Beware the Ides of March, and the other 30 days of it as well

If you are a dedicated reader of The Enfranchised, and you aren't, then you'd know we had it out over the topic of NCAA basketball once before (though my post is the only one in the series worth reading). Still, there might be a dribble or two of piss left for the taking.

I'll first note that I am of two minds about college basketball. On the one hand, I am bothered by the entire phenomenon. Part of this is personal--after four of my roommates were evicted from our choice F Street townhouse during my sophomore year at GWU, I was shipped off to an "efficiency" (one could write an entire post about the misnomic properties of this appellation) apartment in the very same dormitory that housed our illustrious Men's basketball team: The GWU Fighting Colonials. I quickly found them to be loud (quiet hours don't apply when nobody on the floor studies), spoilt (they all seemed to drive SUVs and imports when most others walked, and to have Playstation N's in their rooms when few others had even Playstation N-1's), and lecherous (it quickly became a tedium to have to break the news to them that my girlfriend was just that. The poor girl is Latin and voluptuous (not in the euphemistic way) and so attracts more black men than the subject of a hypothetical stereotype that won't get me in trouble with the NAACP).

On the other hand, when those selfsame Colonials fought their way into the top 20, and then the top 10, I became something of a born-again bandwagoner. I was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Colonial Army, and thought it the personal duty of every student and faculty at GW to make sure these boys had all the Powerade, pep, and pussy they needed to assure a good seed in the Tourney. But when starting Center Pops Mensah-Bonsu [sic] and company failed to lead the team into the sweet 16, I was crestfallen. They hadn’t even lost to some distinguished team like Oxford or The University of Chicago, but rather to a regional school in some North Carolina backwater (Earl University, maybe, it was Marquis or Baron U. It bore the name of some viceroy, of that much I’m sure).

So I did what any good sports fan would do if once-disappointed by his hometown heroes – I formed summary judgments about the intrinsic worth of the entire enterprise. So why worry at all about the mechanics of the tournament? Why not forget basketball altogether and have the respective team-members see who can construct a vaguer and more ridiculous major (Rural Sociology, anyone?) to appease those nettlesome academic-types who are always interfering with university athletics? I’m fairly sure GW could still compete at that.

That, or eliminate the automatic Ivy bid, distribute automatic bids by regions instead of conferences, recalibrate the S-Curve accordingly, and publicly clarify the role of Ratings Percentage Index.

Either way.

Pissing In The Wind: This Bracket Racket

This Sunday, the NCAA announces its field of 65.

That is, of course, an odd number. And as much as it isn't even, it's even less a power of 2, as tournament rosters are wont to be. This irregularity descends from a historical quirk. In every tournament, there are the 31 automatic bids and the 34 at-large bids.

The automatic bids go to the winners of the separate conferences. There used to be 30 conferences, but the august Mountain West Conference split from the athletic pantheon of the Western Athletic Conference, and in its infinite wisdom the NCAA decided both were, in fact, real conferences and both deserve automatic bids.

And then there are the at-large bids, or, as they're also known, the "Good Teams". You want to see Duke in the tournament? Of course you do, cause Coach K is K-k-k-krazy! And who wouldn't want to see UNC. Or Maryland. Or Boston College. Let's not forget Wake Forest's Demon Deacons, a team name up there with Pennsylvania's Fighting Quakers for absurdity. Of course, because all these teams come from the ACC, most of these great teams are coming from an at-large bid.

So why even bother with the automatic bids that are just warm-up for the teams that have been spending the regular seasons kicking ass and taking names?

And while we're at it, what is the deal with those conference tournaments at all? Let's say there is a team from the Podunk Regional Conference that is good. Not great, certainly not a top 25 team, though maybe it's gotten some votes. They work their ass off to establish a solid record, get to the Charles Willamon (he was the first athletic director at East Bumblefuck University) Tournament, and lo and behold, there are actually cameras there! They're going to be on TV! And they lose! And even though they're obviously the "best" team in the 'Dunk.

This is all done, of course, because those fancy-shmancy TV cameras give the 'Dunk teams hell of money. At the cost of, y'know, screwing over their best child.

So, dear commentatrices, what's the way to deal with basketball championships?

Harvard sucks at basketball; Dinosaurs still dead

Harvard decided not to renew their coach after a 12-16 season. At, say, Duke, that would be a disastrous season. Coach K would be roasted alive and the Cameron Crazies would become the Cameron Cannibals. But Frank Sullivan, the coach, had an overall record of 178-245 in 16 seasons at Cambridge Community College. So, in fact, this year's .428 percentage was .8 percent *better* than his career .420 winning record.

