… As the dogwoods and azaleas arrive for their waaay too brief stay, we bid adieu to the primary spectator sports season in the Triangle…. An adieu without fanfare or tickertape or high fives or parades …. If you only measure sports success by BCSs, or cut nets or Stanley Cups then you are disappointed…. Luckily for BobLee, he uses a different standard…
Before BobLee’s sizable Wilson reader contingent get all in a tizzy, it is true that 50 miles northeast of the intersection of I-40 and Miami Blvd, there is indeed a cut down net draped over a National Championship trophy. The Barton College Bulldogs won one for the little guys. Let it be noted 
here that when Barton College was honored this week by the Jones Street Sausage Factory Bloviating (and Apologizing) Blowhards they all were wearing coats and ties. I heard first hand how impressive the team, staff and administrative contingent were. Huzza Huzza Bulldogs! It would be nice if a bit of Barton’s humility and dignity rubbed off on those pious scallywags. Alas, that ain’t gonna happen. With a handful of exceptions, dignity and humility are in darn short supply among the backslapping humbug crowd.
But closer to the Triangle epi-center the April Fools are sullen and morose. When you measure success solely by a destination, the journey becomes insignificant. Only Florida and Tennessee had “successful seasons”. Even NIT champs West Virginia can’t really celebrate since they get Huggy …. yuck, ptui.
Beyond college basketball (yes, there IS a “beyond” college basketball) the ice melted at the RBC Center before the azaleas died. That bodes un-well for Peter Karmanos’ accountants and those local citizens who earn extra $$$ as RBC event staff.
In the time-honored tradition of all under-achieving sports teams since the beginning of time, pundits and team spokesmen cited “INJURIES” as a key factor. …. yawn, snort. That’s like farmers blaming “the weather” for a less than bumper crop of rutabegas this season.
In our annual hockey comment we say again ….. everyone we’ve ever encountered in the Hurricane organization has been first-class and fine. However, while BobLee ranks NHL hockey above Women’s 
Basketball as a spectator sport, it definitely trails watching CSI-Miami reruns or watching Nigella Lawson lick a frosting spoon. The measure of the worth of any business enterprise is not that it specifically appeals to everyone, but rather that it appeals to enough someones to sustain itself. Nigella Lawson licking a frosting spoon has found it’s global audience.
Local ACC Basketball aficionados did not have their lofty expectations met. One might say that NC State fans did, due to temporarily modest expectations, but certainly Duke and UNCers went grumbling 
and mumbling into the merry month of April. March Madness is not unlike that Russian Roulette that Christopher Walken played in Deerhunter. If you hear the click, you won, otherwise they wipe your brains off the table and toss your body onto the mounting pile out back, after someone steals your watch.
As for me …. I had a fine time in my odd little fashion of watching the local sports scene since September. I attended a whole heckuva lot of college football and basketball games and I had a very fine time at every single one of’em. “My team” didn’t win every one of’em but I was with good friends with reasonably well-balanced lives. I don’t recall any bad weather associated with the games and I got to observe enough other fans getting quite angry to make me very happy I “do it my way“. Color, pagentry, flipping cheerleaders …. whats not to like about THAT!
The annual April coaching carrousel is spinning and assorted frogs are jumping to new lily pads. Effected fans react in stereotypical fashion. If your school GETS a new high profile savior to hopefully take you to the promised land … then you love the free market system that permits such movement. If your school LOSES a beloved and much adored coach then you decry and lament the callous “it’s all about the $$$” that sports has become. Count aTm and Duke among the latter as their respective Coach Gs went bye bye. I kinda thought Billy Gillespie would “do a Donovan” and stay in College Station. ….. of no surprise whatsoever was Huggy jumping to Dogpatch. The folks back in “The Little Apple” hopefully knew what sort of fella they were dealing with from the get-go.
You have to give Bob Huggins some credit. He never claims to be anything other than what he is. He 
will recruit the same sort of kids at WVU that he did at Cincy and was doing at K-State …. thugs and hooligans. The gap-toothed sofa-burners in Morgantown will love him and the rest of the hypocrites across NCAA-ville will say “at least we’re not as blatantly corrupt as wherever Bob Huggins is these days”. There are a lot of marginally dubious characters in college sports …. ain’t nuthin’ MARGINALLY dubious about Huggy! ….. but they exist and thrive because WE allow them too.
