Hoops and Bowls

Northwestern's basketball team has continued to pile up wins against teams with tournament aspirations, beating an undefeated NC State team and making a vital contribution to the Big Ten's victory over the ACC in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, which allows Big Ten officials to seize tobacco plants and bib overalls after being forced to surrender their corn crops and wretched post-industrial blight to the ACC year after year.

Drew Crawford fouls the Wolfpack's Dennis Horner hard
enough to turn him into a Messerschmidt grotesque

Though the Wildcats entered the year with the goal of wrenching the NCAA Tournament monkey off their backs-- not one of those untrustworthy monkeys that toddles around the houses of unsuspecting eccentric and lonely people in a diaper only to turn into a simian wrecking ball of fur and fang, but one of those full-on shrieking, biting Outbreak monkeys-- but the 'Cats' continued success without Coble is as gratifying as it is surprising. The Wildcats' winning stems from Shurna and Juice emerging as serious threats, Nash wreaking havoc in the 1-3-1, and Bill Carmody finally embracing the occult after no longer getting satisfaction from punishing fans of loose, flowing basketball with his plodding Princeton offense.

Carmody is captured in this grainy footage attempting to make contact with
the Assyrians' most hostile deities, such as this demon whose modus
operandi was sneaking up on a target distracted by his own vigorous fist-
shaking and aching calf tumors

Unlike in the carving depicted above, Northwestern's Big Ten foes will see them coming partly because of Bruce Weber and Tom Izzo's shared passion for applying Near-Eastern mythology to basketball stratagems, but also because Northwestern has made some noise on the national stage. LTP exuberantly predicts a 10-1 nationally ranked Northwestern heading into conference play, although less optimistic fans may still want to prepare for the possibility of the bandwagon crashing into another wagon filled with poison, cutting implements, and poinsonous cutting implements.

DEFENDING THE BOWLS

Northwestern football is left twisting in the wind until this Sunday, when the creepy cabal of corporate stiffs, NCAA officials, athletic directors, and bald men chained to briefcases full of money (I've always wondered whether the fancy steel briefcase used for illegal monetary transactions is pro-rated into the deal or if the hitman or cop impersonating a hitman to atone for the death of his partner or child skipping happily along in the fuzzy, merrie-go-round music flashback gets to keep the briefcase as an extra bonus, and then you go to his house and he has no space for leather jackets and tight t-shirts and automatic weapons because he has dozens of fancy silver briefcases taking all of his closet space. And surely the briefcase is thrown in, because no drug dealer or arms dealer or South American coup aspirant is going to say something such as "here is $10 million in unmarked treasury certificates for the sniping, less, of course, $654.31 for the fancy briefcase although being thrifty and accountable is the way to the top of the drug, arms, and dictatorship career) decide where everyone gets to go bowling.

This is also the time of the year when the NCAA bowl system comes under the greatest scrutiny, as pundits propel themselves out of the woodwork on homemade woodwork propulsion systems in order to mock the lesser bowl games as money-grubbing wastes of time. Yes, bowl games are money-grubbing and no, they often have no ramifications for the college football world, but BYCTOM has and will continue to embrace all crappy bowl games.

Unfortunately, crappy bowl games have little appeal beyond the competing teams' supporters beyond comical sponsorship names and the occasional power team in an off-year shunted off to some sort college football version of Siberian exile. What these bowl games need is a bit of pizazz to garner interest, much like minor league baseball games with their colorful gimmicks or circus freak shows employing loud people to trumpet the virtues of their particular freak show and get the townspeople lining up for blocks.

For example, for the recently renamed Little Ceasar's Pizza Bowl in Detroit, why not play upon the Caesar imagery to redecorate Ford Field like a mighty Roman coliseum while toga-wearing boosters strut about in their luxury boxes and effigies of Carthaginians are festooned on local trashcan fires? Even officials can get in on the act.

It displeases Mike Ilitch to see holding from #75 on the offense.
Mike Ilitch demands a penalty of 10 yards from the spot of the foul
from #75 that shall be collectively paid by the entire offense. Let
it be known from this day forward: it remains second down

Incidentally, the greatest Roman combat spectacle did not occur in the arena at all. Instead, it featured Emperor Claudius and a beached orca that ended up in a Roman port, attracted to some hides en route from Gaul. As Pliny relates, Claudius had the bloated whale imprisoned in the harbor with a series of nets and ordered his Praetorian Guard to shower it with lances and put on a show for the crowd, although this wikipedia article on gladiators makes it seems like Claudius somehow took on the orca mono-a-whaleo which would have been a far more impressive spectacle because there is pretty much no way to get a single man and killer whale in an arena with both at equal advantage unless there was a half-earth half-ocean arena not unlike the Federer-Nadal glass/clay challenge.