How mercurial, dear Ivy League Bastion. Perhaps the Ivory Tower wants to get in on the game? Recruit noted intellectual players like J, Ph.D.? You get down with your bad self, Stanford of the East.

So how long has it been since they made the big dance? Will next year's seniors be able to gather round the campfire and tell the freshmen stories of NCAA tournament shenanigans? Maybe the red-shirted seniors? Let me get on my reading glasses, and peruse this article... It says that the last time the Crimson made the bracket was.. two thousand and-- Where is that?

"Harvard last made the NCAA Tournament in 1946."

1946?!

That's right. People who saw the Harvard team last ball it up weren't grindin', they were jitterbuggin'. Diplomats from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS watched the game (possibly). India was part of Britain. Bobby Bonds, father of today's elder statesmen of steroid question dodging, Barry Bonds was born. But hey, at least maybe some of the players were scouted for the League? Y'know, go pro?

Oh, wait, no. The NBA wasn't founded for another couple months.

So Harvard, here's my suggestion: Don't form a search committee for a new coach. Why bother? Instead, just let the intramural basketball team currently leading in the standings play for you at the Div I level. That way, you save some money, more kids get to experience the rush of competition, and it's not like you'll do much worse.

Maureen Dowd's Career And Other Cunning Stunts

Sports analogies are illuminating in a piece of writing when they recast complex phenomena--like the Democratic Primary--in the more immediately recognizable terms of positions and objectives, raw talent and charisma, the value of teamwork versus individual achievement, , underdogs and favorites, triumph over adversity, et cetera.

Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed gem, "Where Is His Right Hook?" manages to take a fairly common and straightforward species of sports analogy--'politics is like a prize fight' (or a wrestling match, or a dogfight...)--and make it almost completely incoherent.

A good rule of thumb in journalism (even op-eds) is that the headline, the lede, and the pull-quote should give the reader a fairly good idea what the article is about. In this case, the aforementioned headline set up the following lede:

"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Obama is in touch with his feminine side."

and the pull-quote was....Well, I don't know exactly what the pull-quote was, because I threw away my copy and nytimes.com wants me to pay to read it again.* I'm fairly sure the pull quote said something like "he rolls over while she takes another shot", which is not only ambiguous across about a thousand contexts that the Times would no doubt find "unfit to print", but also brings the pronoun-to-noun ratio in the headline, lede and pull-quote up to 5:2.

Like I said, I can't be sure this was the exact wording of the pull-quote. It might have been a reference to Sex and the City--one can never be sure.

Her writing (and I use that term charitably) invariably seems like it comes straight from her adorable little diary in which she confides her deepest, darkest secrets along with notes about super-hottie Centrists, Third-Wave feminism, and bulk makeup orders.


*though, becoming a member of "Times Select" would allow me to root through their Op-Ed archives and reconstruct just how John Tierney managed to make Libertarianism fit on a postage stamp

March Madness

Stereotypes are idioms, and idioms sure can be useful. For instance, this weekend when I met a women's rugby player, I filed away that fact and all its connotations. And so when she mentioned she was Dutch, I was able to say with nary a pause, "ah, then it makes sense that you want to stick fingers in dikes."

Speaking of, it's March. To some of my friends who are interested in walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (and pants), that means it's March Manness[sic]. But for us here at The Enfranchised, it means it's time for basketball.

(For those of you a bit confused about my introduction and segue, allow me to quote Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 7 Eth.1098a23-24, we find, "What is the difference between cunnilingus and dunking? You don't have to dunk to play woman's basketball." A bit awkward phrasing, yes. But remember that comedic timing was discovered at the same time as perspective in 2-D art, only in the Renaissance.)

And so, this month, we're getting into it. Sports sports sports here at the 'Franchised. College, Pro, PAL, men's, women's unisex, hot horse-on-horse action (if we find horses that play polo, y'know, on other horses. Come to think of it, that's Foster's assignment). You name it, we'll consider considering it.

Feel free to let the door hit you

Apparently some coach I've never heard of (Ritchie McKay) at some school I don't care about (UNM:UArizona::UArizona:Cal Berkeley, and I bearly[sic] care about Berkeley) is on the way out. Fine, happens all the time. But look at the good-bye he's getting:

"I still think Ritchie McKay is a great man and a great coach," University of New Mexico Board of Regents member Jack Fortner told the Albuquerque Journal. "Somewhere, he's going to do great things in a program. And apparently, it's not going to be here at UNM. I haven't had a chance to talk to Ritchie and I will. He's got a great staff, and it's unfortunate that they won't be here either."

