Badgers, Bowls, Basketball

Last week's cliff-hanging thriller against Wisconsin to clinch an eight-win season, fifth place in the Big Ten, and set off wild bowl speculation by Henry Bienen's most elite unit of bone diviners (while Bienen has retired from Northwestern in order to serve as Vice Chairman of Rasmussen College, Inc. and chair the executive committee of the UFL as the only man who can control Tim McGarigle's terrible vengeance upon ball-carriers, BYCTOM sources reveal that he remains in charge of NU's secret department of all sports-related occult activities-- for example did you know that the Rebecca Crown Tower turns purple after Wildcat victories not through the use of cheap plastic veneers that are not quite purple as it appears but through a terrible ancient sorcery).

Bienen, shown here in garb reserved for academics and the black arts, prefers
divination by oracle bones, as preferred in Shang Dynasty China. Thankfully,
Wikipedia's page on divination has a helpful section on other types of divination
that may be used for bowl projection-related purposes that you can do in the privacy
of your own home or coven including tasseomancy (by tea or coffee grounds),
rhabdomancy (by rods), hydromancy (by water), and gastromancy, which apparently
involves divination by using ventriloquest techniques to convince people that sounds
made by the stomach represent the voices of the dead

The 33-31 thriller continued Northwestern's trend of turning Ryan Field into an impenetrable fortress against invasion from the north, which I chalk up to a clever ruse luring Wisconsin into a false sense of security by flooding the stands with red-clad fans in a move that can best be described as a Reverse Trojan Horse after several blows to the head and exposure to mild psychotropic substances. A road team has not won in this unfortunately not annual contest since the 'Cats claimed the crazy double-OT thriller in 2000.

Bucky Badger certainly ranks tops in the world-wide Badger Mascot ratings, just
above Fulham FC's Billy Badger, shown here delaying the start of a half with his
break-dancing antics, and this generic badger costume described on this website
as the way to have a "fierce, spunky badger to represent your team, school, or
business" although it is unclear what business would be rushing to purchase this
badger unless its mission statement specifically involved terrifying children or
rival board members

Though Northwestern's bowl position is technically in the air, consensus seems to point towards the Champs Sports Bowl in Miami. The bowl selection process seems less rife with intrigue than last year, although I do enjoy that speculation about bowls involves the fact that Wisconsin has been to Florida too many times, a theory that posits that corporate executives who choose bowl pairings operate not unlike a cabal of warlords collaborating on an evening's gladiatorial festivities and dismissing teams with a "send them away they no longer amuse me" gesture.

Penn State LB Paul Posluszny looks to the Capital One executive
suite for guidance on a sack during this 2003 bowl contest

RAISE THE BANNER FOR THE C.I.T. CHAMPS

With all of the doom and gloom surrounding the basketball team after the Ryan and Coble injuries, the young Wildcats have been lining up to take over games. After a tough loss to Butler, the best team in the state, Northwestern rebounded with a 31 point explosion by "Juice" Thompson against Tennessee State and 22 from freshman Drew Crawford against Liberty University in the first round of the Chicago Invitational Tournament. But it has been all about John Shurna in the C.I.T.-- the sophomore led Northwestern to an upset against Notre Dame in the second round of the tournament with 25 and 8 against the nationally ranked squad. Northwestern's 1-3-1 zone stifled Irish All-American and possible anthropomorphic tree trunk Luke Harangody and limited Notre Dame to 31.7 percent shooting. And just like that, the switch on Northwestern's basketball program has been turned back to feisty. Just look at this typically understated post from nusports.com that does not have a byline but was written by someone who is clearly being mentored by Skip Myslenski:

Mark Twain once stated that, "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." The same holds true for the Northwestern men's basketball team.

The 'Cats went on to defeat Iowa State Cyclones in the tournament championship game, avenging themselves against teams named for violent natural phenomena after last year's NIT loss to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. Shurna again led Northwestern with 23 points to claim the tournament's most outstanding player award and serve notice that injuries have not ended the Wildcat season, as Bill Carmody continues to assail opponents with a seemingly limitless army of skinny white guys that shoot threes.

This factory churning out malnourished forwards has replaced the Former
Yugoslavia as Carmody's primary recruiting ground

Sure, the Chicago Invitational Tournament is not exactly the Final Four, or even the preseason Chicago-area tournament in the best of possible worlds, but it is also the first trophy a Northwestern basketball team has won in recent memory. The young 'Cats went through two legitimate teams, and it looks like the hoops program is in good hands with the Shurna and "Juice" tandem until the return of Coble to menace the Big Ten.

HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN

Fortunately, the Big Ten Network managed to muscle in on the game which means that there are video highlights available for the Notre Dame and Iowa State games, the latter featuring an ending so exciting that it evidently derailed the overmatched announcer enough to expect chastising from an unexpectedly materializing Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Online sports highlights have become a crucial part of the twenty-first century sports fan experience, so it is important that they are done properly. The NFL did its highlights best at first, short recaps of every game narrated by a stern-voiced announcer and punctuated by jaunty music taken from albums of free use music used to advertise summer camps in the 1980s. They replaced this system several years ago with radio calls, and now offer either radio calls or the catastrophic result of an NFL board meeting where a misguided executive decided that there are people somewhere in the country that actually want to hear Deion Sanders talk for an extended period of time. Sure, the video quality is better now and streaming more efficient, but does anyone actually believe that this is better than this?

Fortunately for Bears fans, Chicagobears.com puts out its own highlight reels narrated by John Spindle who dips into a proper NFL-level of hyperbole to describe the Bears's lackluster efforts:

For Chicago, and primarily their defense, four days of soul-searching had led to this night, no help was on the way, no cavalry was coming, only they could change their course, only they could give the people reason to believe again.

Unfortunately, the Bears have provided mainly highlights for other teams' defensive backs and wide receivers, but as the late John Facenda would have possibly said, it is better to have watchable football highlights, even if they are of Jay Cutler throwing around interceptions the way that Natty Bumpo would spray buckshot into Native Americans and the French.

BYCTOM fully supports any voodoo programs that resurrect John Facenda to
save NFL.com highlights on the belief that his dulcet moans would be better
than the current setup which is like trying to watch football while being
serenaded by a veritable chorus of Menards Men

The NBA is even worse, as someone has evidently pumped some sort of amphetamines into their drinking water supply to the point where their highlights are essentially 90 seconds of random basketball activities and nicknames when all I want is a vague idea of how the Bulls are playing and whether or not Brad Miller has reason to raise his arms in triumph.

The new goal of this blog is to become a clearing house for victorious Brad
Miller images

Dog days of summer

The Wildcats are in Kenosha firming up the depth chart and preparing for the fearsome Tigers of Towson. As the 'Cats shape up for the season by running through tires, hitting blocking sleds, doing that running in place really fast and changing direction drill, and coming together through the ageless magic of Motown sing-alongs, why not get in the spirit by heading over to Nusports.com and reading Skip Myslenski's colorful dispatches? Myslenski, who worked previously for the Tribune until he could no longer handle the fact that being a reporter with a colorful nickname like "Skip" generally entails being targeted by inept mobsters who enjoy punching people in the stomach and ineffectually throwing their guns at Superman, has been completely unleashed by the freedom gained by writing about the 'Cats to break out his most appropriately purple prose. For example, in this piece, entitled "The Passion of the Trenches," Skip whips out alliteration and dance metaphors frenzied enough to serve as copy for the late John Facenda:

They toil always in a world called The Trenches. But there, in a maelstrom of mean-spirited behemoths, they must perform with the precision of a prima ballerina...

Little, of course, is easy in The Trenches, where far more than brute strength is needed to thrive and survive. This is often lost in the crescendo of the crashing bodies, in the cacophony of the grunts and groans. But the work done here in the midst of mayhem is choreographed carefully and constantly the lineman must perform a complex dance, a dance that demands constant adaptation, a dance that must be presented with the hot breath of the enemy blowing in his face...

Sixty, 70, 80 times in an afternoon they dance their disco of destruction, their minuet of mayhem, and each time they pit their bodies, their minds, their wills against those toiling across from them. The hand out jolts, accept jolts, trade jolts and, in the midst of this all, they are adjusting, adjusting their hands and their feet and their steps and their angles in a desperate search for an advantage.

The judges, the measurers, the surveyors, focusing on their fervent
foxtrot on the field, a chaotic conga line careening on course to close
calls. These men become the Fates of football, determining plays, games,
seasons, not by the spin of the thread, but by the link of the chain.
Teams are delayed, delivered, delighted, destroyed, damned as downs
are dialed, dialed into corybantic conquest, dialed into cruel capitulation.
I crunch into a peanut shell, dispatching the innards into a moribund
Morris dance across the teeth and tongue to the terrible pulsing
peristalsis that awaits.

HOME ADVANTAGE

A week ago, the United States predictably lost again at Mexico's doom fortress and national stadium Estadio Azteca. The elevation, smog, and crowds that react like Eastern European villagers to the threat of another unholy symbol of man's hubris in the eyes of nature rampaging through the countryside before turning harmlessly into Lon Chaney have all been well-chronicled.

Model of Estadio Azteca. Incidentally, the best Temple of Doom character is the random
Chinese guy with the Tommy Gun at the beginning who cackles with a lunatic glee as he
fires helplessly at a gong shielding Indiana Jones, as if he is discovering for the first
time the joy of uselessly firing automatic weapons at Harrison Ford.

