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Weekend Werind: There’s Plenty of Crying in Basketball

Sometimes life sends you an omen. Like our TiVo finally screeching to a halt on Friday, just a few hours before the NCAA ‘Sweet 16’ basketball game I desperately wanted to watch.

And sometimes, we ignore those omens. Like when I hooked my laptop up to the TV, streamed the game over our internet connection, and watched anyway.

Only to see my team’s collective ass handed to it on a hardwood platter, in one of the saddest displays of barely basketball since the wheelchair kids took on the neonatal ward patients at the local hospital. The preemie kids might have even shot better in the first half than my team — though, of course, they don’t rebound especially well. You don’t go banging down low in the paint when your soft spot hasn’t grown over yet. It’s just common sense.

The point is, my team is now out of contention for the national title, as has eventually been the case every season since I started this site.

(Come to think of it, they did win a championship just a couple of months before I began. Holy hell, maybe I’ve been jinxing them the past few years.

Or maybe they need to run the half-court offense more efficiently, work on their free throw shooting and do a better job of denying the pass into the high post on defense.

Yeah. I think I’ll go with door number two in this case. If the universe is conspiring to shoot my team in the foot because I’m over here making tasteless jokes and being snarky a few times a week, then I don’t know how the hell the system works in the first place, so screw it.

Also, look at Jim Belushi. He’s tasteless and snarky all the time, and a huge Chicago Cubs fan. If the ‘jinx’ thing were true, then they’d never have a prayer of winning anything again, either.

I mean… wait. Oh, shit.)

Anyway, my annual interest in college basketball has now waned to nothing. I’m proud of the team this year — for a squad unranked in the preseason and picked to finish 8th in their conference, making the round of 16 is nothing to sneeze a skyhook at.

Still, it’s always sad when the team you live and die with finally floats belly-up on the surface of the water. So before getting out the skimmer and flushing the memory of this season altogether, I thought I’d take a look back at the disappointments of Marches past. Feel free to check them out, but I warn you — it’s not pretty. Where the hell was this blogging idea of mine back in March of 2003?

End-of-Basketball Season Posts, with Selected Representative Quotes in Which You May Sense Some Subtle Pattern:

March 25, 2004: Yes, I’m Bitter — But I’m Right, Too, Goddamit

“I really wanted to care about basketball this weekend, and now… well, now I just don’t. Not until October, at least. And CBS does suck ass — Billy Packer’s a big fat weenie, there’s nothing good about Jim ‘Nancyboy’ Nantz, and I’ve got Clark Kellogg’s ‘flush with flava‘ right fucking here.”

March 19, 2005: It’s March — and I’m Mad!

“So, no basketball talk around here this weekend. The sport is dead to me. Dead. At least until next fall. March Madness can suck my ass.”

March 16, 2006: A Maddening March

“Which means, I don’t frankly give a polkaing Pekinese posterior what the hell happens to any other fricking team for the rest of this lousy, time-wasting, poopy tournament.”

March 13, 2007: Tournament? What Tournament?

“So, I’m out. As far as I’m concerned, basketball is over, at least until the fall. I’m not watching any stupid games, I’m not filling out any stupid brackets, and I’m certainly not listening to any more stupid Gumbels. I’m in full-out boycott mode. March Madness can suck it from three-point range.”

March, 2008: On blogging hiatus. Team didn’t make tourney. Would’ve been ugly and profane. Again.

Christ, I love hate college basketball. When does baseball season start, already?