I can only imagine that Mr. Fortner was holding himself back. "And he's got a cute family. They'll go great on some university's christmas cards, unfortunately not ours."

"He has a great car, unfortunately he won't be driving it after we impounded it."

"And he has a great house, shame that it was recently rustled by goons."

C'mon, are you a Regent of a University or a Sopranos recurring character wanna-be?

And while we're at it, why do sports have to have so many layers of duplicity? Grow a pair, pull a Streinbrenner, and say, "he sure did suck here." Don't be a passive aggressive dick and go, "Well, he had a cute Scottish Terrier." 1) It's not germane, 2) have you seen an ugly Scottish Terrier? And why does every coach have to pledge allegiance to their current job? We see every coach pull a Nick Saban and say "I would absolutely, positively not leave my current-- Oh, that much?" and then Benedict Arnold himself (always himself) over to a more lucrative or prestigious position. Which is fine! It's what we all would do. It's what athletes do.

We put capitalism on a pedestal, alright that it keeps most of the population in coal mines because it puts a few of us on 20" spinners. So let's stop expecting professional coaches to be holier-than-y'all and instead realize that a coaching job in the SEC is going to be arousing and that coaches who get such offers will get Ayn Randy.

The Sport of Geeks

Pope/Schiavo Watch 2K5: 1 down, 1 to go.

But on to the important stuff: flaunting wealth. Of course, it used to mean something to play polo. You needed steeds, a line-up of them. No mere laborer could have enough thoroughbreds, and even if he did, they'd all be tired from tilling the soil. Till-soilers. But then horses became cheap (and eventually glue/dog food). And courtesy extended so that you didn't even need to have enough to travel. Collegiate polo expanded. Of course, because of Title IX, you had to use mares. Which ins't as bad as my school's fox-hunting team, which is legally required to be half bitches.

But now we, the Enfranchised, have reclaimed this once crown jewel of superiority and elitism, and done so in a way that warms my white, electronics-oriented heart: Segway polo. Yep. Just what you think it would be. The panacea to problems of urban congestion becoming a trusty mount. For a game that none of these people would play were it not for their having dropped 5 g-spots on this scooter.

Future, we have arrived.



Oh, and also, pointless scandal du jour. (Headline: Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing)

PITW: Bread and Circuses

Pardon me if I stray from my role as moderator to smack some sense into my "peers."

To Foster: It's not that I have any strong desire for the hub-bub of professional sports to overtake the college arena. Once money is explicitly on the table, any pretense of tradition or themes or association would be lost. In their quest for players, schools would have to negotiate on cold dollars instead of warm fantasies of being say "Lady Vols" or "Demon Deacons". (Why any athlete would want to be part of these to begin with is beyond me). In a land of recruiting with contracts and bonuses instead of below-table bling would we ever find a team that could, on sheer will of consistency, compete with the Filibusters' record for single season overtimes? No. No we could not. (To those of you who take my word as gospel: don't try breaking that fact out as canon. In fact, there is no team the Filibusters. But as I write this, I realize that they sound much more like an Asian Archipelago Demoltion Unit than they do an obscure procedural trick anthropomorphized).

To 'Athan: As I was at the NCAA tournament in Kansas City (which is in Missouri. WTF? That's the kind of ill logic that belongs in Canada. Then again, so does the entire Midwest), I found the girl for you. Knowing your fetish for all things absurd and blonde, I present to you the future Mrs. PoopShit. This 6-4 mountain of a matron could make a quaker out of a presbyterian. During foul shots, we chanted "Fee Fie Fo Fum" in between the sound of her mammoth feet leaving potholes in the court. As she palmed the pig skin (I'm not confusing basketball and football her, she just brought pork rinds with her), she would engage in defense by using her gravitational influence to shape the arc of an opponent's shot, removing any hope of goal-tending calls by warping time, space, and the vision of the refs as she deftly weaved her body using calves that had as much thrust as a Pratt & Whitney 350FG Turbofan.

I mean, shit.

Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

Contrary to Foster and his distaste for collegiate basketball (and penchant for JV field hockey), I'm a big fan of this topic. Unlike our recent ones, it doesn't involve eulogizing some dead white dude who used words to big for me to understand (like eulogy), or this so-called "science" or "computers" of which I've heard so much about. Finally, a topic that every freedom loving, God and immigrant-fearing American can relate to: sports. (Need I bring up the suspicious fact that when this topic was presented, Foster conveniently fled to France, possibly to molest unwitting, underage croissants...).