The only thing that stopped whale-baiting from soaring in
popularity is the difficulty of putting together a suitably seedy
underground den where gentlemen can safely wager on civilized
sporting events

Similarly, the Alamo Bowl can feature a half-time recreation of the battle and as an added wrinkle, if a Texas team is involved and loses the game, the winning team gets hoist the standard of Santa Anna and Mexico is allowed to annex San Antonio for the duration of the evening. The Gator Bowl can feature pre-game or half-time gator wrestling for eager tots (the gators are corked for their safety, naturally), the International Bowl can feature a festival of Epcott-style celebrations of worldwide cultural stereotypes, and the Insight Bowl can eschew raucous bands and cheering for some intense group pondering of metaphysical quandaries, such as how we can simply accept the "Insight Bowl" collectively with nary a raised eyebrow.

Each bowl then, instead of being largely interchangeable and forgettable, gains a unique character beyond what local food that ESPN guy can triumphantly discuss eating during the fourth quarter of a rout. Instead of worrying solely about booster vacation destinations or conference matchups, coaches will also have to worry about whether they would be forced to lead their teams onto the field with a bellicose display of military hardware (Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl) or while dressed as an Elizabethan imperial explorer (San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, a bowl so uninspiring that it can only benefit from fitting irritable coaches with enormous ruffled collars-- this is so logical I can't believe others have not thought about it first).

NORTHWESTERN'S DESTINATIONS

Although most Northwestern pundits seem to be pointing to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, these ESPN predictions have the 'Cats in Tampa for the Outback Bowl (the losing team will be "transported" home on an aging Victorian sailboat with no access to lime juice). With Friday's World Cup draw, this will hopefully be the most exciting sporting event involving picking teams until Selection Sunday finally putting Northwestern in the NCAA tournament or watching an entire fanbase sink into a Messerschmidt grimace.

Heartbreak Weekend for Wildcats

Watching Northwestern basketball this week has left fans wandering the highways of the Chicago suburbs carrying nothing but a backpack full of sorrow and partially shredded pants. The home stand, which stood to propel the Wildcats into their first postseason since 1999 ended with two late collapses, including Saturday's overtime debacle against Michigan.

Last Thursday's loss to the Illini, however, may be perhaps the most painful loss in NU Hoops history. The grisly highlights are available here, but I suggest clearing the surrounding area of cutlery and obtaining a device to stop you from swallowing your tongue before watching. The 'Cats were up by 14 late in the second half, and up by 6 with a minute left, and could not stop turning the ball over after being ruthlessly tackled by Illinois defenders.


The inspiration for the Illini trap defense

This loss was not only painful, but it greatly damaged Northwestern's postseason hopes. More importantly, it was to the hated Illini. I have written earlier about how I think that the NU-Illinois football rivalry might be the worst in the NCAA, but their basketball team is beneath contempt. Of course, Northwestern and Illinois have a rivalry in the sense that Germany and Belgium had a rivalry in the first half of the twentieth century.


Belgium, victims of the hated Kaiser and the
unstoppable Schlieffen Plan

The 'Cats came precariously close to snapping a nine-game losing streak against the Illini. The last time they beat them was in 2004, when Davor Duvancic improbably scored 22 points against an Illinois team a year away from playing in the championship game featuring Dee Brown, Dee Brown's shorts, Deron Williams, and Luther Head, who is probably one of the most improbably named athletes of the twenty-first century. That Illini team also boasted all-time great benchriding stick insect "Chainsaw" Nick Smith. Also of note: in that game Northwestern superstar Jitim Young led the 'Cats with 10 boards, despite standing 6'2." Of course, rebounding was a major issue for NU that year, with Carmody quipping that "power forward" was an oxymoron on his team, and that "a drunken sailor" could pull down more rebounds than the 'Cats' bigs.


Carmody follows the lead of Horatio Nelson
in coaching basketball, advocating throwing
players in the scuppers with the hose pipe on
them and ending practice by proclaiming
"Kiss me, Tavaris Hardy."

Of course, Illinois got their revenge a year later as they beat Northwestern three times, including an 84-48 humiliation in Champaign and an disgraceful alley-oop exhibition in the Big Ten Tournament which can best be described as the opposite of this Zach Randolph streetball demonstration (this is an astonishing basketball display, but the gem is the look on Isiah's face after Randolph turns into the world's worst Curly Neal). That 2004-5 Illinois team was among my least favorites with their constant wearing of orange jerseys, their near perfect record heading into the tournament, and the fact that they did nothing but shoot three pointers and have Bruce Weber caterwauling on the sidelines.


The many moods of Bruce Weber

CATCHING UP WITH THE 'CATS

The 2003-4 Northwestern team was one of Northwestern's last nearly successful teams, finishing 14-15, but 8-8 in the Big Ten (they also missed qualifying for post-season play by a single game the next year). The team featured the aforementioned Young, sharp-shooting forward Vedran Vukusic, high-flying Mohammed Hachad, and speedy T.J. Parker, whose older brother Tony was winning championships with the San Antonio Spurs.

