Orange Flush: Syracuse University on cusp of all-time bowl greatness

DATELINE: Syracuse! _ It’s the fourth quarter of the big game against Albany. For 50 minutes, you’ve held back your water like the heroic walls around Copenhagen. Now, deep within your exhausted bladder, swollen to the size of a weather balloon, nature’s liquid fire has begun to wail like Mariah Carey seated on a hot tack. Enough! You waddle to the rest room. You die 10,000 deaths waiting in line. Finally, you step into the confessional, unsheath yourself and behold a vision foreign to human eyes - not even Moses on the mountain saw this! - in 20 milleniums: A welcoming pool of beautiful, perfect orange. 

What wizardry is this? What hath God wrought!  Hath the savior Himself returned to change water into Tang? 

No, my bloated friend, you're simply peeing in Syracuse – the city of magic, the town where the sewer pipes flow with carrot juice - future home to the Orange Flush.   

Yes, Syracuse University -  which has hosted Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Carmelo Anthony and even members of the IT IS HIGH IT IS FAR Yankees truth blog – could become the first U.S. institution of higher learning to turn common, everyday toilet water into a pumpkin-hued symbol of academic, athletic and urinary excellence.

I know what you're thinking: Holy crap! How did they do it? And how can I get me some? Can I buy it?  Well, the answer is in today's home delivery edition of syracuse.com:  It reports that SU has won government money – (surprise, surprise!) – to install a $1.35 million rainwater collection system atop the Carrier Dome roof.

Approximately 880,000 of the 6.6 million gallons of water that pours off the Dome’s 7-acre roof each year will be captured by the system and stored in tanks hung from the bottom of the arena’s upper bleachers. During events at the Dome, the water will be used to flush the toilets and urinals in the building’s 16 public bathrooms.

Building codes require the water to be dyed to avoid confusion with drinking water, even though the water will only be used in toilets and urinals. So university officials are considering coloring the water orange, the school’s official color since 1890.


Folks, this is gonna be big. This is like the second Erie Canal, except the water looks like runoff from John Boehner's skull. It's like Superstorm Sandy with a surf of liquified Velveeta.

Songs will be written about this. Movies will be made. Tourists from around the world will visit the Dome, having their pictures taken while pushing the flush button. To stay competitive, every school in America soon will dye its dumpster water. Frankly, I pity Brown University. That will not look pleasant.

From now on, every game is the Orange Bowl. I no longer fear hydrofracking, global warming, asteroids and Bristol Palin. Hell, if humanity can do something truly splashy about the otherwise boring and colorless pee break... well, we can do anything:

Write this down: 2013 will be the year that water flowed orange. Orange you happy?