Anyway, Foster makes a number of points, most of them sexually perverse. We've heard them all before: athletes are stupid; they're corrupt ingrates; women have no place driving cars; and so forth. Needless to say, I disagree with most of what Foster says, particularly the part about kicking puppies for sport.

First off, are student-athletes the hyphenated beings they're made out to be? Foster thinks not, and I think so. Sure you get the occasional Jim Harrick "Coaching 101" exam that asks Varsity Basketball players on the final exam, "How many points is a 3-pointer worth?" (find the link yourself, dammit), but I'm not willing to make the blanket statement that all athletes are like that. For every Maurice Clarrett, you have a Shane Battier or Emeka Okafur, not to mention the walk-ons. I'm not naive enough to say that Allen Iverson took the most academically strenuous courseload at Georgetown, but if you change the schools from Georgetown or Stanford to Miami or Ohio St., how much more work do you think Joe Fraternity did there than The Answer at G'Town? And note, elephant-walking doesn't count as a class (if you don't know what it is, you're missing out on a good joke).

Even at the elite universities with good athletics, you'd need to extend the anti-athlete argument to all those legacy kids whose names include suffixes with numbers. I wouldn't be particularly against this extension of the argument, but you have to remember why this is done in the first place: bling.

For every generation of Winthrops or Cabots or Bush's you let into your college, you raise the chance of getting a new building erected (heh) as that trust fund amasses. Sure it runs contrary to the ideals our nation was founded upon, but colleges gotta feed their babies too. To make a rambling point short: hate the game, not the player.

Aside from the above "logical" arguments, I'd say schools gain from admitting "underqualified" athletes in non-financial ways as well. As I've theorized before, smart kids are ugly, so athletes are hot. I don't know how I could have gotten through 2 hours of psychology if not for ogling the shotputting ogre in front of me every Monday and Wed. "Damn! Look at those traps! I wonder how much she benches... I wonder how much she can drink... I wonder what her hair smells like... I wonder what her back hair smells like..." Mmmmm. Sweet memories.

Aside from the general deliciousness athletes bring to campus, I don't see how you can be against someone doing you such a big (and sweaty) favor on the curve. Lord knows I don't want to always be that lone dot all the way to the left of the peak. If letting in a few more fullbacks brings me a standard deviation closer to the mean, I say come on in.

This is all without even bringing up the school spirit argument. I've said it once and I'll say it again: you can't tailgate for a chess match. Nor can you paint your chest for a concerto, or vomit in the bleachers during Hamlet.

I really can't think of anything else to say, so let me end this with a joke:

Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs hanging on your wall?
A: Art.

(Same post, different blog)

Unbunch your panties

Normally I try to be good about responding to PITWs, but unfortunately I've spent the weekend hacking up a lung and stealing my 3-year old cousin's jelly beans at my Aunt's house. Needless to say, my mind is currently backed up with mucus and chocolate, and all I can think about is tonight's pending Desperate Housewives and going to bed soon thereafter.

So I promise to respond tomorrow. And the response will be bigger than Jesus.

March-Madness's Arch-Badness

If the play on words in the title of this piece hangs together about as well as the diorama in Dan's seventh grade science project, cut me some slack: I'm on vacation. Or practically--I'm leaving for Frohnce and, eventually, Spain, in two motherfucking hours. And as sexy as the idea of typing this post on the Chunnel Train (Ethan Hunt style) is, I can't quite bring myself to take my laptop into a country which has already displayed great gusto for bending me over and giving me the old blitzkreig right up my Maginot Line.

Frogs aside, I'm not crazy about the flavor of this week's piss. It has a decent bouquet, fine mouthfeel, but the uric acid marches all over the fruit; the subtle notes of ginger, lemongrass, and nitrogenous waste materials are lost. What I mean to say is, its a non-question for DR. F; another pseudo-problem summarily dispatched by the finest intellect of the 21st century.

The thing about Dan's question is it breaks the FIRST rule of denial: You can't have your delusion and eat it too. Viz., as soon as we start talking about college basketball players as deserving some sort of compensation (that is, as soon as we recognize that basketball players are profitable for universities) the mirage that many of them have any right to BE at a university disappears like the Leviathan's wedding band at a nursing home (think about it). Come on, the reason college athletes are unpaid is so we who sit on the Board of Trustees (and we here at the Enfranchised sit on ALL boards-of-trustees) can keep our fingers wedged firmly in our ears and tell ourselves they're students first. But the truth is most of these kids aren't even students EIGHTH. They're ball-players, and that's a fine thing. Nothing wrong with being a ball player. (Hell, if I had a jumpshot do you think I'd be writing drivel for this rag?) Still, I've got a sneaking suspicion that Allen Iverson didn't catch all the subtleties of G. John Ikenberry's seminar's on American power while he was at Georgetown. 'Na mean?

