A BCS Conference Commissioner Weighs In

Listen, you little pea-brained shit. You wanna pay college atheltes? Fine! Just make the numbers work and I'd be glad to. Do you know how much money it would take to give each athlete from a high-profile sport a salary each month for simple things like groceries and clothes and to relieve him/her of the feeling s/he had to steal or cheat the system simply to get by? Yeah, I don't know either. I pay people to shop for me, so I have very little idea of the market value of basic foodstuffs. A dozen eggs is like $20 right? $50? Either way, we're talking about a lot of money.

And where do you think that money will come from? Huh, chump? That's right - - my wallet. You're just gonna rob my kids of their allowances and their goose down duvet inserts so that some back-up running back future millionaire at Colorado State can buy pork rinds?

It can't happen. I wish it could. There's just not enough money. I'm sorry, there isn't. I don't know where it's all gone. But we just can't make the numbers work.

Mo Diplomas, No Problems.

It is all too infrequent that an author's hypocrisy is a matter of public record, so this was an opportunity I had to seize.

"College athletes shouldn't be paid" by Douglas M. Gottlieb.

At first blush, this doesn't seem to be all that ridiculous. A man with an insider's perspective can give us some great insider knowledge about what's going on in the inner-workings of the NCAA, where record profits just seem to disappear. So this post on ESPN's Insider page might be worth reading. (If you can't tell, I despise the over-use of the term insider at ESPN).

While there is a sudden clamoring for universities to pay their players, I feel otherwise based on my time as a student athlete and even after I left campus.

Hold up there, sparky! Which campus are you talking about? I thought I remembered that you went to a few different schools.

Oklahoma State welcomed me after my issues at Notre Dame. I don't think OSU would have accepted me from junior college, if not for my athletic prowess.

OK, so that's Notre Dame, then JuCo, then OK State? Man Notre Dame is kind of a storied program, you were starting as a freshman, and your team showed some promise. Why did you leave?

Oh! Now I remember! You were accused of stealing your roommate's credit cards and charging $900 to them! And then you were expelled.

Why would you do such a thing? Was money hard to come by while you were a student athlete? Why would you play if you weren't getting any benefits?

While college players are not paid directly, they receive a tremendous amount of benefits that aid them during, and after, their time on campus.

Oh.

It starts with "comped" campus visits in high school and continues with tutoring, preferred class registration, choice housing arrangements and, of course, the ability to walk away with a degree and without an ounce of debt to your name.

Sure, that's a lot of benefits. I guess that paid for food and clothes, too? No? How about trips to the movies or drinks or Tamagachis or bandaids or a mattress pad or ANYTHING YOU NEED TO BUY WITH ANY FORM OF CURRENCY?!

Oh, you get none of that? Makes sense that somebody (anybody) might steal credit cards or sell jerseys and memorabilia to get a tradeable commodity for the purchase of other goods. In fact, that could probably be easily predicted by the entire compendium of human existence.

I am not claiming that athletes don't get a bunch of benefits, but when the March Madness alone brings in $613 million in revenue, you could give a kid some gas money (for the car that a booster bought him, of course).

While we're on the topic, what other sorts of benefits do college athletes get?

When you play big-time basketball or football, people want to hire you. You are a known commodity and, like the colleges, businesses too would like to profit from your presence -- and compensate you in kind.

Sure. If you can read and write. Say, you know where gobs of college athletes come from? Areas of destitution where roughly 50% of students graduate from high school and those who do graduate will, on average, perform at an 8th grade level.

But let's say you come from the inner city, you get into college on the back of astounding athletic ability and you stick it out for four years. Gottlieb is right that you'll have a degree that you more than likely wouldn't have attained otherwise (assuming of course that your ticket to college didn't itself pull you out of all those valuable classes and the degree you're now holding wasn't actually just a token of time served but an actual, meaningful symbol of your earned academic prowess over your time at the university).

But then he keeps going...