El Tri's astounding home advantage naturally leads to Northwestern and its somewhat tamer environment, where the stands are inundated alternately with belligerent visiting fans during Big Ten games and tumbleweed for the Towsons and directional state opponents. This excellent article by David Ranciman examines the changing nature of home field advantage in the age of professional sports. Naturally, being a British source, the article focuses on soccer, although it also touches on football, hockey (surprisingly little home field/ice advantage), basketball, and baseball (where home field advantage evidently counts the least despite the fact that baseball fields allow for far more variation in their size and shape than in any other major sport). More importantly, he lists his "fortresses of sport" at the end: Old Trafford Stadium, Eden Park (home of the All Blacks), Pakistan National Stadium (a 45 year unbeaten streak in test cricket), and inexplicably Greece Olympic Stadium. This was frankly a disappointment as I was hoping to know Australia's most hostile Aussie Rules oval or where one might as well pack up their hurling sticks or slamballs.

The streets of the Running Man, however, proved an
insufficient home advantage for Dynamo, the Electric Rapist

In college football, the most hostile environments have traditionally been down South where fans allow their blood to be properly angried up by rivalry and pageantry. The mighty information power of the internet, despite providing some speed bumps, reveals that Miami holds the record for consecutive home wins with 58 from 1985 to 1994, taking the crown from Alabama who managed 57 from 1963 to 1982.

Home team advantage in college football is real, as home teams win approximately 59% of home games. I would actually expect a larger advantage looking at FBS schools, not because college football stadiums are more likely than any other sport to house nearly six figures worth of braying drunken maniacs, but because power conference teams traditionally schedule most of their cupcake non-conference games at home. For Northwestern, home field advantage is more palpable than one might think. Take a look at this data set:

Northwestern road wins 1979-1982: 0
Northwestern home wins 1979-1982: 1

With an increase of infinity percent, perhaps I've misjudged Ryan Field's home advantage.

MURDERING THE 2009 CUBS: YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, COPPER

The Cubs seem to be out of the NL Central at six games back and only three left to play against division-leading St. Louis. The difference between the NL and the AL is that the National League clubs spending ludicrous amounts money have apparently been doing so on less talented players, although the Mets have the excuse of suffering through the baseball version of the Battle of Ypres during the course of the season. At least Lou has had the good sense to bench Kevin Gregg, who is either part of an elaborate double cross engineered by rival baseball teams hoping to sabotage the Cubs in a conflagration that will end in a Viennese sewer or a lousy pitcher in the glamor role on a terrible bullpen. Few of the Cub relievers have decent nicknames, so I've decided to pitch in by turning to the colorful world of Chicago's most brutal mobsters. Why not bring in Kevin "The Scourge" Gregg, named for the murdered Capone consigliere Antonio "The Scourge" Lombardo as he allows a veritable tommy gun spray of baseballs launched by opposing hitters into unsuspecting grandstands?

Ozzie Guillen vowed retaliation earlier this month for
hit batsmen, claiming, "If I see somebody hitting my
players and I know it's on purpose, two guys are going
down," Guillen said. "I don't care if I get suspended,"
which demonstrates a thorough understanding of the
Connery Doctrine of the Chicago Way.

Chicago gangster nicknames are pretty much the pinnacle of human nickname innovation. Of course, not all are winners; for every "Scourge," there was a "Momo" or a "Big Jim" or the almost disastrously banal "Milwaukee Phil" which is possibly the least chilling gangster nickname of all time, unless you are dealing with a gangster with a pathological fear of mullets, bratwurst, or people who pronounce the letter O in a comical fashion. I like evocative gangster nicknames that let you guess their role such as "Jackie The Lackie" Cerone or Frank "Tight Lips" Gusenberg, which is like being "The Whammer" of the gangster world. Unfortunately for Gusenberg, he had an unpleasant Valentine's Day in 1929. My favorite of these is Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci who sounds less like a Jazz Age mobster and more like a lesser Batman Villain.

The Schemer would fit right in with Batman's redundant battles against the Riddler
and the Puzzler. The best of the Adam West Batman villains is definitely King Tut,
a fat guy dressed approximately like a Pharaoh whose special ability seemed to
mainly consist of doing the Egyptian walk over to the fridge to see if there were
any more eclairs

Probably the greatest gangster nickname belongs to Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. Humphreys was an adept political fixer who was allegedly able to put the screws to Harry Truman, a feat that few others could claim at the time including Joseph Stalin. He pressured Truman by threatening to reveal the role played by gangsters in elevating Truman through the Kansas City political ranks. Born Llewellyn Morris Humphreys, the Camel is possibly the second most powerful Welsh gangster of all time.

Humphreys was also known as "The Hump." The gangster-looking photo of Lloyd
George and Churchill is one of my favorite photos of anything

The connection of gangster nicknames to sports does not have to be limited to shaky Cubs relief pitchers. What about Pat "The Fitst" Fitzgerald, Ron "The Piece" Santo, Kevin "The Mantis" Coble (that's not really a gangster nickname but it's a reminder that a random mention of "The Mantis" as a nickname for Kevin Coble is going to remain coiled up like a cobra at the bottom of a burlap sack ready to pop out at inconvenient and unpredictable times) and "Brian Urlacher." Of course, other nicknames already have a Chicago sporting legacy.

Paul "the waiter" Ricca and his prodigal, nicknamigal son