The Larry Harris incident. … Assuming you all have heard this one …. El Sid got his weekly “Uh oh” phone call. “This one” did not involve a blood relative but rather his right-hand man in some sort of traffic mishap. Methinks El Sid is feeling like a double-wide in Tornado Alley.
We ran a contest among our Wuff pals …. Counting how many times the two words “Phil” and “Ford” would appear in the Wuff Loonie Bins. The tally hit a bazillion in the first 20 minutes. According to the beady-eyed nargets crawling around in the basement of WuffWorld, “nobody knew about Phil Ford’s traffic arrests” because of the (trumpet fan fare please) UNC J-School lock down on all such reports. We then did a random survey of 120,685 area sports fans of assorted partisanships and all 120,685 DID indeed know chapter and verse about Phil Ford’s issues. Once again the Lupine Nargets embarrass their fellow NCSU fans far more than Coach Harris might have.
There IS a realistic possibility that Larry Harris was “profiled” by an over-zealous officer. There is however ZERO possibility that Larry Harris was unaware that he is a large intimidating black man driving an Escalade late at night thru downtown Raleigh. Being stopped for speeding is a ho-hummer. Add “resisting an officer” and suddenly every single Tar Heel Shineola forgets those Georgetown and Tennessee meltdowns and goes into full chortle mode. For sure the officer involved is yet another honor graduate of the UNC Police-School along with every other law enforcement official who has ever questioned any NCSU athletic figure in the past 75 years.
Larry Harris has been a BB coach at NCSU for 11 years without so much as a parking ticket reported (no doubt suppressed by pro-NCSU media!). Smart $$$ says Larry Harris is probably a “good guy”. We suspect there are indeed “circumstances” involved in this incident. But those who enjoy celebrity status in society receive no sympathy here when the negatives of such fame percolate to the media forefront. That applies regardless of the color of their jersey.
The AppleCheek Fraud from Robbins (whose wife has cancer, if you didn’t know) has backed out on another candidates’ debate because Fox News was involved. We suggest that Roger Ailes simply purchase an “empty suit” from Men’s Wearhouse and set it in a chair on the stage. The “real story” is that Johnny wanted to have Ms Elizabeth on stage to hide behind and Fox officials laughed in his face.
Meanwhile the “poor little mill town boy (who is quite manly according to Rob)” can play footsie with fellow sympathy sponge Perky Katie …. two vapidly shallow and rapidly fading figures of equally diminishing significance. Not to cry Johnny …. YOUR PAPER – the N&O, ran color pictures of you and Elizabeth on both the front and back pages of their main section today. Now they certainly are not biased …… no sirrree bob! ….. bwahahahahaha!
Meanwhile down in Augusta, the weekend leaderboard is filled with whozits who have to change their shoes in the Augusta National parking lot. Regardless, late Sunday afternoon will still be MUST WATCH TV because It’s The Back-Nine On Sunday At The Masters. We will be in Myrtle Beach with Hootie & The Blowfish as we’ve been for the past five years.
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Why is Huggy’s most recent former residence
known as “The Little Apple”?
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Indeed it was Suzanne Somers in the T-bird in American Graffiti. This was pre-Thighmaster and Threes Company. How many knew that SS was also in a Dirty Harry (Magnum Force) as a victim …. “the girl in the swimming pool”?
GREAT STORY …. earlier this week we got a nasty-gram from RuthInRoswell. Ruth was QUITE displeased with my scenario about the Franklin Street hypocrites and Jason Ray. Using our razor keen Internet Legend instincts we decided to engage Ruth in a dialogue. VOILA! …. Ruth is now a Platinum Pal and brand new BobLeeBuddy. Guess where Ruth had gotten her initial opinion of sweet lovable BobLee ?????? …. duh! …. Ye Olde Lunatic Asylum (aka “the IC Board!”). …. it really did not take all that much evidence for her to see my point about Franklin Street hyprocisy and, more importantly, to consider the source of her original opinions on moi. …. like countless others, once the light goes on about “those board people” anyone over 25 with a real job sees it for what it is ….. washes their hands with lye soap and signs off. …… we welcome RuthInRoswell to our happy little community of adults with a sense of humor.