We so massively undervalue a college degree -- which can lead to increased earning potential in the professional world -- and overestimate the value of a couple of hundred dollars per month while in college, which may end up getting taxed anyway.

First, college degrees are dropping in value, because, compared to 50 years ago, a much much higher percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Many think that we may be at the peak of a higher education bubble.

And again, the same fatal flaw as before: Your degree, regardless of its value, is a deferred benefit. That doesn't get you shit in the here and now. And, though there are plenty of loans available, that means you're not leaving debt free as Gottlieb and others so often claim.

But it all comes to a head for me with this point:

The payoff is in the end, after school, much like the future doctors, scientists and businessmen and women with whom you attend school. College is about sacrificing, learning and growing as a person. The reward for all students is the memories and experiences gained in the short term and benefiting from them in the long run.

Yeah, college seems like a real sacrifice for most students. What with the partying and the indiscriminate sex and the long hours of sleeping and the nothing-that-resembles-the-working-world. I would HATE to do college for the rest of my life. Talk about a drag!

And in what fucking way is the (imagined) illiterate-but-monstrous back-up defensive tackle from rural Mississippi on a Big XII football team the same as an aspiring brain surgeon from Westchester, NY?! Are you out of your goddamned mind, Gottlieb?!

Sure, there will be a payoff if you're one of the elite athletes in college athletics. But if you're not - - or worse, if you were an elite athlete who rode that into college and you get injured - - you better unlace your cleats and grab hold of your ankles, because when the NCAA is done milking you for every penny, the rest of your Eat Shit And Choke Life is going to make you remember where you came from.

Unless of course you take the easy way out and steal credit cards.

And we’re back. Again. At least I am. Get excited.

So it’s been a while. Here are some things that have caught my attention recently.

The guy who owns the Utah Jazz’ D-League team wants to stage a one on one game between Michael Jordan and Bryon Russell. He’ll make a donation to the winner’s charity of choice. Tremendously noble. But he thinks that this game should happen during halftime of his team’s season opener. Come on, how delusional is this guy? If Michael Jordan is going to play any sort of basketball game, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it won’t be during halftime of a Utah Flash game.

I drink almost exclusively from two cups. The first is a 7-11 GI Joe souvenir cup with Duke on it. I do have the entire set of four, but the Duke cup is my favorite. The second cup is a Phillies 2008 World Series Champions pint glass. To clear up any potential misconceptions about this glass, I didn’t steal it from a bar. At some point in the night I ended up with it, it became more of an effort to bring it back to the bar than to keep it, so I just brought it home with me. Again, not stealing. Brett Myers would understand. Also, GI Joe and the Phillies? Convince me I’m not an eight year old.

Moammar Gadhafi is saying things. I didn’t read this whole article, because it was boring, but one part of it jumped out at me. Gadhafi wants to get rid of the veto power that the five permanent members of the Security Council have. I hope this proposal goes all the way through, and then at the very last minute we veto it. Fuck him. Also, the capitalization of teleprompter in this article amused me. TelePrompTer. Weird.

I have a new favorite website: http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/. The URL is a little bit misleading. No one is saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I don’t know if Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. But Glenn Beck has refused to deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. So did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990? Probably. Fuck him.

Last week I met someone who claims to have “no emotions.” That just isn’t true. To quote someone who is almost certainly a genius, “it means that she’s so emotional that she can’t feel any one emotion over all the others at catastrophically high levels.” You shouldn’t be walking away from people like this, you should be running.

This story was pretty funny. This coach is setting a precedent that may come back to kick his ass, but it’s still a pretty stand up move. Nevertheless, I still think that Chip Kelly is an asshole, and will continue to think so until he revokes LaGarrette Blount’s suspension. Yeah, Blount hit a guy in the face, but the guy probably deserved it, and Blount apologized like right away. The guy he hit has accepted the apology, so Oregon should drop their self-righteous, draconian punishment and let Blount have at least some of a senior season.

