Scumbag Boosters and Greedy Boys

Man o' man does this kind of shit scares me. In case you don't know Rhett Bomar, QB for the Oklahoma Sooners, was busted, cut and publicly flogged by his coach after availing himself of the illicit offerings of a over-zealot booster. Tony Soprano’s boys call it a no-show job. Pretty nice gig actually. You get paid loads of cash, at least by the standards of a 20 year old kid, to stay home. Oh, and there is a car allowance too? Sweet. Hey Dumbass! You’re going to make millions of dollars a year if you can just keep your head out of your ass.

The reason it scares me is that there are dumb asses like this at every school. At any D-1 school you’ll find at least a handful of shortsighted morons whose sense of self-entitlement out weighs any amount of couth, moxie or common sense that God gave a flaming bag of shit. I’d like to be able to grab every Ohio State player by their heavily starched, custom made collar and say, “See this Oklahoma jackass? Learn something from him and keep your hands in your pockets instead of out in front of you palm-up waiting for some scumbag alumni to line it with Benjamin’s! Get it?” Hopefully my boy Tressel will take care of that. Though I think it’s likely that he enters the building on the opposite side from the players. He drives a ’92 Ford Ranger; he wouldn’t want to be shown up by the kid’s cars.

Being Avis would be better…

At least when it comes to AP pre-season NCAA Football rankings. Here’s a stat for you – Only eight teams since 1950 have captured the (mythical) national title who also started the year ranked #1. One team, Oklahoma, nabbed four of those championships. That’s less than a 15% chance of essentially going wire to wire. Though I don’t know if any of those teams fell out of the top spot only to gain it back later. I’ll leave that level of research to someone else.

So imagine my consternation when every college football prognostication mag in the country has the Buckeyes pre-season number 1. I think they can win it all this year too, but damn. If I feel it, doesn’t the pressure of being ranked #1 have to be felt on the team. These kids have to watch ESPN or read the local papers, to be sure. How does a coach keep his players from getting a big head and overlooking the details? Details like blocking assignments and bitch slapping teams your supposed to like NIU while still getting up for games again Texas and the transvestite hookers from Ann Arbor. I’m sure there is generic coach speak to answer this question. ‘Our kids focus on the little things and play as a team….blah blah blah’ I want answers! We’re a little over 3 weeks away from the opening game and I’m nearly apoplectic.

Ohio State has one thing that will keep me from the ledge. Two words – Jim F-ing Tressel. He must be a freaking unbelievably calming and leveling force on this team. He’s coached this team to a National Championship through umpteen games with victory margins thinner than water soup. He’ll deliver. Why do we need to worry that we only have 2 returning starters on the defensive squad? Pshaw. He’ll reload that sucker. That 2002-03 team didn’t have a bunch of household names on defense. There were some awesome freshmen to be sure but unproven nonetheless.

Ok. I’m better now.
I’m probably not going to get into the Xs and Os and two deeps but I’ll definitely be weighing in often about the Buckeyes.

Handshakes

So who’s the wuss?

I use this company down the street mainly because they are close to our company and they are also a smallish, family-ish run business. The kind I like to support. The sales rep, that was lucky enough to be standing there when I walked in with our company’s wallet wide open, who literally didn’t nothing for the commission but open the door, bugs the shit out of me. I should’ve known what to expect when she – and no that’s not why – shook my hand the first time. You’ve heard people refer to a limp handshake as a “dead fish?” Dead fish around the globe are flopping over and gasping for air so that they can say, “hey what the….” This is one really crappy handshake. I magine if you were to try to grip a handful of smoke, well this is one step better than that. I’m pretty sure there is blood pumping in that hand, which I guess the smoke can’t boast. I’d like to say something to her, but given her handshake, I’m afraid of hurting her feelings.

It’s more than the grip. Regardless of their importance, if my requests are small they can be ignored. Right? Hogwash! I’ve made a dozen small requests of these people and I feel like they are ignoring me. So I call and let them know them missed one or two. Then the miss them again and I call. You see where this is going. Call, Goof, Call, Goof. It’s a pain in the ass. I should drop them, but they’ve kind of have me over a barrel. The reason we use them is because they handle a new and quickly growing business segment. Switching to another provider would really muck things up and cost us dearly. And by “dearly” I mean CASH. So for now, I’m resigning myself to be the complaining customer who looks like he’s nitpicking.

I know this is not an earth-shattering problem, but it’s my blog so I’ll cry if I want to.

So...Big Gulps Huh?

I’ve never really thought of myself as one with a ton to say. But then I realized that that is just plain silly. Everyone has something to say. I’m relatively smart and moderately witty so why not trot out some musings. (Or blatant rip-offs of other’s stuff if I’m having a particularly slow mind day.)

I’m the Dallas, Texas area and it’s hotter than two rats humpin’ in a wool sock. I mean damn hot. We got no water and nary a prospect of rain in the long-range forecast. There’s some crappy fungus growing in our reservoirs that makes the drinking water smell like it came out of a boar’s ass and taste twice as bad. Everyone’s yards are drying up because we can’t water but 1 day a week. I don’t have to mow my lawn anymore; instead I can just go out and kick the grass over. Oh, and the ground is cracking, I mean like two inch cracks in the dirt. I saw a Chinaman blinking back at me in one.

It’s f-in’ hot but I’m not sure I want to get into a discussion of global warming. First it kinda makes my brain power-down. The political hot-button nature of the argument is off-putting. The scientist claim that it’s WAY hotter than decades before and the ice caps are melting, seems like they would know, right? On the other hand, how much faith can we put into the temperature readings from the years 238 or 691? When Maximinus Thrax was kicking the shit out of Carthage did he know what the temp was, or barometric pressure? Or did he just know that it was hot enough to melt the Fuller brush on the top of his helmet. I’ll leave it to the scientists, Al Gore and the powers that be to reauchambeau for it.

Ok on second thought, maybe I don’t have any thing to say. I’ll continue to say nothing here when I come up with nothing.

Counting down to College Football. A