… This collegiate nickname fracus is silly but not because of all the obvious reasons. It’s relevance can only be appreciated by overstating the relevance of intercollegiate athletics itself. BobLee compares these Nickname Nuts to the Sons of Liberty, Carrie A. Nation, and ML King as well as Hitler and bad movies. The part where Swagger genetically crossbreeds a pig to a pteradactyl is worth the 5 minutes it’ll take you to read this one.
The Nickname Nuts grab double handfuls of headlines with their heartfelt defense of the loinclothed lads of the forest primevil. They are countered by the indignant response from the inmates of the message board asylums and LTTE loonies. That these equally matched armies of society’s leftover chromosomes should square off under the mainstream media’s Big Top is oddly fitting with emphasis on “odd”.
Using the absurd to illustrate absurdity is a clever debate ploy. Crediting either side in this water balloon fight with clever strategy is saying Pamela Anderson married Tommy Lee for his mind.
Last Spring at the Kenan-Flagler Business School I heard Myles Brand huff and puff about the 
critical issues facing “big time” intercollegiate athletics. I listened pretty closely and nowhere on the list was concern for the delicate sensitivities of “Native Americans”. Yet here we are standing for the kick-off of College Football 2005 and that is the focus of his confederacy of dunces. Not a whisper about curtailing the facilities arms race … the student-athlete farce … recruiting scandals … bad boy coaches with rap sheets uglier than a Jerry Tarkanian colonoscopy get big buck contracts to JUST WIN BABY.
Jonathan Swift the quintessential satirist of English literature might have thusly framed this
situation.
Dr. Lemuel Gulliver washes ashore in a topsy turvy land where foppish pigs have mated with squawking mad pteradactyls and gained control of the Principal’s office. With the brutal precision of Herman Goering these societal misfits are playing “Simon Says” over the intercom with the faculty, students and cafeteria staff. Yes, even the sweaty fat lady in charge of pulverizing the “mystery meat” has put down her bloody machete and is trying to rub her tummy and pat her head.
Quick someone send an SOS to the Queen of Hearts to dispatch Mr Toad and Yosemite Sam to ride to the rescue. Where is Dudley DoRight? An embattled sporting public cries out for it’s El Cid.
Rename EVERY school in Division 1-A the “Ludicrous Hypocrites”. Dress them all in “a whiter shade of pale” and await the arrival of Harry Potter and his Quidditch teammates. The first defensive “front seven” to average 1000 on their SAT wins a sno-cone machine for their Admissions Department.
This tempest in a jockstrap is being compared to Wounded Knee, The Little Big Horn, The Trail of Tears, and the plight of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island. This mess is the Ultimate Insult for the noble American Indians … reduced to the level of baby harp seals and used as headline bait for the League of Loonies.
World history, even the revised version preferred by the pointyheaded faculty squirrels shedding alligator tears for Hiawatha, is chockfull of radicals igniting social change. The Nickname Nuts obviously have delusions of themselves joining ML King, Carrie A Nation, Curt Flood and Spencer Haywood atop the Mount Rushmore of Status Quo Commandos.
It is true that Martin, Carrie, Curt and Spencer were three men and one crazy lady anointed to lead revolutions whose time has come. Alas, not every cloud has a silver lining. Not every Wonka bar contains a “golden ticket” and not every cockamamie cause is just. The plight of the American Negro in the 1960s needed correcting … but Coca Cola did not need a new formula in the 80s. The America Female needed equal pay for equal work … but Ishtar, Heaven’s Gate and Gigli will not make a saleable DVD triple play. There IS such a thing as a bad idea … Nehru jackets and AMC Pacers.
Prehaps Myles and the NCAA’s High Priests of Hypocrisy are smarter than all of us. Prehaps they see thru the inflated pomp and silliness of “big time college sports” and see it as nothing more than a Kevlar sock full of cat nip tossed to the academic yap dogs to rip and tear. Let them think they are “making a difference” and bringing a cintella of meaning to their life of wanton irrelevance. How many aborigines in the outback will notice if the Florida State Seminoles become the SemiColons? Once these moon bats have removed all metaphors for aggression and violence from the team names they can move on to requiring sensitivity training for middle linebackers and etiquette classes for blitzing corners. One can only guess where Coach K’s sideline exhortations rank in their 100 Ways We Can Finally Make’em Pay For Giving Us Wedgies In PE.
As these academic squirrel farms gather their quite mad legions into ongoing discussions of “what bedevilment can we inflict next?” some of us see the humor afoot here. The faculty fruitbats never imagined that Myles and his Spineless Milktoast Men would actually cave to this 
nickname silliness. There has never been a “what next”. The Geronimo Has Feelings Too Society was quite prepared to reenact the Man Called Horse purification ceremony at halftime of the annual Lehigh vs Lafayette gridiron classic this fall. All that remained was (1) finding someone who knew where either Lehigh or Lafayette might be and (2) obtaining permission from the PETA loons to lower a horse to the degraded level of man.
Now Spineless Myles has given these rabid barn owls everything they asked for plus Mother Brand’s secret recipe for cocoanut macaroons. In a dusty sarcophagus in a remote Kansas City cemetery former NCAA strongman Walter “Because I said so that’s Why” Byers is throwing up a hairball.
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Swagger’s Stumper
What TV Game Show
shares its name with a town in New Mexico?
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Jed missed the rabbit but found a bubblin’ crude, oil that is, black gold, and Texas tea … as well as Miss Hathaway’s secret stash of Jethro Bodine bubblegum cards.
BobLee’s “All you need to know” PreSeason ACC Football Forecast is coming up REALLY soon. Not the standard football geek crap since BLS ain’t your standard football geek.
BobLee spent Monday with Nancy Lopez. She’s lost weight but not an ounce of her incredible charm and class. None better as a role model for how to be a sports icon role model.
Am I the only one who thought Davis Love III was wearing Clay Aiken’s shoulders on Sunday? DL3, do a few push-ups now and then. It can’t hurt.