Sunday is International Michael Vick Appreciation Day. (That may not be actually true.) He’s going to destroy the Chiefs. He was holding back during the preseason. He’s going to score like six touchdowns. Adjust your fantasy rosters accordingly.

Three One Two Four Five

8:30 – This summer, with the job I have, I get to work overnight if I want to. I’m actually doing that right now. It’s not so busy here; there was maybe a half hour’s worth of work to do when I go in, but that’s mostly done, leaving me free to write this nonsense and watch the discovery channel, at least until the Lakers Magic game comes on. Consider this a live blog of a 7pm-7am shift.

I don’t especially care about the NBA; the finals aren’t all that compelling, and I don’t have a rooting interest. I guess it would be cool for Jameer Nelson to win an NBA title, he’s a good guy, it seems. Though it would have been a lot cooler had he won an NCAA Championship. Fucking Oklahoma State. But beyond him, I don’t care about anyone playing anymore, I’m even pretty ambivalent towards Kobe.

All this talk about Kobe’s legacy is boring as hell. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about it, or NBA history in general. There’s very little of interest there; I have no idea how Bill Simmons managed to put together a 700 page book on the subject. It’s not like baseball history, which is incredible. Basketball history is essentially Naismith, Wilt getting laid, the Celtics winning titles, that all-star game where the players refused to play, Kareem, Bird, Magic, MJ, and then present day. I feel like you could pick any decade since like 1890 (maybe excluding the 80s) and there would be more interesting baseball stuff in that ten year period than in the entire history of the NBA.

I moved last weekend and I’m happy that’s done. Moving three people’s stuff in one day just in not a good idea. But the new place is cool. You should come by.

8:54 – National Anthem in LA. The guy is doing a good job, but honestly I prefer just an instrumental version. Regardless, America is amazing. The other day I actually made a list of the greatest Americans in history, and I was going to write about them all and crap, but since the only internet I have is intermittent wireless that reaches from the school I just kinda lost interest. Anyway, here’s the top five: Andrew Jackson, Jim Morrison, Neil Armstrong, Ted Williams, and Mark Twain. This is indisputable; if you disagree I can only presume that you support the terrorists. You’re either with us or against us.

9:03 – Quick flurry of work. Not really much, it took like four minutes and now it’s over, just in time for tip off. I think that Andrew Bynum is going to break out this series, and just annihilate Howard. I don’t like Howard. He’s an absolute beast, and he’s probably known he was bound for the NBA since like middle school. He should have been practicing his foul shots.

9:14 – We have an incredible soda machine here. Like half the time it gives you two cans. Incredible. Maybe this is why the city’s budget is so fucked up. Also, I’m clearly not an economist.

9:24 – Just printed out some guy’s criminal record. It was so many pages I had to use one of those black clip things instead of a paper clip. The guy was committing crimes all over the country, a really serious criminal. Maybe we need like some sort of 18 strike law or something to lock this guy up forever. Unrelated, except for the word strike, but Sandy Koufax twice struck out the side on nine pitches. Only two other players have done it twice. The first time Koufax did it was actually the first inning of his no hitter. Pure dominance.

9:30 – I brought a book to read in case things get really boring and slow: High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby. Being able to read is one of the coolest things about not being in school. After this I’m going to read Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, Stonehenge, by Bernard Cornwell, and some book on the history of chess that my roommate has the looks interesting. The last book I finished was The King’s Commission, by Dewey Lambdin. It was ok, good enough for me to want to read the next one in the series.