Now, as soon as we start throwing around big, Marxy sounding words like "Labor" and "Proletariot", and wondering whether these athletes--who bring in big bucks for their schools--should get paid, why then the NCAA's New Clothes start to look an awful lot like their Birthday Suit (Look people, I can't make all the connections for you, I'm on a clock here). In other words, even asking that question should make Duke and UNC blush. The short answer, then, is that if college ballers want to get paid, they shouldn't be college ballers. What about the nearly-dead white men at the universities that profit from these amateurs? Well, that ain't right either. And just because it shows no signs of changing doesn't mean we should compound it with a further slutting-up of the NCAA. As it stands, the system works a lot like Reno, lets not make it Vegas.

Let me be the 1,242,569,382nd to say that the NBA ought to consider a farm system for developing young talent to take the place of college ball. As I'm sure that my reputation for humility precedes me, I'll humbly suggest that college athletes stay paid in the same old currency they've ALWAYS been paid in: soft grades and high-quality trim. It isn't exactly a hard-knock life for your average college jock. I had the distinction of living amongst them at a dorm RESERVED for their likes at GWU last year. Most were adequately blinged and drove sports cars, and GW didn't even make it into the sweet sixteen.

Though, I can confirm that our power forward made it into some sweet sixteens on his own...and a few baht mitzvahs.

-The Natural

Not bad for 25 minutes eh?

Pissing In The Wind: March Madness

Well, my bracket's shot. The Leviathan's, imbued with the results of hours of careful study, bears about as much resemblance to reality as, well, The Leviathan. Foster replaced basketball teams with philosophers on his, and unless Sartre makes it to the Final Four, he's fucked. So, we need something else with which to amuse ourself. Hence, pissing.

So, let's keep it simple: Why should NCAA student-athletes be amateur? Is this jsut another excuse to exploit the wage-labor of a teenaged proletariat? Or is it a genuine attempt to make them love the sport and the program?

Do your worst.

Pissing In The Wind: What America's next sport will not be.

Pardon me for the tardiness: My back is currently burdened by monsters of network protocols. That being said, Foster and the Leviathan urinated amply. I guess what I have to add is largely a prediction of what will not become popular. Ever. And that's webcomics. No, I mean, they might have their appeal in reading them. Occassionally. when you want to feel superior. But I mean watching them being written. And yet, this seems to be the newest league (cf. here). To add to the Leviathan's point: something is definitely not a sport if your jersey is ironic merchandise.

That is all,
DaBentley

Pissing in the Wind: Oh, Canada

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H - E - Double-Hockey-Stick (and a Handbasket)

Hockey, much like MxPx, is slowly going the way of the buffalo. I for one don't weep. As a portly young lad, I learned quickly that ice is a fickle mistress and something to be avoided at all costs. Though I did, for a time, feel a certain affinity toward Zambonis, as I thought they were a kind of Italian pastry.

But that, I suppose, is besides the point.

For those of you who worry about this kind of thing, and I have serious doubts that our readership includes many of you, I'll offer a suggestion or two about the prospects for filling those modestly-sized skates.

If our aim is to stick as closely to the spirit of hockey as possible, then it seems to me we ought to replace it with a sport I've tentatively called "kicking-the-shit-out-of-mulleted-Canadians". Its rules, I take it, are self-explanatory. Its potential, enormous. It'd no doubt be the biggest thing in Yank-on-Canuck action since the Aroostock War.

Alas, our legal department tells us that's not the way to go. So what else? Well, I care a great deal for backgammon. Unfortunately the WBA would murder us on the television-rights. But speaking of games which don't require a speck of athletic ability, what about poker? Seems nowadays every teenaged prick with a piggy bank and the rough capacity for abstract thought fancies himself a cardshark (here's where I tell you I was so ahead of the curve on this whole poker thing: I was so ahead of the curve on this whole poker thing).

Now, I happen to get a kick out of watching the ESPN coverage of the World Series, and apparently, so does every asshole with a remote control and optical nerves. The good news is these same kids pay me off when I'm at the casino, cuz they get it into their heads that they ought to try everything they see on TV (these are the same fuck-o's who shave each others asses and skateboard of their roofs; think "Jackass" without the production values). Now I'm not saying I'm a great player, but I respect the game enough to know my role, unlike every assclown with a dollar and a modicum of hand-eye coordination. I was at a low-limit hold-em table the other day and I'll be a tipsy-showgirl if there wasn't some little shit with a "NO LIMIT TEXAS HOLD-EM" t-shirt on. Now, I've seen a lot of great ball players at Yankee Stadium, and wouldn't you know it that not a ONE of them wore a shirt that said "PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL" on it. Anyway, bottom line is that the bubble has got to burst on the poker fad. Its only a matter of time before every fuckface with a pair of 3s and an opposable thumb gets tired of subsidizing the careers of middle-of-the-road players like myself. And once they realize they can't DO it, I'm thinking their interest in WATCHING it will wane.