T.J., who memorably left before his senior year to play pro ball in France is evidently lighting it up for the French National Team, except that the website apparently got caught in a classic T.J.-Tony confusion error. In reality, T.J. now plays for SLUC-Nancy in the French ProA league, where he faces off against Vichy, led by ex-boilermaker David Teague and other Big Ten collaborationists.

The worst enemy of SLUC-Nancy is "la défense en zone"
and poorly groomed cougar eyebrows

Vedran is playing for the celebrated KK Cibona of the Adriatic League in Croatia. Here he is with some flashy passing, and in highlights against Zagreb in league play.

Jitim plays for Polonia Warszawa in Poland after playing last year for MAFC Budapest with a group of fellow American dance enthusiasts.

This year's team is the most talented since the departure of that group, unless it comes to answering reader mail or maintaining an impeccable coiff.

ASSESSING THE REST OF THE SEASON

Northwestern is in danger of missing the NIT without a strong showing at the back end of the schedule. Coming up is the a home game against Ohio State, and another close loss would leave me as incredulous as Lake Forest residents up in arms against the tree-cutting ways of Mr. T. In 1987, Mr. T began chopping down trees on his estate in the posh Chicago suburb, eliciting protests from the neighborhood council who had gotten the city named a "Tree City USA" for seven consectuive years despite the presence of irritating human statues and crusty jugglers. This article taken from the Sun-Times declares "Now playing in Lake Forest: Mr. T in Chainsaw Massacre" and opens with "Call him Mr. T, not Mr. Tree." I usually find such newspaper writing appalling until I realized that the article would be much better if read aloud by Walter Winchell, although this makes me upset that we no longer live in a society where being informed meant being willing to be shouted at by nasal men.


This is an actual cartoon from the Chicago Tribune. I imagine that the man depicted
turning Mr. T's catchphrases around at him would have no retort for a barrage of
"shut up old man" put-downs.

To make matters even more ridiculous, the Mr. T vs. Lake Forest battle was chronicled in a book entitled Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes by Greg Mitman and published by Yale University Press in 2007. Here are some examples of how he uses Mr. T to shape his argument in the introduction:

Saying that allergies to tree pollen provoked him, the man that wore gold chains as a reminder of the chains of his slave ancestors took action.

And here he is tying it all together:

What Mr. T's neighbors didn't appreciate, or care to recognize, is that the places where Americans have struggled to breathe, as well as the spaces they have created to breathe more freely-- lavishly landscaped estates, hay fever resorts, air-conditioned homes-- have been shaped, not only by the ecology of animal, insect, plant, and man-made allergens, but also by the unequal distribution of wealth and health care in American society.

Mitman writes that Mr. T's Lake Forest estate let him live "far upwind of the industrial pollutants, pesticides, poverty, and violence that he had dreamed of escaping as a youth" as well as pitying fools who won't eat his cereal.

In one final bit of alarming writing, the New York Times has unfortunately unleashed Bono upon an unsuspecting populace. In his first article for the times, the U2 frontman and self-anointed savior of mankind ruminated on Frank Sinatra:

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know — as opposed to what they don’t want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this — the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power — interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year? In the mist of uncertainty in your business life, your love life, your life life, why is Sinatra’s voice such a foghorn — such confidence in nervous times allowing you romance but knocking your rose-tinted glasses off your nose, if you get too carried away.


The Guardian's Ben Greenman wrote a brilliant parody of Bono taking his overwrought commentary to the Super Bowl, but I'll quote a passage next to picture of Bono's smug, leering countenance in order to give it greater authenticity:


The football is kicked high in the air, caught. I am just an Irish stranger in the midst of this refining fire, and so I do what an Irish stranger would do: Watch. Well, watch and take some chicken wings. It is said that they are even more delectable when dipped in bleu cheese. They spell it "blue" in the American manner, these American men in their American world. Hold on. Let me wipe my hands.

We are all in a red zone, a zone of excitement and enchantment, a zone of hope where we cannot predict precisely and so require our hope to keep us warm. There is nothing cool in the room, save the blue cheese.



Let's hope the 'Cats can find that zone of excitement and beat the Buckeyes on Wednesday.

Shuffle Update

It is particularly generous of the NFL to give everyone a bye week before the Superbowl so that players can rest, coaches can hone their strategies, overzealous mayors can work out inane bets, and bookies' henchmen can order new bats. The weekend paves the way for the NFL hype juggernaut in an attempt to ruin football to the point where our desire to spike things or pour icy gatorade on each other seems pointless. Even if an opposing ballcarrier were to brazenly run through our homes or places of businesses, we become less inclined to stop them with a bone-crunching helmet-to-helmet hit.