9:45 – Still no work coming in. Come on people, commit some crimes. I just noticed that Nelson is in the game, and is killing it. Awesome. The Phils play in about 20 minutes, getting into the hard part of this road trip. They’ve won like six in a row, are 3.5 up in the Mets, and I feel like there isn’t a team in baseball that they can’t sweep. It’s an incredible team, and I like everyone on it. And now we actually have depth in our system. Happ and Bastardo have done well in the few starts they’ve had, we have a ton of corner outfielders, at all levels, Drabek just got promoted to AA and is flowing there, Carrasco still has great stuff despite struggling this year, and I still have hope for Lou Marson and Joe Savery. Maybe we’ll even move some of these guys to acquire a co-ace. I know it won’t happen, but I’d love to see Ruben bring Roy Halladay to CBP.

10:11 – Oh man, I’m so pumped. I just got back inside from running laps around the CJC, (aside: that bing.com commercial was intense and impressive) trying to burn off some of the enthusiasm-driven energy. Why am I so pumped up? Because I just saw a commercial for the new GI Joe movie. It even had some stuff that wasn’t in the trailers I’ve seen. And holy shit, it looks incredible. Obviously there’s going to be a ton of ass-kicking. I mean, come on, it’s GI Joe. But the great thing about GI Joe, and I really hope the movie handles it well, is how cool the characters are, both the good guys and the bad.

My favorite GI Joe of all time is actually a member of Cobra: Firefly. I doubt he’ll be in this movie, but I would like to see him in a sequel. Dude’s incredible. He’s a demolition expert, great at blowing shit up. He’s a sneaky motherfucker too. But when the GI Joe’s spot him, that’s bad news too, cause he’ll kick their asses. He can fight Snake Eyes to a draw. Also, his action figure is the coolest.

10:31 – Gerber and I are going to write a movie. It’s only in the embryonic stages now, but I can tell it’s going to be great. Look for us to be winning Oscars in 2013.

10:49 – The undergrad intern just left, peacing ten minutes early. There really isn’t anything to do. Also, Kobe is going to sweep the Magic. Penguins won tonight. Fuck them.

11:03 – Doing some busy work. People need to stop being criminals. It’s not cool. But I dunno, I can’t help but feel it’s not all their fault. Not to make excuses, cause come on, stop it, but it’s remarkable how many of the defendants that come through here don’t have jobs. Also, it’s pretty absurd how much time and money is wasted prosecuting people for pretty minor drug offenses. We need to make some jobs and then just leave people alone if they’re not bothering anyone.

Some people, though, are just really fucked up, probably beyond any kind of help. Earlier this week some asshole took an eleven year old girl down some alley and raped her for like an hour. He should be gelded. Police named this guy as a person of interest, and offered a reward. This worked out pretty well: the guy was noticed in his neighborhood, and a bunch of people kicked the shit out of him. While this is pretty gratifying, vigilantism just isn’t a good thing. That group wasn’t the only posse stomping some guy in the name of justice; another group thought they were kicking and bludgeoning this same rapist, but it turned out to be the completely wrong guy. Oops.

11:34 – I really wish the Lakers weren’t killing the Magic so badly now, it would make my night less boring. 2008 World Series MVP Cole Hamels is locked in a pitchers’ duel against Clayton Kershaw, but as I write this Raaaaauuuuuuuuuuul Ibanez just belted an RBI double. Runners on 2nd and 3rd, one out, Pedro Feliz coming to bat. And the Dodgers are pulling Kershaw: 5.1 IP, 7H, 2ER, 5K.

11:40 – I think that maybe an alternate theory of the JFK assassination should be given some consideration. I’ve heard that Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, and neither did anyone on a grassy knoll anywhere. There was certainly no magic bullet. No, some people are saying that the Secret Service shot JFK and that other guy. Why? Because they had just become zombies, having been very recently bitten. I’ve never seen anything or anyone saying that isn’t the case, so it must be true. Similarly, I’ve also never heard from anyone that Hillary Duff isn’t in to me, so I can only assume that that is equally true.

11:44 – The janitors are here now. I can’t stand the noise vacuum cleaners make. It’s worse than nails on a chalk board.