Here in the Her Majesty's United Kingdom, they've got cricket. But let's get back to our discussion of sports. We've got to keep our audience in mind: what would satiate the hockey fan's puck-cravings in the absence of his fix? What's essential to hockey's hockeyness? Is it the rule structure? Dubious. Nary a Bruins fan will make the trek to his local middle school field hockey match to watch the girls duke it out in plaid, and any one who DOES is probably required by state law to inform you of certain things. Is it the ice, then? Unlikely. Few Philiadelphia Flyers fanatics shed a tear when Michelle Kwan took her last figure eight around the rink. But, come to think of it, they all probably got their rocks off watching the Tanya Harding take a lead pipe to the Kerigan's kneecap. Which brings me back to my original point: Hockey is about hurting people, preferably uneducated foreigners.

And thanks to Adam Smith and the Amazing Technicolor (R) Free Market, we've already got a substitute good which offers just as much xenophobic sadism, one that's waiting to sweep in and pick up the hockey fans once the NHL finally folds:

War.

That's right, I'm talking America's passtime. No, no. Not the Bud Selig one, the Donny Rumsfeld one. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, peace is what made sport necessary. Don't try to deny it--you know the pessimistic anthropologist in you agrees with me. But there's certainly no shortage of the stuff these days, so who needs hockey? I challenge the NHL to produce something as awe-inspiring and entertaining as the M1A2 Abrams tank, with its smoothbore kinetic shitstorm of a main gun. Step right up and get your tickets, war's got everything you could possibly ask for in a sport: high stakes, favorites and underdogs, zealous fans, controversey, live broadcasts, no slaughter rule.

Pfft. And you voted for Kerry?

Pissing In The Wind: What kinds of sticks, what kinds of balls?

So, hockey's over. I mean, yes, for the season. But, let's face it, hockey was barely holding on as the "fourth sport" anyway. If they do come back, it's not going to be because of puck-handling, it's going to be because they amend the rules so every goalie is now a gorilla without further equipment and you're allowed to engage in fights on the ice. With katanas. Katanae?

So, commentators, I put it to you: what sport will emerge from the icy ashes of the NHL's corpse to grab mindshare among American audiences? Ice skating? Tonsil Hockey? Steroid-testing? Inform us, O Enfranchised.

Why the Eagles will win the Super Bowl

The Eagles will win the Super Bowl this year. I know this not because of sports certainty or information gleaned from analysis of marketplaces acting as conglomerators of insider knowledge. No, I know it for a stronger reason: narrative necessity.

Just look at the backstories. The Patriots have... what, exactly? They're Goliath. The favorites. They've won 2 out of the last 3 years. If they win, it's just setting them up as the mini-Yankees. And with the Red Sox already sucking up all the Miracle that the greater Boston Area could expect for the next three centuries.... No magic there, my friends.

But the Eagles are underdogs writ large. Terrell Owens managed to turn his privilege into a handicap by breaking his ankle or tibia or fibumacallit at just the right time to make his return triumphant and daring. Who can imagine any ending to this day other than him pushing himself harder than he should, extending a distressed joint just a bit more to make the catch. Sacrificing his body for the game. Wait, no, sorry: Sacrificing His Body For The Game.

But the real glory is Jeff Thomason: the assistant project manager at a Philadelphia construction company is back in the saddle. We all know the story: a has-been or a never-was that is suddenly thrust into the limelight. He wasn't even expecting to be playing, and here he is... The whole stadium starts chanting "Rudy". I mean, what the Eagles have is the destiny of every cliché sports feel-good movie.

The Patriots have two options to pursue if they want half-a-shot at the Lombardi Cup. 1) They could fire all their starters and replace them with a motley mix of cripples, orphans, and three-legged puppies. This unfortunately would start a bidding war with the Eagles, and end up with next year's top draft pick being used on a 7-year-old albino forced to enter the coal-mines to feed his family asbestos (the only thing he can afford on his meager wages) who has both emphysema and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

Or, 2) they could up the ante and return the Eagles' dramatic story with a buddy comedy. Hire as their new wide receiver: a midget. A funny one, suitable of being in Jack Ass or Yet Another Mike Myers Movie. And aside from the physical humor of his lowered Hummer that has platinum-plated phonebooks for him to sit on, he contributes to the playing: the quarterback gives him the ball, then engages in everyone favorite illegal sport, midget tossing, and picks up a decent 7 yards.

So, keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground, and maybe we'll find out that this Sunday, we'll see not a matchup of the NFC and the AFC, but instead of tired heart-wrenching/tear-jerker vs. odd-couple/fish-out-of-water/Adam Sandler vehicle.

-D"Oh, and of course, everyone's actual favorite illegal sport is cockfighting"an

The Salad Bowl--a reply

Ha! The Leviathan gets to respond this time! And what better topic than the "BCS Mess."

I'd love to talk about the BCS, but I'm no sports writer, it woudn't be anything you haven't heard already, and frankly, it wouldn't live up to Pissing in the Wind's reputation for literary cock-fighting. But as an avid college football fan (and reader of the international section of many a newspaper, Herr Foster), I just can't resist a few bulletpoints. So here goes:

• The BCS blows. It blows, sucks, and swallows. All at once. Sure it's better than the old system, but so what? If I'm horny, and there are two fat chicks, one 300 lbs., and the other 287, I'm not going to want to have sex with either of them. And Ms. 287 is going to come up to me and say, "I may not be your dream woman, but look at my hideous friend." It's all relative people.
• Out of any other team, Cal got screwed the most. Royally screwed. I'm talking scepter up the ass screwed. They finish in the top 6 in the nation, and get rewarded by playing Texas Tech in the Assclown bowl. I'd say Auburn and Utah got screwed as well. Auburn because they're, in my book, one of the three teams tied for number one, and they don't even get to play the number 4, 5, or 6 team. Undefeated Utah is trying to show it can compete with the big boys and is truly bowl worthy, and who do they play? Pitt. Not even top 10.
• Unfortunately, I don't see this changing any time soon. The conferences just get too much money from these bowls, not to mention the loot pulled in by these sponsoring corporations. You can have the Tostidos Fiesta bowl, but not really the Nokia Playoffs, or Pepsi presents the NCAA college football finals.

But enough of this discussing of the topic. I should get back to the real task: taking a proverbial shit on Baron von Foster's posting.

I'll be the first to admit, the Ivy League is not exactly a bastion of athleticism (nor is it a bastion of attractiveness, social skills, or basic physical coordination). When it comes to football, basketball, and the other arena sports, we can't compete with the national powers. But Goddammit, we kick ass at the preppy, white kid sports.

Our squash team is consistently among the top two in the nation. Our sailing and crew team are always competing for a national title. Basically, if it's played at a country club or requires expensive equipment, we kick ass. Anything that's dominated by snooty white people of Mayflower heritage, or a suffix no less than XII, we rock.

Of course God does not give with both hands. Aside from football and basketball, we're not terribly good at, say, dancing, jumping, or tanning. Does this bother me? Not at all. You haven't experienced sports bliss until you've seen Charles Putnam Yorkshire the 57th hit a sticky wicket, as you clap politely along with the throngs of bare-chested fans in the student section. And the tailgating before the big Harvard-Yale equestrian match. Man! Kegs + horses + drunk co-eds = hilarity.

So while we may be a little unathletic, a little ugly, and a little socially awkward, I'll be damned if we couldn't beat, say, the Oxford dental team in a teeth contest. Or the GWU football team in...existing! Hahahahahahaha.

Before I sign off, I would like to take this opportunity to have some fun with the Dans in a purely non-personal, playful, yet sexual manner. I will now write the above sentence in Enfranchisedese:

E're my selves doth exuent--my existential and transcendal selves--I shall seize this like the great philosopher, Immanuel Kierkegaard von Hegel, seized the immaculate; HEREBY, I titilate the gelastic senses of the Dans, albeit in the metaphysical, impish, and lustful sense, methinks, ex post facto [sic].

HI-Larious!

Same post, different blog

Pissing Into The Wind, Round 2

Lots of news today. An attack on the American Consulate in Saudi Arabia. The BBC is cutting its staff by 10 percent, in a move sure to raise the stakes in its arms race with NPR to see who can be the shittier public information source in a world of media conglomerates.
Eliot Spitzer, the man Wall Street hates more than beggars, has thrown his hat into the race for governor of New York. So what to talk about in this second edition of Pissing Into The Wind? Obviously we will only tackle issues of firstmost importance and relevance.

The BCS.