Although they existed for centuries as part of the the Rath Yatra, juggernauts today form
only the second deadliest parade vehicle

NOT SHUFFLING

Needless to say, the Bears will not be in the Superbowl this year. The Bears did not even make the playoffs thanks to a truly horrific showing by the defense. I admit that I have no football coaching experience, and I have never played in a football game that did not end with a hapless participant limping off the field shouting "my valve!" or suffering compound nerd fracture, but from my layman's perspective, the something about the defensive scheme seemed off.

Bob Babich's "Cover 2" zone defense

Instead, it will of course be the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals in Tampa Bay. The mayors are already at it, with the mayor of Glendale putting up a cactus, deftly finding a crappy gift that grows indigenously. My favorite part is that it's the mayor of Glendale stepping up. If the Bears had moved to Gary, I guess that the Gary mayor would have had to offer up an extraneous Jackson.

Even though the Bears have not won a Super Bowl since 1985, their legacy of terrible rap videos lives on. No doubt everyone has already seen the original, although I do want to call attention to Steve Fuller, who's inexplicable presence and terrible rapping often escape the attention and analysis he truly deserves. First of all, why does the backup quarterback get an entire verse? The Superbowl Shuffle already goes on far longer than humans should be able to endure, and includes an unnecessary saxophone solo. This would be like the 2008 Bears giving Rex Grossman his own verse, except that Steve Fuller was probably not at the time the funniest person in all of professional football.

Grossman lost his job in the preseason when a
pass attempt somehow ended with him throwing
a bucket full of glitter all over a confused Desmond
Clark

Fuller's verses from the Shuffle include the lyrics:

They say Jimmy is our man
If Jimmy can't do it, I sure can

and

We're not here to feathers ruffle

Mercifully, whatever twisted soul composed the Super Bowl Shuffle must have already passed up lyrics such as "we're not here to root for truffle" or "we're not here to cause kerfuffle."


The Shuffle lyrics were heavily inspired by an obscure
Sir Walter Raleigh poem where he compares settling
Roanoake to "making romance," boasts to "bring
on the Papists, bring on the Spanish, this one 'tis for the
Queen, tho' she doth look mannish," and declaring that
"I'm just here to sport this ruffle"

OTHER SHUFFLES

The Bears Super Bowl created a template in the NFL for winning which included a suffocating defense, a possession offense geared around a hall-of-fame caliber running back, and an abysmal rap video. Taking this to heart, both the L.A. Raiders and the L.A. Rams released rap videos in an unprecedented rap video arms race that ended with Al Davis pounding his shoes on the table in Paul Tagliabue's office, claiming that our grandchildren will wear spiked shoulder pades. The Raiders' video is most notable for the random Matt Millen appearance, while the Rams' questionably titled "Ram It" blows all the other videos away with solid Pointer Sisters dance moves. Unquestionably, the only way for the Rams to have improved on their choreography would have been to add elements of the boogaloo and camel walk as demonstrated by an expert:



My favorite part of the video is James Brown's semi-deranged grin as he randomly throws out dance moves off the top of his head while listening to James Brown. The video cuts off before we see him leaving the room, but I'd like to think that James Brown could not successfully leave a building without Bobby Byrd appearing out of nowhere to drape him in a cape as he finishes writing a check at the grocery store or returning some James Brown DVDs or leaving a drug-addled TV interview where he keeps shouting the names of his own songs.

The video craze seemed to have died in the early '90s when the Miami Dolphins' "Can't Touch Us" ended with half the roster out with strained zubaz. But the problem has extended beyond football. Recently, the Bradley basketball team came out with their shuffle for the 2008-9 season. More disturbingly, non-sports related enterprises unleashed horrifying shuffle attempts, such as this effort by the Southern Food Brokerage. Before we all laugh at these unluckily recorded people, let's remember that this is clearly the result of a hostage situation where a maniac forced the southern, mulleted, and elderly to rap for his amusement or else he would flood the market with generic Teddy Grahams and dunkaroos.



FEATHER STATUS: RUFFLED

On the basketball front, Northwestern notched perhaps the programs' greatest victory last Wednesday on the road in Sparta, thanks to a miraculous ability to hit 30-footers. The Mantis led the Wildcats with 31 points against #7 Michigan State, and the 1-3-1 zone defense forced 18 turnovers. Unfortunately, the 'Cats were unable to build on that momentum, dropping a tough one to the hated Wolverines in Ann Arbor, and falling to 2-5 in a surprisingly tough Big Ten. With home games against Indiana, a struggling Wisconsin, and Chicago State, the 'Cats still have a chance to make a push to the NIT.

Should the 'Cats make a postseason, I expect a proper NIT shuffle by the Bill Carmody Rhythm Galaxy.