MAD IRL GOES TO CAMPAGNOLA FOR A MEAT AND CHEESE PLATE

I would like to posit the Goren Thesis of Twitter and Online to you, reader.

At everyone’s core, there are basically five things that they post about. Anything beyond that is either an unusual departure, or just a variation on one of your five brand pillars.

For Jon Rothstein, my muse, he is either tweeting about buy-game scoops, bad metaphors, watching the godfather, trying to get the attention of Minka Kelly, or eating Italian food somewhere in New York City.

Jon Rothstein food tweets are really something to behold. Search his Twitter history for “#OTC,” which I believe stands for “off the charts,” and you’ll find a myriad of poorly taken photos of Jon’s meals. Also of note, Jon’s orders are super bizarre.

This is a flagrant amount of breakfast food. Two orders of pancakes and more than enough eggs to permanently alter your cholesterol history is not recommended. But this isn’t uncommon. Jon seems to order a minimum of two entrees, and he frequently goes even more aggressive than that. It’s yet another chapter in the Book Of Jon.

But we at Mid-Major Madness are specifically fascinated with one of Jon’s many favorites: Campagnola. Why? It’s hard to say. Maybe because of how many times he’s pointed out that the meat and cheese plate is the best in the city. It might be this picture that seems to be taken with a RAZR phone camera.

More likely, though, it’s that Jon has used the same picture of Campagnola, one where there are Christmas decorations set up, three separate times over four months.

This, of course, beggars questions. Why didn’t he just take a new picture? How long were those Christmas decorations actually up? How deep into his photo library did he have to go to find that specific picture? It’s all very strange.

But, yes, Campagnola has become the latest iteration of Mid-Major Madness’s obsession with Jon Rothstein.

I had to try it for myself.

Our intrepid site manager, Russell Steinberg, and myself popped on down to Campagnola for a lovely early evening dinner in the city. I pulled my order straight from Jon’s playbook and ordered the tri-pasta appetizer (which, by the way, is not actually on the menu, somehow making the experience even more Jon Rothstein) and the pappardelle bolognese.

I respect the hell out of Jon Rothstein because he appears to grind harder than any other human who’s ever lived. He’s broken literally hundreds of scheduling scoops this season alone. I think his analysis is, usually, pretty bad. His take on graduate transfers, for one, is especially noxious. This take on an A-10/AAC Challenge is a bad one too, not because the idea is bad, but because like 60 percent of the article is him talking about Manhattan, which makes zero sense.

But the man knows his food. And it’s enough to make me question everything I know about college basketball.

The meal was delightful. The meat and cheese plate offered alongside the traditional bread basket was, in fact, phenomenal. Probably the best in the city. The tri-pasta appetizer was, in fact, off the charts. Everything from appetizer to dessert was astonishingly good. Jon Rothstein’s taste in food is scientifically proven to be impeccable. Can someone be so right on one thing and so very, very wrong on everything else? Maybe transfers are the scourge of the earth, and maybe Manhattan doesn’t suck in the summer, and maybe the Godfather saga is the best thing to ever happen to cinema.

It’s all very jarring. But it’s nothing that can’t be worked out over a nice dinner at Primola. Hit me up, Jon. Let’s break bread.