RICKSTER IS THE COLUMNIST FOR THE WEEKLY PUBLICATION, "THE SOMERS RECORD"

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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

SPORTS

SPORTS

I have not had a chance to write (lucky you) (and yes I understand you are not the plural you) because I’ve been working hard on the NCAA Tournament. My job is to assemble a whole bunch of information regarding how the network is broadcast into a zillion different regions, and make sure that the people who actually make the switches know what the heck they are doing.

You can say what you want about the NCAA Tournament, mostly because it is your first amendment right. By the way, why is the right to free speech an amendment? How did they forget to put that into the Constitution in the first place? Remember that War for Independence we just fought so that we could speak freely? Didn’t anyone proofread the thing? “Dude we left some stuff out- it might be pretty important…”

Incidentally I have a great idea to reduce the deficit: you know the Bill of Rights? Go ahead and submit a bill. Charge people for the rights they actually use. For instance, I need free speech so I can annoy people. But I don’t need to bear arms. I have arms, but I don’t need to bear them. Charge people extra for brandishing arms, and even more if they menace. I don’t need free religion- I am not religious. I don’t need to do anything unto others- I can’t remember if that is the Bill of Rights or the Ten Commandments? I always get those and Benjamin Franklin confused. “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned-“ was that Jesus or Ben Franklin? I heard Jesus was kind of a cheapskate.

Anyway, when the NCAA tournament rolls around everyone has to “pick their brackets.” Don’t worry that you know ABSOLUTELY nothing about the teams, just pick them. The early rounds of your bracket are awash with red ink. If you got most of them right that means you are an idiot savant, like a horse who can paint with his tail, and it comes out looking better than some stuff you have seen at the MOMA, or when your cat walks across the piano, and it sounds a little like Liszt. Or when George Clooney is in a movie and for some odd reason it isn’t that bad.

Obama picked some ridiculous school for an upset and was crowing about it for two days. My mother LOVED the NCAA Tournament, because she loved to root for the underdog.
“I love Michigan- they are cute! A little school like that against a big powerhouse and they WON!”
“Mom, Michigan was favored by 25 points- their stadium fits 100,000 people.”

This year these dopey mid-major schools have been beating up on the big guns, and the execs at CBS are getting nervous. A final featuring Murray State versus St. Marys (Cal) was a distinct and distasteful possibility for far too long. Any school that has to list what state it’s from in parentheses because there is another BETTER school somewhere else with the same name does NOT belong this deep in the tournament.

They are thinking of expanding the tournament to 96 teams. This is not good. I went to Syracuse, which is a fine learning institution with a damned good basketball team. I don’t want to see some bogus little college come along and knock my ass out in the second round.

It would actually be 97 teams, because they have that play-in game. Can someone please explain why that play-in game is in my life? Didn’t they play the whole season so that they could either be selected or not selected by the tournament committee like everyone else? The winner (loser, because the winner wins an embarrassing smack-down in the first round by the number one seed of the tournament) this year was Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Does a team with the word “bluff” in it sound like it’s going very far? This year they skipped the game and Duke just took them into a back alley and shot them- it was more humane.

Some dopey schools in the past: I.U.P.U.I. I’m not sure what it stands for but it will keep you from getting pregnant I think. Also: Austin Peay (pronounced Austin Pee), which got a lot of chuckles from dads and eye-rolls from moms with kids named Austin.

And the lower the seed, the weirder the school nickname is. Cornell is known as the Big Red. The Big Red WHAT? I think I know the answer, but I am too much of a lady to say. Speaking of ladies, that’s another thing. After Title IX passed, all the major schools had to fund female basketball programs, but they didn’t give any thought to what they would call them. So they just put the word “lady” in front of the existing nickname. The “Lady Trojans” of USC is a perfect example of inappropriate. Now the nickname for Brigham Young University is the “Cougars,” so I’m not sure what to make of that.


Incidentally, the lowest seed to become the national champion was Villanova in 1985. They did qualify as a “Cinderella” team, because they arrived at the tournament in a large pumpkin, and believe me the inside of it was the pits.


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Thursday, March 4, 2010

WINTER OLYMPICS

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