Where’s The Outrage?

Seems like every year, you hear people complain about the Major League playoff, and World Series games starting too late at night.
Mainly because it’s too late for young fans to watch.
I myself am usually in this croud, especially since according nearly every stat out there, less and less American kids are playing baseball.
However, you hear hardly a peep about NCAA Basketball tourney games starting so late.
Now, even big time, close basketball games take nowhere near as long as a MLB playoff game, but still, they start just as late, if not later in some cases.
Why is this?
Also, since I live in Columbus my ears perk up a little when I hear complaints, or outrage about Jim Tressel and Ohio State, and their whole little “scandal” thing. However, I have heard very little about the fact that two of the teams in The Final Four are being coached either by a guy who has had two other Final 4 trips vacated because of major infractions (even one that was going down as he was hired for this job), and another being coached by a guy who will be suspended at the start of next season, if he comes back.
Callipari, and Calhoun have done a great job of making sure lower level assistants, and outside handlers, who seem to be pretty well taken care of have taken the brunt of the blame, even though anyone with half a brain can see their hands are as dirty as anyone, and chances are the things they have been busted for, barely scratch the surface.
So why is it, everyone nationally seems to want Tressel’s head on a platter, but Jim Calhoun (who pays AAU coaches) gets a free pass?
Where’s the outrage?
My answer?
Tressel is the new story, and college basketball may be the most corrupt sport in all the land, and we pretty much expect it.

I Feel Better

Now that I got a few words off my chest, some of which may have been a little harsh, I’m at peace with my Buckeyes losing.
Sure, I may have gone a little far initially, but I’m quite calm now.
Saturday was a new day for me. I had a moment to appreciate the Buckeyes great season, and count my blessings.
It was a fun year.
Today, it’s gotten even better.
If UNC can smack the cats, I’ll be right as rain.
Of course watching Kansas spit the bit helped more than a little to cheer me up.
Sure, I have no Buckeyes to watch today, no Big Love on HBO, and absolutely no shot at winning anything in my bracket. Well, at least I assume that, since I still don’t have the stomach to check the standings.
But seeing Kansas, who never even had to face any of the 2-8 seeds int their bracket, statisticly the easiest road to the final 4 a 1 seed has ever had, absolutely get kicked in the taint, I’m back not quite on top of the world, but perched nicely at the millitry crest of the hill.
Oh VCU, if only you could play Butler in the final, but knowing for certain one of you will have a chance to shock a perenial power brings me joy.
Best of luck to both of ya, VCU, and Butler, the new princes of Basketball.

At least we have our teeth

There is a cursed spot on this earth. The spot, that is stained from where John Callipari landed when he fell from his whore mother’s wretched cunt.
That pretty much sums this up.
Not bitter though. But still, fuck Kentucky, and everything that has ever came from that shitwagon commonwealth, except of course for Makers Mark, which is Louisville country, and that being said Rick Pitino, is a child molesting butt-fucker.
Seriously though, I’m taking this loss well.
No hard feelings, except the constant wishing for every God Damned Kentucky basketball fan to get slipped a date rape drug, and wake up in a bathtub full of ice cubes, to find their butthole has been removed.
Then, the entrance, and the exit will match. Toothless, shit-stained, cum-pockets.

