Well hello there. Welcome back to Life, Love… Sport (Commitmentphobic Edition). If any of you managed to catch the Memphis-Tennessee tilt over the weekend, it was truly a classic. And not only for the game – the characters involved really spiced up the proceedings for me. For example, the halftime interview with Bruce Pearl and Erin Andrews was classy, and, yes, I mean that sarcastically. He was all up in her business, but it’s legal because he’s a single guy and, as far as our sources tell us, Erin Andrews is a single gal (and of legal age!). The game is just one of the few topics that we shall discuss today, which include, but are not limited to, collegiate basketball in general, the fate of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and his issues with the government and, if we have time, maybe something else.
The Tennessee victory over Memphis guaranteed the team its first No. 1 ranking in school history. How does the team celebrate? By losing to Vanderbilt on Tuesday, of course. In the sport of amateur basketball it seems that nobody wants to be the best team in the land. And I can’t blame them. It’s tough to be the best. Everyone is always gunning for you, making life difficult. Besides, the rankings now don’t mean a thing, it’s all about the tournament. And, if you think for a minute that Memphis cares if they got the top seed with one loss, you need to check yourself into a mental institution.
Around this time, there is a flurry of columnists who get all excited about bubble teams. Not that I’m judging or anything, but the point of a bubble team is the three or four teams that are just shy of being March Madness-eligible and that list should not include half the teams that play Division I basketball. It’s not even March and I’m already tired of hearing about bubble teams.
Teams like Syracuse, Arizona State, Mississippi and Maryland all find themselves on the proverbial bubble. Life on the bubble is tough – you never know when a loss to Butt-munch State will keep you out come March. But I have no pity for those teams. They made the schedules, live with it.
Recently, I have been hearing rumblings and grumblings that perhaps Barry Bonds would like to play baseball again. He must have brass ones to think that a year removed from being a complete pain in the ass and a general nuisance to the game of baseball that someone would be willing to pay him to play for their team.
What idiot GM wants that kind of circus around his team at this point in the season? Spring training should be a fun time with excitement and bold predictions without Barry Bonds playing the race card in interviews. I’ve been wanting to say this for so long: the game has passed Bonds by. It’s the truth – the sooner he can accept that and get out of our minds, the better the game will be.
Roger Clemens apparently harbors no illusion of getting back in the game, which is a good thing, seeing as how the Justice Department is going to launch an investigation into his testimony. You just don’t mess with the Feds; it never works out well. Just ask Michael Vick. Clemens severely underestimated the fury of the fans and Congress. He thought that by denying anything ever happened, people would just believe him and all the trouble would go away.
However, he forgot that he pissed off all the Red Sox fans by getting fat and out of shape and then crying his way out of town only to win several more Cy Youngs with other teams. He also pissed off the Yankee fans by leaving for the Astros after he “retired,” returning last year and being awful, and he pissed off the Astros fans by being a general douchebag. That is a lot of people and none of them are giving him a break.
That’s not even the worst part of the story; it gets better. Apparently, Roger Clemens threw his own wife under the bus during his testimony. How terrible is that? How low must you sink in order to do that? Here’s to hoping that Clemens is kept out of the Hall of Fame. After all, if they could keep Pete Rose out of the Hall just because he won some money, they could definitely keep Roger out for going to jail for lying.
Final Fact:
No network footage exists of Super Bowl I. It was taped over for a soap opera.
Maystrovsky’s column appears weekly.Maystrovsky is a member of the class of 2009.
