So far this month I have completely missed Groundhog Day, State v Carolina Basketball AND National Signing Day. Valentine Day is the only “Day” I intend to celebrate in February.
Let me guess….. “your school” signed ”everyone we really really wanted” just like they have done for twenty years in a row. Since your current head coach is also “Exactly the one man we really really want to lead us to The Promised Land” I guess its only right that these coincidences continue. AMAZING !!!….
I am reminded of Peanuts’ Linus’ lament: “There is no heavier burden than a great potential.” Take heed ye boasting board monkeys… take heed.
Every sleeping giant in America is now poised to assume its rightful seat upon the NatChamp throne. Hip Hip HOORAY! Boola Boola Sis Boom Baaa!
Really, I did not watch a single one of the Recruiting Shows. Tom Luginbill (aka the Mel Kiper Jr of College Football) was, I’m sure, spell-binding as usual. If “recruiting” had not replaced Foto-Electric Football, Strat-o-Matic Baseball, and scratching oneself as couch potato obsessions, would Tom Luginbill be sitting in a State Farm Office in a strip mall in Pensacola right now?
An article in this month’s New England Journal of Medicine proffers that “recruiting addiction” has now passed Kardashianism and The Bravo Channel to become America’s #2 most prevalent stoopid sickness. Tied at the top are “meth” and “those little bite-size Snickers you can only get at Halloween”.
Dropping out of the Top Ten “most prevalent stoopid addictions” after over a decade are Oprah, “arguing over when America will embrace soccer” and endless reruns of “A Clear & Present Danger”.
You long timers know I hate “recruiting crap” more than Carol Folt hates overhead luggage bins on planes…. think about it!
I see that the NCAA is now “hip”. Instead of requiring kids to actually sign their names, they can just use their Twitter names. Nick Saban signed five guys named LLCoolTide and three BamaZ’s……. Steve Spurrier “thinks” several of his signees might have SAT scores higher than their bench press totals……. New Texas coach Charlie Strong earns a $100,000 bonus if less than a dozen of his recruits show up with prison tatts.
My favorite part of this sicko recruiting obsession is when Alphonsoic “Big A” Fontineaux from New Iberia Storefront Academy & Oyster Bar pulls out an LSU ballcap and tells a packed assembly at New Iberia AOB High Gym-atorium that he “chooses to matriculate at LSU” because:
(1) their coaches all kissed my ass for six months…. (2) I was impressed by their highly-rated School of Gator Rassling…. (3) It was the easiest school for me to spell….. and (4) my set of beats by ‘Dre ‘phones are purple.
Any school that puts on ANY sort of “Signing Day Whoop-Dee-Do Fest” is part of the problem with Big Time College Sport and is not at all interested in being part of any sort of solution. Since EDI (“Everybody Does It”) you get my cynical drift.
Then there was the time a Killian High phenom chose Florida State and when asked if he knew what “FSU” stood for said “you have to ask my agent”. Bobby Bowden swallowed his teeth on that one.
I can not imagine anything more demeaning than a 50 y/o coach recruiting semi-literate high school footballers. Bilking elderly widows out of their life savings would be more uplifting. OK, being a human trafficer “procurer” for a Middle Eastern brothel might be worse.
On National Signing Day the term “student-athlete” is about as appropriate as the term “virginal” at any NFL Cheerleader tryout.
After everything that has gone on in the past five years, you just KNOW there is some C-blue goober trapped in a bunker with eleven Japanese soldiers waiting for WW II to end who is thrilled to learn that Carolina signed 20 “really great kids who will make us all proud”. AKA “our kinda kids”. Uh oh!
Did I ever tell you the time I was at a Rams Club shindig when Burly John used the “our kinda kids” line and I spit tea all over Big Bobby? I later recalled that five of those kids were gone within two years for the ubiquitous “we’re not saying why” reason.
TA McClendon’s interest in architecture, nuclear engineering and veterinary medicine never quite materialized either. Ahhhh the shattered dreams of Signing Day.
I can’t wait to get “The Wolfpack Way” report from our Bard of The Brickyard “BK”. Last we heard: WuffDave was only recruiting:
“celibate Eagle Scouts with 1300 SATs who have completed six-month mission trips in Zambia teaching orphans how to whistle”.
Look Out National Championship Game – Here Comes WuffDave’s Angel Pack. Oh… and every single WuffDave recruit from now on “is as fine a human being as RUSSELL” !!! Well, of course they are. 🙂 …. As much as I truly do admire Russell, that “Wisconsin-thing” will always be there and some half-wit on InsideCarolina will mention it 11,876 times.
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Has there EVER been any team in any sport EVER that after “winning the Big One” did not whine “We were determined to prove all the naysayers wrong. We believed in ourselves when no one else did …. blah blah yadda yadda.” Did the ’27 Yankees and Auerbach Celtics even say THAT? Gimmee a break.
I really did completely miss last week’s UNC v State basketball game, which, apparently, many of the State players missed too. I saw a score posted several hours after the game and said “oh”. About the same reaction I had to missing The Winter Olympics….
But BobLee, the Winter Olympics are next week. ….. “oh”.
I did watch the last part of Duke vs Syracuse. It was a very exciting game and might have been more so if I knew at least one player on either team. 10,000 of the 35,000 on hand were so far away from the court that Bob Uecker sent a St Bernard to find them.
I read an ESPN article this week mentioning the fine seasons being had by Sean Miller, Rick Barnes and Herb Sendek and I thought “Gee, what do all those guys have in common?”
Alls I know is Raylan Givens is running the Crowe family out of Harlan County and Boyd Crowder is doing the same to the Detroit Mob. Killer Women has been cancelled….. and The New “24” starts pretty soon.
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That last column – The Invisible Fence – got Top Five alltime views AND a record number of dirty looks when I drove down Franklin Street. What about “threats” ? Oh, I have a filter that sends all those directly to Interpol.