Enough Already

I missed the NCAA selection show because I was out working on the new house. I have seen zero minutes of coverage (trying to get my 2 year old to watch The Empire Strikes Back/fend off the flu), and only had minimal radio coverage on my drive home.
I skimmed through two articles about the Big Dance, and gave a blank bracket a quick once over.
Already, I am tired of hearing teams complain about getting “snubbed”.
This year, there are 68 teams in the tourney, taking the grand total of teams who have no shot to win it all the way up to 60, as opposed to years past when the total ammount of hopeless teams was a mere 50 or so teams.
If you didn’t get in, chances are you sucked really bad at Basketball this season.
Sure, there are still teams we have to put in, even though everyone knows they are at best a one-and-done, but they did win their conference tourney/championship so they get in over slightly better shitty teams from bigger conferences.
 But this happens every year, and when someone like Princeton (I’m assuming they invented the Princeton style offense) wins a game or two, we’ll all go crazy.
Yes, there are teams out there like Colorado who had a few big wins over good teams, and still didn’t get in even though teams they beat got in ahead of them.
How can this be?
My guess is teams like Colorado played pretty much nobody early on in the season, and lost to a lot of shitty teams, thus cancelling out whatever “big” wins they may have had.
In this day and age, it is hard to not make the tournament.
The rules are quite simple.
Win your conference, or conference tourney, you get in.
Play a few tough teams early in the regular season out of conference, and you don’t even need to win, and you get bonus points.
Don’t rack up loss after loss to mediocre teams, or maybe even try winning more than one decent sized road game.
Try all of these things next year, and if that doesn’t work, try not sucking at Basketball.
My personal hypocrasy was tested this season.
I’ve always said, as long as Izzo is at MSU, and they still offer players scholarships, I don’t care about what their record is, they deserve to be in, because they never let you down in March.
This year is as close as I think we will ever come to proving this wrong. I don’t think MSU deserved a slot, but with Lucas healthy as a Senior, and Izzo on the bench, I am not putting any of my money against them.
I see the Big East has like 73 teams in it this year. What an amazing Conference!
I have yet to look at the full bracket with any detail, but I’m gonna go ahead and say there will be the same ammount of Big East teams in the Elite 8 this year as there are grocery stores that sell Unicorn meat.
Why?
Because it is the same thing year, after year.
So many different teams from The Big East catch our eye during a game here or there, and we fall in love. Then, that team loses to the next Big East team to win our hearts, and it just grows, and grows.
They say “The Big East” eats it’s own.
Not so.
The Big East feeds it’s own.
With the exception of the years UCONN won it all, and Carmelo Anthony’s little reign of terror (won me a lot of money), The Big East falls flat, each and every year.
For about 9 minutes in the middle of March, we here people say things like “maybe the big east wasn’t as good as we thought” but then someone says something about how playing in that conference takes it’s toll on all the Big East teams, and then right before the next season, the Bandwagon is as strong as ever, and the whole thig just repeats itself.
Look, The Big East is a great conference, and fun to watch. Something on my sports bucket list would be to go to the Garden for The Big East Tournament, but 95% of the time, Big East play does not fit in with NCAA tourney style ball.
It’s like the Pheonix Suns from years past.
Fun to watch, they can score a lot of points, and look amazing, but when team after team has no clue of discipline, and practices selective defense, you will not be dancing long in March.
You have to be able to win a game by only scoring in the mid fifties, as opposed to the fast flowing showtime style played in The Big East.
I’m not saying no Big East teams will win it, I’m just saying once again, I am betting against it.