Randy Johnson won his 300th game tonight, topping the baseball juggernaut that is the Washington Nationals. Randy Johnson is pretty interesting. Obviously he’s a first ballot Hall of Famer, with huge K totals, and he was utterly dominant for a while, but for some reason I don’t think of him right away with Pedro, Maddux, and Clemens. I think part of it might be that he’s been pitching for so far past his peak, and completely reinvented himself. But he’s probably one of the five greatest lefthanders in history, with Koufax, Carlton, Waddell, and I don’t know, maybe Warren Spahn, Carl Hubbell, and Eddie Plank, who I’m almost positive is a lefty. Pretty elite. Slightly related, but did you know that of all the LHP starting pitchers in Cooperstown, the second lowest career ERA belongs to George Herman Ruth?

12:05 – The people at work are watching some show about stupid criminals. The FIghtin’s are up 3-0. Hamels is pitching really well, but has only struck out three through six. But he’s pitching a lot better than in his last start, so hopefully he’s good to go.

Albert Pujols is amazing. Is he top five first basemen of all time already? He’s definitely still behind Gehrig and Foxx, and probably Greenberg too. But I dunno, he could already be on a level with like Willie McCovey and Eddie Murray. And he’s still decently you, probably could play for another ten years. Damn.

12:16 – I’m bored. That’s all.

12:21 – Israel is probably funding the Somali pirates. If they’re not, they should. It’d be such a good move for them. It fucks with Egypt and all the Persian Gulf countries that don’t like Jews, and it brings an even greater American naval presence into the area. It’s a brilliant scheme.

Dave Holmes is on at least two TV shows. That amazes me, it’s two shows too many. Can we really not find anyone better? I think we can. Come on, America.

Most people write the letter “S” from top to bottom. I don’t, I go bottom to top. So does Winston, actually. It’s just more efficient that way, and writing flows better, left to right. What other letters do you end up going right to left? Pretty much only g, p, and y, and they’re fucked up because they go below the line. S’s should be written from bottom to top. Try it, it’s liberating.

12:42 – Phillies just won. Cole rocked the CG SO. 5K, 5H, fewer than 100 pitches. Ace. I doubt more than ten thousand people in LA know or care though, I guess LA had a bigger game tonight. Sometimes I think baseball would be more interesting had teams never moved to the West Coast, and things were a lot more regional, with just the east coast and the Midwest. The Royals could be like the westernmost team. That might be fun, so many rivalries all over the place. Hockey should have done the same thing, and not gone south of DC. Phoenix, really? Ugh, Gary Bettman.

12:55 – Approaching the halfway point. A nap would be huge. Going to go get food.

1:23 – Back to work. Well, not work. Can’t say that I’ve had an hour’s worth of work yet. Combined, the four of us here have done maybe two hours. We’ve also watched two full episodes of The Smoking Gun: World’s Dumbest Criminals. I can’t take this nonsense. What a terrible show.

2:39 – Long hour. Decent amount of work, actually. But that’s done, and now I guess it’s movie time. They put on The Strangers, something I really don’t have any desire to see. So far it’s not good. I don’t need to see people get stabbed. Rest assured, the movie I write with Dick will be better.

2:50 – I wish I had a five hour energy drink. This is clearly the perfect time for one. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s totally worthwhile to repeat: five hour energy is the best energy drink ever made. It’s what God drinks when He gets tired. Just amazing. There’s no crash. Seriously, Guarana has been holding us back for so long. This has rendered Rock Star, Monster, and Red Bull all obsolete.

3:01 – Four hours left. Less, even.

3:07 – People need to stop committing crimes. Everyone would benefit from it. Just be cool.

Since I’m doing this co-op nonsense, I have to go to class once a week for two hours at a time. It’s ridiculous. Including myself, there are four people in the class, plus the teacher. We don’t learn anything, just mostly sit and talk. We talked about what we thought about the first year of law school, other jobs we’ve had, bosses, and some other stuff. I don’t see how we’re supposed to be graded, and more importantly, I don’t see why I need to waste two hours a week. Whatever.

