency plans, all authority is ceded to the UI football coach, one Kirk Ferentz.

Look folks, obviously things didn't go our way in the last couple days, the aliens are really going hard at us, we just need to execute better and hopefully we can get things turned around. Let's do it.

The crowd claps politely for a couple seconds.

Sir, we've just received word that an alien ship is en route. We have just a few hours left to mobilize our forces. We're scrambling aircraft from the Eastern Iowa Airport as we speak.

Does that give us F-16s or whatever?

Well, sort of. There's nothing like that at the actual airport, god no, but there are some planes that normally do connecting flights, so they can take us to air force bases where the real good stuff is. But if you think you can take out a superalien fleet with a few DC-9s at your disposal, by all means.

That sounds like a good enough plan. How coachable are these planes?

Not very, sir.

Fine. Gang, you know what to do.

The assistant coaches all file into an airplane and leave.

OK, look, no question, we wanted to be ahead at this juncture, but y'know, we've just got to go out there and play our best for 60 minutes, take care of the little things and hopefully that scoreboard will look a little better at the end of the day.

Stunned silence ensues.

So, uh... Anything maybe about how this is the Fourth of July weekend, coach?

That was two days ago.

And, y'know, Independence Day, and all? How we're independent from the aliens and stuff?

We were never dependent on them.

Right, but you could ment--

This is just one weekend in a long year. We can't get our heads up today then down in a week. We just have to go out there, execute our best, and you know, hope things turn out right.

/sideways karate chop

Sir! We were only able to get one fighter jet scrambled and in position to defeat the aliens!

What? Why?

There is literally one airplane with any ammunition in the state of Iowa. Low priority.

Makes sense. Balance is important. It all just comes down to execution. Who's in the plane?

Time to get some revenge on these Sooners!

Wait, what Sooners? Greg, these are aliens.

I'm gonna kill you Oklahoma scum!

Now, Coach Davis! Fire the missile!

HELLO, STOOPS! I'M BAAAAAAAACK!

Do it, Greg!

/flies sideways away from spaceship

/fires missile that goes three yards then hits Mark Weisman in the knee

My ACL!

/punts

/claps

/chews gum

Humanity is extinguished.