Lets Do This

I guess it’s time to come out from under the rock, and put my two cents in on the recent events surrounding my Ohio State Buckeyes.
Let me say first, I never agreed with the NCAA rules regarding a player selling his own gear.
Not for these kids, not for A.J. Green, and not for the next one to do it.
That being said, that part is in the past, and rules are rules, even stupid ones, and everyone almost moved on from that whole thing anyway.
Then the Tressel news broke.
This is where the big difference starts.
It’s one thing for kids who may not have known better, may have needed the money, and really should be able to sell the shirt off their back, like all the rest of us.
But again, I digress.
It’s a whole different story though for a long time Coach, who makes millions each year, who does know better, who is supposed to do the right thing, and even writes books about  doing the right thing, and tries to portray an image of honesty, and integrity.
I know why Tress, would try and cover for his players, I may have done the same myself given the chance.
Winning is almost everything these days, and with all that comes with it, covering for 2 star players when you had a good chance at winning a National title may have been worth the risk.
But now we know it wasn’t.
You cannot stand up at a Press Conference and state your disappointment in 5 kids, and say things about making the right choices, when all along you have been covering for at least 2 of them, and did nothing about it.
You can’t let your boss stand in front of the world and make a fool of himself by saying this is an isolated event, and there are no other infractions to come from this, when all the while you know, that you personally are sitting on the biggest one of all.
You can’t let a new book on faith, leadership, and honor hit the shelves, when time and again you have allowed things like this to happen.
You can’t allow someones child, whom you have been honored with the task of looking after, to take a brunt of scrutiny, when you yourself have lied about any knowledge of his actions.
How do you explain your 2 game suspension to the kids who are supposed to miss 5 games? How do you explain it to the parents of the next kid down the line, when you try to get them to OSU?
I love Ohio State, and I love football, but the image portrayed at that Press Conference was disturbing.
The joking, and ass kissing done by Gene Smith, and E. Gordon Ghee was sad to see, and paints a picture that the Football part of OSU Football, is bigger than the OSU part.
It’s possible to be upset with someone, and still like, love, or respect them.
Isn’t that a message we try to teach our children, and the children who attend our university when they make mistakes?
Ohio State, and even it’s Football program is so much more than just one man. For anyone who cares anything about Ohio State, or even just it’s football program, you have to wonder why Jim Tressel was not asked, or forced to step aside, for the greater cause.
I’m not saying he should have been fired, or that he should have resigned, but I think a longer look needed to be taken at those options, and everyone who cares about The Ohio State University, who has any vested interest in it, should have seen this longer look.
All this being said, I see no reason why wins from the 2010 season should be “revoked”.
Not only did the sale of these Jersey’s, rings, etc. have nothing to do with the play on the field, the NCAA already staked their claim that these kids were eligible, and let them play in the Sugar Bowl.
Why a coach’s knowledge of their wrongdoings a few months sooner than what he said he knew about them would have any affect on their eligibility is beyond me.
They were either eligible always, or never.
Besides, from what we have just learned (barring any new news) Tressel only knew of 2 players, and the NCAA ruled on a total of 6 back in December.
Seeing as how OSU resumed selling game worn gear on their team website, and taken back off shortly before the most recent news broke, just shows what a hypocrisy this whole thing is.
I’m sure given the outrage, and the notoriety to all of this, the NCAA is going to come down hard, to try and make up for how they handled this thing the first time around, and they way they were perceived, this gives them a chance at redemption, even if it only furthers their image of making rules up as they go.
However it plays out from here, I will still be a fan. I will still support Ohio State, and take pride in being a Buckeye, no matter what a handful of other have done to the University’s image, or what anyone, anywhere else thinks.
O-H!

