Villanova Wildcats
 

Somewhere within the offices that make The Simpsons, there's a die-hard Villanova fan thrilled to give his Wildcats a shout-out. On a recent episode, the opening credits feature an alteration that shows Bart Simpson scrawling his 'Nova fanship onto a classroom chalkboard:


"If Villanova doesn't win we lose everything," he writes repeatedly.

Maybe Bart bet everything he had on a Wildcats championship. Or maybe the Simpsons just has a thing for Villanova. After all, local drunk Barney Grumble claimed in a 1990s episode that he had briefly served as a guest lecturer at the university:

It's unclear how or why the Nova mentions came about, but writers for The Simpsons have always loved to sprinkle their humor with sports references. You can go all the way to the first season of the show, when Bart mobilizes his classmates to stand up to the school bully.

When calling them out one by one, he includes some peculiar last names we haven't heard of in Springfield since. Most notably, he shouts "Olajuwon!"

A non-basketball fan would miss it entirely, but it shows how The Simpsons universe loves itself some sports pop culture. As for the championship game Monday night, Bart will be rooting for Villanova, even if nobody knows why.

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