The win has galvanized a city behind the only competently run professional sports franchise in town compared to the impotent Sox, incompetent Cubs, gormless Bears front office, and coach-punching Bulls brain trust. The Cubs have been maddening to the point where Lou Piniella has developed a spectacular beard implying an enthusiasm for box car-based transportation that should come off when Hawks players shave their grizzled attempts at facial hair.
In the Big Piniella Mountains
The Riot always walks
And Zambrano only smashes
With his left hand after balks
There's a crowd to roar
And a run to score
And you can bellow to an umpire
That his mom's a whore
In the Big Piniella Mountains
Lou would do best to shave the beard but leave his upper lip alone if he wants to join the Chicago Distinguished List of Mustachioed Coaching Champions.
The mustache is a prerequisite for Chicago coaches who want to win it all. Note that
Ozzie Guillen is grandfathered in because although he won the 2005 world series
with a Van Dyke style goatee, he did sport the tremendous 'stache seen on the right
when he played shortstop for the Sox in the 1980s but also out of fear that
neglecting him would somehow land me as a footnote in Guillen's Nixon-like
enemies list including Magglio Ordonez, Jay Mariotti, "Cowboy" Joe West, The Sox
marketing guy tasked with preventing him from making death threats over twitter,
and the late Sonny Dogole.
REALIGNMENT
Nebraska is expected to join the Big Ten and start a complex chain of realignment that will leave the Big 12 a dessicated husk of a conference. Nebraska's membership might be the beginning of more teams in the Expanding Ten until it gains subsidiary conferences across all levels of college athletics including the NAIA and junior colleges (which will be known, of course, as the Littlest Ten). The addition of the Cornhuskers is no doubt motivated largely by the scintillating rivalry with Northwestern ignited at the 2000 Alamo Bowl. And who could blame the fanbases after the teams were pitted against each other with the prestigious Alamo Shaped Trophy at stake to determine a marginal increase in the arbitrary post-season college football rankings?
A chart showing the importance of the Northwestern-Nebraska rivalry to the new
Big Ten with a rating of zero Pacinos indicating a general unawareness of the
existence of Northwestern football
Nebraska has not been to Evanston since 1931, where they suffered a 19-7 defeat at the hands of the Wildcats who no doubt took advantage of the comically archaic 1930s football rules including time fracture wickets and the Pernicious Poem Place. Including the disastrous Alamo Bowl, the 'Cats are 1-3 all time against the Lads from Lincoln, which will give them incentive to finally avenge that 12-0 shutout from 1902.
The Big 12 is essentially gutted, with Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A & M, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State expected to join the Pac 10. Other major realignments will certainly affect the rest of college football, including Notre Dame, which is expected to disband its football program live up to its Fighting Irish moniker by creating North America's top-flight hurling program and eventually challenge powerhouse Counties Kilkenny and Cork.
THE WORLD CUP
The World Cup may be the world's greatest sports spectacular, but it does itself a great disservice by limiting itself to countries that actually exist. Congratulations are in order to Padania, the winner of the 2010 VIVA World Cup fought amongst nations that have been denied international recognition, bond over a common language across international borders, or incorporated into France in 1486. This year, the VIVA World Cup, designed for national soccer teams not associated with FIFA, involved six teams competing in Gozo: Padania, Iraqi Kurdistan, Occitania (a new-comer that had participated in the Europeada 2008 contest for Europe's national minorities such as Danes in Germany, Catalans, Sorbs, Roma in Hungary, and the North Frisians), Provence, the Two Sicilies, and Gozo.
Obviously, I fully support the N.F. Board and their tournament, but six teams is not nearly enough, especially since someone needs to rise up and challenge the Padanian juggernaut, which has dominated the tournament since they joined in 2008 (the inaugural tournament featured Sapmi pummeling Monaco 21-1). The tournament should expand to absorb non-FIFA competitors such as the 2006 Elf Cup that featured Crimea, Găgăuzia, Tibet, Greenland, Northern Cyprus, and Zanzibar (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan also participated but are actually FIFA members, so they sent their futsal teams). More importantly, the Cup needs to expand to North America so that Newfoundland can send a team.
Newfoundland was, in 1919, technically a British Dominion, equal in status with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Newfoundland never equaled the prestige of its sister dominions, partly because it did not join the League of Nations and send representatives to demand German reparations at Versailles. Hit hard by the worldwide economic crisis of the 1930s as well as a spectacularly corrupt and useless government, Newfoundland was about to default on its loans. With its back against the wall, Newfoundland did what any small country would do in its situation: attempt to sell Labrador to Canada, presumably asking what do we have to do to put this fish and iron-ore rich Atlantic region in within your federal authority today. Canada didn't bite and in 1933, Newfoundland accepted a loan from Britain with the caveat that it give up its Dominion status to a Commission of British and Newfoundland representatives. British representatives found dealing with the shiftless and embattled government taxing, with one frustrated representative writing to a friend that: "I am sorry; I can only say I have done my best, but this infernal place is a hopeless proposition; the sooner it sinks into the sea, the better."
Newfoundland Prime Minister Richard
Squires managed to rebound from a 1923
arrest on corruption charges to regain the
government in 1928. He was ousted from
power again in 1932 when accusations of
corruption sparked a riot in St. Johns.
He was not reelected
Newfoundland joined with Canada in 1946, but can almost certainly put together a powerhouse soccer team that can take on upwards of three Sicilies.
A BOUNTEOUS TIME FOR SPORTING FANS
With the Crosstown Classic, the NBA Finals, the World Cup, and the Rod Blagojevich trial in full swing as well as the pillaging excitement of college football realignment, it's almost too much excitement to handle. Obviously, realignment puts the resurgent Wildcats in a precarious position with the addition of more powerhouse teams to the conference, but worse comes to worse, if things sputter out, they can form a tournament for Conferenceless FBS Teams in non-sanctioned football events.
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