Oppurtunity Lost

So lets back track a week or so.
My wife is in labor, has been pretty much all day. This being our 2nd go at this, we are seasoned veterans. We’re not gonna go to the hospital until it is finally go time, as opposed to before when they sent us home, so she could labor there for a while and then go back in. (it should be noted, last time as we were waiting after being sent home, I had to watch a Paul Walker movie while I took down contraction times. It was excruciating)
So she’s timing her contractions, while I drive our son to my sisters.
The plan is for me to get him there, get back, and then wait a little while for the contractions to get to about 5 minutes apart.
Easy enough.
Well, it turns out in between the contractions which were 7-8 minutes apart, my wife is having little contractions directly between the big ones.
So doubt starts to sink in that maybe we should be counting the little contractions as well, and if so, that means they are under 5 minutes apart.
If this is the case, we are past go time, and I need to drive really fast, or google how to deliver a baby.
Now, the kicker in all this, is we are supposed to call her Dr’s office, and speak tot he on-call nurse, and she will either tell us what to do, or have an on-call Dr. call us back within minutes.
So we call, talk to some nurse whom we later discovered sucks at doing her job. She says she’ll have the Dr call us right back, and we are to wait for instructions.
So we wait, and my wife continues to labor.
Now the contractions are like 4 minutes apart, tops. It’s pretty apparent we need to get to the Hospital, and do it fast.
This was my big chance to drive like a maniac, and get away with it.
    Sidebar: THis is the 2nd time in my life this has happened. The first was on the way to the airport for our honeymoon. I knew there was no cop in hell (save for lesbian troopers) that would ticket a cute young couple on the way to their honeymoon. I was right, I got pulled over going 89 mph, and the State Highway Patrolman asked me where I was off to in such a hurry. We said in cheesy couple unison “our honeymoon”, and flashed our newly signed marriage certificate. He just shook his head, told me to slow down, wished us congratulations, and sent us on our merry way.
Anywh0, this time there were no cops anywhere, which sucked. I also really regretted not installing the same horn they had on the General Lee in The Dukes Of Hazard. So, as I am driving really, really fast down State Rt. 315 with no cops anywhere, I was checking both cell phones, expecting at least a courtesy call from my wifes Doctors office.
Even if they didn’t have the decency to tell us what to do (which we already knew), at least they would call back. We were in labor, and they did say they would call back within 5 minutes.
So we get to the hospital, they give us the whole “is this your first child speal” and act like it is no big deal. Then once they got us in a room, they took a closer look, and immediately went into action.
It’s go time.
They admitted my wife without paperwork, and got everything started to deliver a baby, all the while explaining to my wife that we may not be able to get her an epidural, which did not sit well.
During this chaos, the nurse in charge took a moment to scold us a little bit, about waiting so long to come in.
We just didn’t want to be that couple that panics, comes in, gets sent home, over, and over.
So after my minor ass chewing was finished, I made note to check both phones. Maybe I had missed that call from the Dr.
No missed calls.
At this point it had been like 40 minutes since we called, and the baby would be here in no time.
This is when I decided that since my wife was a little occupied at the moment, I really wanted to be the one to take the call from the Dr, who had already missed the boat on being helpful in any way.
The plan was, I was going to fuck with the Doctor just a bit.
I was going to scream into the phone, act like I was in a panic, all the while pretending like we didn’t know what to do.
I was going to say something like “I see an arm!” or “I keep pushing it back in there, but it keeps wanting back out!”
Something awesome, since they deserved to be fucked with, since they never called us back.
So anywho, about an hour later we got our 2nd son Owen, and the rest is history.
Still waiting for that damned doctor’s office to call back, still waiting.
The perfect chance to fuck with someone, who clearly deserves it, gone forever.
That is, I’m assuming at this point, they don’t plan on calling back,

Who Do You Think You Are

So my wife has the remote, and for some reason it’s on NBC.
Did the Stanley Cup finals start already?
No.
Kentucky Derby?
No.
So why is it on NBC?
Nobody can answer that question, but what I do know is I saw a commercial for a show that I would like to watch, although I am quite certain I will never watch it.
It’s called ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’
It’s about famous people finding out stuff about their ancestor’s. I’m guessing that they don’t know the stuff beforehand, and the stuff is interesting, but it is NBC, so maybe not.
Anywho, I have to assume the celebrities all find out they are related to someone who was fairly important, or did something interesting, but again, it is NBC, so maybe not.
What would be way better than whatever crap they come up with is if they did the same show, just a little different.
What if, instead of finding out you are a descendant from some freed slave, or marginally important civil rights activist, or the first woman Dr. in some colony, what if the celebrity found out they are descended from some assbag of a person?
What if, they found out their Great-great-grandmother was a prostitute?
How awesome would that show be.

