Back in October, after Katie Nolan agreed to a much-deserved deal with ESPN, I wrote the following about the ever-talented sportscaster:

Katie Nolan is the epitome of “girl you take home to Mom & Dad”. She’s funny, gorgeous, smart, rich (probably? — hello ESPN money) talented and into sports. She seems like the type of chick who actually knows how to shotgun a beer without spilling all over herself and probably has a better fantasy football team then you do. She can quote Pulp Fiction and she enjoys a good BBQ burger. She’s that kinda girl.

And man, I meant it. I’ve had a HUGE crush on Katie Nolan ever since the OG days of Guyism, long before Fox Sports and ESPN came calling. Now fast forward five or six years later and Nolan is one of the most exciting young prospects at ESPN (seriously, Fox f*cked up by letting her walk. Her old Garbage Time podcast rocked & I’m sure her new podcast will be even better).

However, despite her excellent track record and even brighter future, Nolan, for whatever reason, still lets Twitter trolls get to her, frequently responding to all the loser internet squids who have nothing better to do then give her a hard time. So, me, being the forward-thinking individual that I am, decided to use that to my advantage.

“Ye ole’ bait and switch,” I told myself.

The plan was simple — I lead my tweet with a mean or degrading comment to get Katie’s attention, only to immediately pivot into telling her how much I think she rocks. A solid plan if I do say so myself.

So, I fired off the tweet at around 10:20 PM, expecting it to get lost in the Twitter abyss as most people shooting their shots at celebrities usually do. So I ripped my pen a couple of times, rolled over, and shut my eyes for bed … but not for long. Within five minutes, my phone started blowing up with notifications because … Katie actually answered.

Well, now I’m legit nervous. Never in my dreams did I expect my literal shot in the dark to even elicit a “like”, let alone a response, and now here I am, mid-conversation with Katie Nolan. I tried to think of something ironic or funny or slick to say, but it was already passed 10:30 and the charm sector of my brain had shut down hours ago, leading me to use the only approach I could think of: being direct. I figured if she respected my original Tweet enough to answer, she’d respect a similar follow-up.

While it might seem like a total prayer to some (it was), this particular shot had a better chance of going in than most, as Katie and I both live in the same city — Hoboken. And no, it isn’t creepy that I know that, because she had mentioned where she lives a couple of times on her old Garbage Time podcast and occasionally tweets from locations I recognize around the city. In hindsight, I wish I had mentioned something about Hoboken in my initial response.

Needless to say, unfortunately, Katie wasn’t about it (however, she did says “probs not”, so part of me was feeling like Lloyd Christmas, wondering if she’s saying there’s a chance) and kindly declined my invitation. I was able to squeeze a compliment out of her, though (nice ENOUGH!), which is a decent dub in it of itself. So, as any gentleman would, I politely bowed out of the race, thanking Katie for her time and wishing her the best in this upcoming year.

At this point, I’ve accepted defeat and have begun to re-prepare myself to enter the sweet escape of sleep once more. However, it appears Katie wasn’t done with me, as she wanted to fire off one parting shot.

Now, not only have I been upgraded from “nice enough” to a “kind and gentle soul” (#facts), but now she’s TEASING me! Now, I don’t know about y’all personal experiences, but in my lifetime, teasing is essentially the most basic form of flirting. While part of me wanted to bow out gracefully and not make a further fool of myself, this seemed to be another window that I just couldn’t let pass me by, so dammit, I went full J.R. Smith and hurled up another prayer.

Did Katie answer? Of course not. But that’s not the point here, everyone. The point is that you must always keep shooting your shot, no matter how the odds are stacked against you. Yes, Katie Nolan is approximately 17x more talented, gorgeous, and famous than I, but my stupid little Tweet had her attention for about 15 minutes, and that’s about 15 minutes closer than most ever come.

So, Katie, if for whatever reason you’re reading this — if the Patriots lose (or win, I’m flexible) this weekend, I’ll meet you at The Madison on Washington.

