Yeah, if you’re Pacman Jones, and you want very badly to play for the Cowboys, and you want to endear yourself to the Dallas fanbase, requesting to wear Deion Sanders’s number, that’s a good first step. It’s a good second step, after that, to stub your toe and spend the rest of the year on injured reserve. Something to think about.
I am Gladwell! Mighty and strong! Your puny journalistic ethics cannot contain me!
The nice thing about Baylor fandom is that it’s cheap. This is especially true if you live in the Northeast (as I do) and don’t have to shell out for season tickets. (When I lived in Austin, I was a season-ticket holder for football and basketball.) It’s especially true if you never got into the habit of supporting Baylor athletics financially. (Why not get in the habit? Two words: “Tom Stanton”.)
I shelled out for travel to one Baylor game in the last twelve months, as a Bear Meat correspondent to the Baylor-Buffalo tilt. And that was a little expensive, but mostly because the Canadian dollar came up to par and because the slots at the Fallsview Casino aren’t what you would call loose. I meant to go to the Baylor game against St. John’s, but it was the day I flew back to Texas for the holidays.
Anyway, I didn’t go to the Baylor-Purdue game today, because a) it was a Thursday game and b) I don’t really have the time to take off from work to go to DC and c) I knew they were going to lose, as they did. (This didn’t stop me from putting Baylor in my Sweet Sixteen in every bracket, mind you, so you know what kind of fool I am.)
But had Baylor emerged victorious (stop giggling) I would have gotten the wife out of bed and made the trek down to Our Nation’s Capital to see the Fighting Bears of the Brazos play in the second-round game, win or lose. (Probably lose.)
This would have cost me:
And, of course, I ended up saving over a thousand dollars by watching the entire first-round game at work on my computer. Didn’t cost me a cent, and I don’t have to spend any money on Baylor men’s athletics from now until the Baylor-UConn game in September, and all that’s going to cost me is fuel and tolls. And all those poor Kansas and Texas fans will have to pay through the nose to go to their regional tournaments. Isn’t it great to be a Baylor fan?
(If that doesn’t convince you, think of all the money you save by not going to bowl games.)
Congratulations to Jim Caple, for writing the first story about R. A. Dickey that isn’t about that missing ligament of his. (I did a Google search on “Dickey” and “ligament”, and got over 11,000 hits, to tell you just how pervasive the whole thing is.)
And, no, I am NOT cheering for Dickey to do well as a Mariner with the knuckler — I don’t care if it is a nice human interest story. He was with the Rangers farm system for so long, and they never got anything out of him, and if he turns into the next Tom Candiotti with some other team I am going to be vexed indeed.
To be completely honest with you, I’d be more disappointed if Baylor fans hadn’t been throwing plastic bottles onto the court during the A&M game. When you’re Baylor, and you’re on the bubble for the NCAA tournament, and then lose by double digits, at home, to the Agriculturalists, on national television, then throwing stuff on the court is not just harmless fun – it’s practically a requirement.
Okay, maybe not really, and I’m not, you know, encouraging any antisocial behavior, and I especially don’t want to see any players, staff, or anyone not named Dave Bliss injured by flying debris. It’s more that such suckiness by the men’s cagers at this point in the season absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.
I had a weird dream last night that I won’t trouble you with, but it featured a guy that I went to high school with. In the dream, he was a pilot with a service that ferried corporate jets from place to place; didn’t make much sense, but he was offering me a free ride to New Orleans, so I was cool with it. So I decided to Google him when I woke up. He had a common enough name, but with a slightly unusual spelling, so I figured I might be able to ferret it out.
The first link was to some punk-rock drummer or something, which didn’t much seem likely. The second link, though — ay ay ay. It was a link to a large Midwestern law school’s page, the home page of a law professor.
Oh, no, he dint.
Fortunately, the link had a picture, and it didn’t look anything like the guy I remembered — looked like a younger Wayne Newton. I can’t even tell you what I would have done if he had been a lawprof. It just… well, it didn’t happen, so there.
I kept looking, and there is someone else with the same name who’s the office manager for an office supply store in Georgia. That made me feel MUCH better. Not that I want to dwell on the misery of someone I haven’t seen in twenty years, mind you, but it’s better to think of them that way than as a lawprof, don’t you think?