3:26 – Seriously, I can’t stress this enough: stop doing illegal things. It’s incredible, seeing some of these rap sheets that are like 80 pages long. Seriously, people in their fifties who’ve been committing crimes for decades, with no end in sight. I think part of the problem has to be how little jail time these fucks do. And we can’t put anyone in jail, because there’s no room. It’s absurd how fucked up this is. And also, a ton of paper gets wasted here. Pretty much not the most environmentally friendly working environment.

3:48 – Reading CNN.com. It’s an elite news source. So far, the high point has been a Sarah Palin quote from the political ticker, saying that Obama’s fiscal policies “defy economics 101.” If anyone would know, it’s Palin; community college Econ 101 is probably the extent of her economic education. God, she sucks. Second favorite is an article talking about how awesome all the shows on TNT are. TNT and CNN are, of course, owned by the same company. The news is awesome.

4:02 – I guess it’s time for the second half of tonight’s double feature; the guys who get paid to be here just put on Goodfellas. It’s a decent movie, much better than The Strangers. I just wish that Ray Liotta weren’t in it. Nothing against him, but I don’t see Henry Hill, I see Shoeless Joe Jackson. Third highest batting average of all time. He came up with the A’s and I wish he would have stayed in Philly playing his whole career for Connie Mack. He wouldn’t have been caught up in all that 1919 nonsense, and then who knows what he could have done. Challenge Ruth as biggest star of the 20s? Possible.

There are so many cool hypotheticals with baseball. What if Ted Williams had never missed time for two wars? What if Ty Cobb had tried to hit for power? How far would Matt Stairs hit a Walter Johnson fastball? What if Micky Mantle had been sober his whole career? How ridiculous would Satchel Paige’s numbers be if he hadn’t been stuck in the Negro Leagues? What about Josh Gibson? Sadaharu Of?

4:38 – No one writes kick ass songs about America anymore, and that sucks. We need like a God Bless America for this decade. And please don’t let it be a Toby Keith song.

Ok, more about books. Gatsby is pretty much held up as the book representative of the twenties. Same with Grapes of Wrath for the Thirties, Keroac for that era, you know. So what book is going to come to be considered to represent the 80s and 90s? Bright Lights, Big City is cool, written in the second person, but really isn’t that great a book. American Psycho nails that time period, but a whole lot of hookers get killed. Maybe Fight Club? Though the fighting and shit kinda overshadows a lot of that, especially in the movie. Also, Phillip Ross sucks, I’ve never been impressed with him. I’d say that Richard Russo is the best American novelist right now.

5:12 – So a couple weeks ago I wrote an all-star team of baseball movie characters. I was going to do the same for hockey, but there really isn’t enough for a full post. So I’ll put it here. The first line is Adam Banks centering Connor Banks and Ned Braden. Second line is Dean Youngblood, Stevie Weekes, and Gunner Stahl. Third line, my checking line, is the Hanson Brothers. First defensive pairing would be Reggie Dunlop and Tree, and the second would be Fulton Reed and John Beebee. Starting goalie is Julie the Cat Gaffney, backed up by the French Canadian guy that Keanu Reaves plays in Youngblood. It’s not a full roster because hockey movies just don’t have them.

5:40 – About an hour left. Goodfellas is still going strong, the Lufthansa heist just went down. I’m trying to decide if I want to walk home or pay the two dollars for the subway. If it’s not raining I’ll probably walk. Getting to wear jeans to work is great, way better than a suit.

6:10 – Wandered around for a little bit just now. Things are coming alive upstairs. Even down here people are starting to trickle in. More lights are on, printers are making noise, feet have come down off desks. Shit is getting serious. At least Goodfellas is still on. That Henry Hill is one traitorous bastard.

6:25 – I just saw a commercial for some sort of museum exhibit about Galileo and the Medici family. Also, work is pretty much wrapped up.

6:50 – The seven o’clock people are in now. Leaving.