That's right. Every other NCAA sport manages to have a sane play-off schedule, generating mania commensurate with its stature. Basketball has March Madness. Women's Volleyball has December Dulcitude. Men's Volleyball has Arbitrary Month Arbitrage. But when it comes to football, we just trip over ourselves.

First we say that it's too computer guided, so we emphasize human voting. Then the humans are lobbied heavily, and Cal manages to win a game when the lower ranked Texas isn't even playing, and they LOSE A SPOT IN THE ROSE BOWL. What kind of system is it when we take a Pac-10 team out of the Rose Bowl?

So, to you, my panelists, I put the question: how do we bring sanity to the system? Play-offs? Calling audibles on bowl games (like right now, let's just have a 2-3 play in game for Auburn and Smokelahoma)? Just giving USC the national championship and letting all the other teams play for second? Bring back Zombie Knute Rockne and let him coach the Fighting Irish?

So it turns out Rudy can fail...

No, I'm not talking about Clash songs, I'm talking about Sean Astin, perhaps now better known as Samwise Gamgee. He put in an appearance at the Oxford Union last nite, strolling into the great debate hall in a smart three-button suit replete with half, nay, full Windsor pink tie, his lovely daughter Alexandra in hand. We managed to get seats on the floor, in a small section unified by, if nothing else, our support for the introduction of a measure to the effect that "This House believes Rudy is the greatest sports film of our generation." Of course, Oxfordshire is Tolkien country (The Hobbit was written about fifty yards from where I sit, in Staircase Two of Pembroke College), so needless to say there was about as much support in the room for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame as there was for the Fighting Irish of Belfast. Thus was I fully prepared to see a species of nerdery different than my own take the day, and listen to Astin struggle in vain to satiate the tremendous demand for the inducement of childlike wonder among fan-fic writers and theatre-girls alike.

As chance would have it though, these Serfs of the Ring were doomed to disappointment. Instead, what we got from Mr. Astin was an eloquent, if not at times loquaicious and contrived, treatise on morality and world-view formation. Reading at first from "prepared remarks", Astin managed both to affect the American self-loathing commonplace among liberal apologists with European audiences, and to quote Malcolm X at great length. I will say of him that he is bright and intellectually curious (having worked his way through community college and UCLA on his way to a degree in American Studies), but I wonder in the end if he's really being honest with himself.

Two points struck me as particularly disingenuous. First, a comment about having "spent two-thousand dollars on books, about the war and the president and the politics" and thereupon "spreading them around my apartment, and reading the titles trying to make sense of my worldview"; suffice it to say that the reading of titles does not an education make; a studious trip to the Bodliean will save one both time and money if a spatial arrangement of similarly provocative epigrams is all one is after. But perhaps this is unfair--Astin was speaking in anecdotes, and we can only assume he's read more than just titles. Still, the second comment irked me, and as he was addressing it in response to a question posed by a friend Alex immediately to my left, I can't help but feel that my cringe at its utterance was both recognized by Astin, and cause for his retreat into safer waters.

You see, he was fresh from confessing to us his difficulty in "reconciling free market capitalism and democracy". Fair enough, Goonie. But as your new book, on your own account, deals quite explicitly with the pragmatics of movie deals, agents, franchise rights and the like, it seems as though you've got a working grip on how the market works, and how it works for you. But the the death knell, for me, sounded when Astin implored all of us to see The Corporation, a no-holds-barred documentary that makes Farhenheit 9/11 look like a soft jest from Cheney to Bush. (To be equitable, The Economist called The Corporation "surprisingly rational"). I do not doubt that we all should see this film, or more appropriately that we should avail ourselves to the truths presented therein. But perhaps Mr. Astin ought to see it again, and figure out if he can "reconcile" his admiration for it with the fact that his checks are signed by TimeWarner Inc.

I didn't intend for this post to get so long, and for it to be so unfunny. So I'll finish off by saying that, ceteris paribus, Sean Astin is one of the good ones. An Alec Baldwin or Sean Penn he is not, and he seems genuinely committed to public service (working, for instance, with President Bush's volunteerism board, the Secretary of the Army, and with the Carter Foundation). The case of Astin just goes to show how easily (unavoidably?) we slip into hypocrisy, and how unpalatable that hypocrisy can sound to a kid from Jersey whose parents were not, in any case, Gomez Addams and Patty Duke.*

-Citizen Foster

*I should also note that granting Astin a reprieve was made a great deal easier when, yielding graciously to my request, he helped us all to the Chester Copperpot speech from Goonies, and to a stirring rendition of Charles S. Dutton's famous "Five-foot-nothin, a-hundred-and-nothin" speech from Rudy (the greatest sports film of our generation).