W

The Next Round

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Baseball-stars-children-emerge-as-hoops-superst?urn=highschool-328860#mwpphu-container

Sweet article about Barry Larkin, and Ken Griffey Jr.’s kids being awesome at basketball.
It’d be nice if they can contribute at least one kid a piece to the Cincinnati Reds, as the Dads were my two all-time favorite players growing up.
I suppose I would also have to wish for the Reds to get Griffey’s kid before a decade of playing on astroturf kills his body, but I don’t want to get greedy.
So I decided to use google to see if this shot in the dark dream has a shot in the dark. I remember Griffey having at least one son, and then i saw this.
http://recruiting.scout.com/2/1051797.html
I have an old Score, or Upper Deck card that looks so much like this picture, except an ugly Mariners hat was involved.
So maybe there will be no more Griffey’s for the Reds this time around, but if anything can save the Bengals, it has to be Griff’s kid.

Not Bad

So the latest dumbassed show I catch my wife watching Extreme Couponing, may be just what I was looking for.
So after she explains the overall concept of the show (fat retards who are addicted to buying a bunch of shit they don’t need, cause they are getting it cheap) I’m kinda hooked.
The first chick, is a big coupon fan, and by big, I mean she looks like an adolescent hippo. So her deal is, she devotes 70 hours a week to coupons, and exploiting deals from the store, This is her alternative to getting an actual job or anything like that.
They pay like 70 bucks to order coupons online (cause newspapers are a waste), and then gameplan a shopping trip like Bill belichek breaks down Peyton manning game film.
Once they are ready, she does a “dry run through the store, comparing the store deals to her giant box of coupons.
Then, they get to it.
Her, and her fat, enabling, cock-tard of a husband get like 9 shopping carts, and find things that are listed as 2-for-$1 in the store, and then they get about 200 of them, and then they use a limitless $1 off coupon.
They buy hundreds of boxes of pasta, an entire shopping cart of Gatorade, and all the candy bars in the store.
They take like 3 hours to check-out, before they finally overload the computers, at which time they ahve to break the whole order into 3 orders, on 3 registers.
In the end, they get like $1,500.00 worth of shit they don’t need, and only pay about 50 bucks for all of this.
It completely ass-rapes the store they buy it from, and will likely spell the end of Coupons for the rest of us, but they seem to love it.
Then, they have to pack two emptied out SUV’s to the point where they can barely fit inside.
By this time, they are drenched in sweat, and they have to find room in their shitty house for 90 jars of Ragu.
It’s amazing really.
These people, are in some ways genius, in other ways complete drains on normal society.
They tear through dumpsters looking for old coupons, buy 2 years worth of stuff and store it in the garage, and drive long distances to find the perfect deal.
This hot psycho chick just bought $600 worth of cereal, yogurt, and pasta for 2 dollars, and change.
It goes on and on.
At the same time I feel jealous of their deal finding, coupon clipping skills, but I also feel sorry for them, as well as want to see them fall out of a hot air balloon.
Now, you have to see this show to believe it, it’s on TLC, so if you’re not gay or married, you’ll never find it.
You may be thinking, these people should sell all this stuff and make a fortune, and then they wouldn’t need to be how they are now.
Or you may be thinking, they should donate this stuff to shelters, and we could wipe out hunger in America.
Wrong, and wrong.
They just take it home pack it away in the extra bedroom, or fill up the garage.
Go America!

Who’s Your Daddy II

If your name is Owen Benjamin Thomas, and you are a perfect little boy who weighed in at 7lbs 10oz, then the answer is me!
Everybody is healthy, and happy, and we’re all home safe. It’s 3-1 dudes to chicks in this house now, so in a few years, once we get away from Elmo, and Nick Jr, Sports will drown out crappy reality shows in our house.
Couldn’t be happier here folks, we are truly blessed, and ready to take on the world now that I have not one, but 2 clones ready to do my bidding.
So far he’s got Mommy wrapped around his cute little fingers. Once he figures out I am the cool parent, and he starts working his magic on me, he’ll be on easy street for sure.
So welcome to the world little buddy.
We got a fun ride ahead of us.