Thumbs 9: One Thumb Short of the Most Awkward Double-Fisted Handshake Ever

Thumbs Up to the Orlando Magic. Though they stumbled in Game 5, they are causing enough, hysterical strife for all the loud-mouth Cavs band wagoners to make me happy. And my bet is that they're exponentially increasing the chances that Lebron is a Knick in 2010.

Thumbs down to these Ass-Hats http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/28/ent.movie.smoking/index.html
Cocksuckers want any movie with smoking in it to be rated R, as they might incite youth smoking. At the same time, why don't we rate any movies that show children being lazy as NC-17 and burn any movies that blaspheme.

Thumbs Up: Terminator Salvation. Infinitely better than the third installment despite the lack of nearly naked robot-women. It's so satisfying to finally stop pussy-footing around the actual war with machines and see Christian Bale put a bullet in a metal skull.

Thumbs Down: Work After a Long Weekend. I don't care that it was only four days in “actual time,” it sure felt like a regular week of getting poked in the eye by beaurocracy. The miserable weather didn't help anything, but sources report that that, at least, will change in the next couple days.

Spring Cleaning

This is nothing like the spring cleaning that Winston was whining about Friday, it’s a lot more speculative. Right now the Washington post has ten things that they would get rid of in a world-wide spring cleaning. The ten things that the Post writers would do away with are the Nobel Prize in Literature, the NAACP, the White House Press Corps, Tenure, the Prom, the term “Muslim World,” Larry Summers, the Vice-Presidency, Television, and West Point. They have essays up about each one of those things if you’re especially interested; I wasn’t, and only read the one about the Nobel Prize, so I won’t be talking about their decisions. Instead, I’ve come up with a list of ten things that I would like to see be swept off the planet.

Twitter: Ok, so now Oprah has a Twitter, Ashton Kutcher has a million people following him, but this is plagued by controversy, and all of this is considered to be news. What the fuck? You cannot convince me that Twitter won’t be responsible for the downfall of America. It’s our lead-lined plumbing and barbarian hordes combined.

Sarah Palin: One of John McCain’s staff members, one who was involved in vetting Palin, recently described her selection as high risk, high reward. Fuck, that’s how I drafted my fantasy baseball team, it’s not how we should govern. I would be a lot saner if she just faded into obscurity.

All the people who got pissed off when Obama said that America wasn’t a Christian nation: It isn’t. Never was, hopefully never will be. Thomas Jefferson certainly wasn’t a Christian. Yeah, the money says “in God we trust,” but come on, that’s not necessarily a Christian god. If you want to, say America is a monotheistic nation; I’ll still dislike you, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised that you know a polysyllabic word. Or maybe go read the Bill of Rights.

Portugal: Xenophobic? Eh, maybe. But what has Portugal done for the world recently? They’ve made no meaningful contributions since pretty much the fifteenth century. If Christiano Ronaldo is at all indicative of the rest of Portugal, and I’m assuming he is, we can do without them.

CNN.com’s iReporter program: I can’t think of one meaningful contribution iReporter has made to my understanding of the world. Seriously, we don’t need to give a voice on cnn.com to every vapid asshole with a camera. That’s what blogspot is for.

Axis of Evil: Not the term, I’m ok with that. I’m mostly talking about Iran and North Korea. They’re both getting pretty uppity again, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them gone. While Iran is putting Americans in jail on specious accusations of espionage, the Israelis are getting ready to bomb them back to the stone age if they even hint about developing a nuclear weapon. I’m ok with that. As for North Korea, they’re doing all sorts of saber-rattling, saying that any sanctions would be regarded as an act of war. You know what else could be considered an act of war? Launching missiles and then lying about it. Crazy people don’t make good world leaders.

Stephanie Meyer: Is this the future of literate? Wikipedia actually lists her occupation as “novelist.” That’s like calling the homeless guy with a rhyming cardboard sign a poet. Somebody needs to do something; between Twilight and Napoleon Dynamite, Mormon propaganda is threatening to destroy American popular culture.

NASCAR: Stop it. I’m watching a baseball game, and FOX is trying to make me like NASCAR. It’s not going to work. And I don’t care how many backflips Carl Edwards does, he’s no Ozzie Smith. My respect for Tim McCarver increased exponentially when he just flat out said that Ozzie was better. And Joe Buck, what the hell, how can you possibly pick Edwards?!?! Jack Buck wouldn’t have put up with that garbage. Disgraceful. But back to NASCAR, it’s not entertaining, it’s just a waste of gasoline. Every time NASCAR stages a race, a Saudi oil prince smiles, and then writes a check to Hamas.

Newspapers: The internet has made them pretty much superfluous at this point. It seems like the only thing that newspapers really write about any more is the death of newspapers. I see why this would be a big deal to reporters, but it bores me. Let’s stop wasting paper.

The NBA: The NBA season started with like six teams being capable of winning the title. Attrition has whittled that number down to two, the Lakers and Cavs. Of course, the NBA is still going to go through with this whole playoffs thing, and it will dominate ESPN programming for two months, and I won’t care. Because the NBA is a joke. The officiating is farcical at best, there’s way too much whining, no one is especially interesting, and it just can’t match the intensity or entertainment of college basketball. I would not miss the NBA at all.

Thumbs 2: Thumb Harder

Thumbs Up – The Netherlands. The Sidney Ponson-led baseball juggernaut knocked the Dominican Republic out of the World Baseball Classic, and managed to make Jose Reyes look like a bitch in the process. At least the choking was condensed to one game here, rather than the entire month of September.

Thumbs Down – Davey Johnson, manager of Team USA in the WBC. For some reason, Johnson keeps giving Derek Jeter playing time over Jimmy Rollins. This bothers me not only as a Phillies fan, but also as an American. Rollins is great defensively, Jeter can't go to his left. Jimmy can run, and hit for both power and average; Jeter is declining asa batter. Team USA is better with Rollins on the field.

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Thumbs Up- Spring Break. I teach for a living, and after any given week I'm ready for a week off. When I finally get that week off (as I will starting after school on Friday) it's heavenly. And this particular one is especially so as it features St. Paddy's day and the start of the NCAA Tourney. It doesn't get much better than that.

Thumbs Down- The week before Spring Break. Holy hell. If my kids are usually shit heads, then they are like shit heads on crack this week. This happens every time (the week before Christmas break was the longest week of my life)! I stood in disbelief while a 16 year-old stormed out of my classroom screaming "You got me fucked up!" because I told her to wait 5 minutes before I let her go to the bathroom. Aren't kids adorable?

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Thumbs Up – www.sporcle.com. Far and away one of the best ways to kill an afternoon on the internet. Sporcle caters to the quizmaster within us all, challenging its viewers to name all of the elements on the periodic table or World Series Champions in sequential order. The categories vary from Movies to Geography to History; there really is something for everyone. So sit down by yourself or with a group of your friends (like most things in life, Sporcle makes for an excellent drinking game) and try to name all of Batman’s nemeses. Just don’t let your teacher or your boss catch you.

Thumbs Down – Dunking. I know that dunking is one of the cornerstones of this great country of ours and that all Americans are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of mad air, but there’s a time and a place for it. Stories of premature dunking and the heartbreak they cause are rampant this week. St. Mary's was down 2-0 before the tip off against Gonzaga after a technical foul for dunking in warm ups. Even worse is this story where Harlem’s boys basketball team travelled 168 miles just to forfeit a game after one of their players broke the backboard with a pregame dunk. The coach basically told his kids, “I know it’s against the rules, but everyone else is doing it so go crazy. What’s the worst that could happen?” Turns out the forfeit of a division game and a quick trip to the loser’s bracket is the worst that could happen. I hope you feel real smart.