It's a great day to be a Wahoo

I woke up today still smiling about UVA's win over VT last night.

I've been a Wahoo fan for years. While heralded in the academic realm, UVA's never been known as a football school, like Florida State (in their '90s heyday of course) or a USC. Despite sharing a state border with Duke and UNC, I'm not sure anyone's called UVA a basketball school either.

In my lifetime the big UVA sports accomplishments have been in lacrosse, a sport I first learned about when I saw American Pie, soccer and of late, tennis.

The overwhelming majority of positive things I've heard said about UVA basketball have been about Ralph Sampson, the undisputed king of Wahoo basketball, who played from 1979-1983. All I can tell you about him is he was the best player in the country at the time, was a 7'4" (yeah, you read that right) center and led UVA to its only Final Four in 1983. Oh yeah, then there was the biggest upset in college basketball history, when the #1 Sampson-led Cavaliers lost to a then-unknown school in Hawaii called Chaminade. UVA is all about Ralph Sampson facts and is always mentioning on viewbooks and other "come to our school" literature that he and Katie Couric (two of the most famous alums) lived on The Lawn. Fancy.

UVA's won the ACC in basketball once -- in 1976. They've been the the Final Four once -- the time with Sampson in '83.

And geez, up until last night we had even lost to Virginia Tech in our last three outings. All were decided by three or less points or an overtime.

This is the plight of the UVA fan. You watch in fear. How bad are they going to beat us this time?, you think when you enter our football stadium against a ranked opponent. Or How long until they blow it?, when they somehow build an comfortable, seemingly insurmountable lead.

But at last, we broke down that barrier at least. My Hoos beat the Hokies 75-61 at the JPJ last night. (And even crazier, beat #12 Clemson at home over the weekend. But this is our rival. This is Virginia Tech!)

Finally, I can say (and this will surely come back and bite me at some point)...

HOOS WIN, SUCKAS!

At least they did last night. And even more today than most days, I'm proud, proud, proud to be an alum.

Big 12 Twins

If you know me well, you probably have heard me comment at one time or another that Texas basketball coach Rick Barnes and my favorite author, John Grisham, look alike.

Left: Rick Barnes, Right: John Grisham

As of yesterday, I also noticed that the Kansas basketball coach, Bill Self looks a lot like Virginia governor, Tim Kaine.

Left: Bill Self, Right: Tim Kaine

Crazy.

Reilly on Free Speech and Sports

When I was younger (10 or so, let's say), I remember helping my brothers make cardboard signs for them to take to a Steelers game. I remember vividly the Prang marker set we used and how clever my brothers and I thought we were when we made a sign that said

No
Body likes
Cleveland

when the game was televised on NBC. Oh, we were smart ones all right.

I think I speak for most when I say that signs are a fun and jovial part of the atmosphere at sporting events. Most support their team, sometimes they make small jabs at the opponent, and yet other occasions they call attention to completely different phenomena (for example "Hi Mom, please send $!" pleas). Whatever the inspiration, signs are overwhelmingly a tradition that many sports fans have come to embrace.

Not so at the University of Virginia, according to Rick Reilly's latest story. According to some sort of rule there, no signs of any size are allowed at sporting events anymore. Not even "Go UVA!," not even a message on a sheet of notebook paper. The only exception, unsurprisingly, are advertisements.

As a former UVA student myself, I'm pretty appalled by the school's stance against free speech. Apparently it is some sort of new athletic department policy. Reilly interviewed former UVA football standout Ronde Barber about the situation and Barber said, "Seems odd. You'd think if there was one university that would stand up for free speech, it'd be Virginia. When I was there, the signs were really clever."

I graduated after Ronde Barber, and thankfully, sometime before the new communist revolution. And I'd have to say, my experience was pretty much the same as Barber's. UVA may not have had national championships in football or basketball, but we had clever fans dammit!

Of all of the amusing signs people brought to games, my favorite was one that someone had a picture of Dick Vitale's head Photoshopped into a Duke cheerleader's uniform. Some friends and I had camped out 17 days -- yes 17 days! -- for the big UVA-Duke basketball showdown at UVA's University Hall (U-Hall, because we love to abbreviate everything at UVA). Anyway, my friends and I got front row seats to the contest, and a group with that poster was right behind us. To no one's surprise, Dick Vitale was there to broadcast the game.

I'm not sure this is the exact picture, but it looks exactly how I remembered it in my head. Source: http://www.truthaboutduke.com/news_month.php?m=November&y=2005

And how do you think he responded? He laughed and even autographed the sign for the students! Unbelievable. I think this says in a nutshell why people should be able to make signs; they make for a good laugh, add to the enthusiasm and atmosphere of the game, and hey, the best can take whatever heat is dealt. Like Reilly said about coach-slamming signs, "Who, exactly, is Virginia protecting here? Groh? The man can handle himself. After all, he was once the head coach of the New York Jets." Right on, Mr. Reilly.

The whole controversy is downright disturbing. UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson. That's right, the very man who penned the Declaration of Independence, our nation's third president, and so fervently stood for rights like free speech. Good ol' TJ (or Teej as I liked to refer to him back in the day) would roll over in his grave if he knew what was going down at The University these days. As Reilly said, it's un-American, and where is the line drawn? Does this mean that in the coming years the Lawn won't have free speech either? No organizations intercepting unsuspecting students in an effort to get them to join their organization/show up to their meetings/donate money/buy their baked goods/rally behind their cause? As annoying as I found those soliciting tables (I'd walk the 2 or 3 minutes out of the way to avoid them), I 100% support their right to be there. Maybe it's time the UVA athletics department took the same stand.

Dr J, Dr P

Y'all catch the Dr. J Dr Pepper commercial yet? I get the vibe it's been around for a little while, but I've been seeing it a lot lately.

Well I must say I'm a fan. Why exactly? Because it is so perfectly corny in every way. Check it out:



It has all the "nos" of creative advertising wrapped into one beautiful, hilarious, so-bad-it's-good package.

How, you ask?

Does it have a ridiculous celebrity spokesman for the product?
Check, Dr. J, obviously a candidate who'd know lots about... soda. And Dr. J, Dr Pepper, very funny, we get it easily.

Oh, so an athlete is the spokesperson. Is there a cheesy slo-mo sports play in the commercial?
Check, oh you know it.

Ah yes, and for Dr. Pepper. Clever. How many times is that pun approached?
At least 3 times (Dr. J name is a pun in every mention, so there's at least a pun in introduction, when he mentions being a doctor, and tagline at end).

Is a cheesy over-the-top sports feat accomplished (an impossible goal or shot, slam dunking on the moon, etc.) to a play-by-play soundtrack or equally silly song?
Oh yeah, Dr. J hits the glass with his ice cube from 10 feet away. In slow motion. Gotta love the music during the shot though. It was my favorite part of the commercial.

How about a cringe-when-you-hear it line from the script?
"Trust me. I'm a doctor."

And a pun-tastic tagline to seal the commercial?
Check. Dr's orders. Doesn't get any better than that!

Apparently we can expect more where that came from from Deutsch/LA, where similar ads will feature another doctor with expertise, Dr. Frasier Crane. The boundless corniness of this installation will certainly be tough to top.

What is a trapezoidal lane?

Every four years I'm reminded of several oddities that are associated with Olympic (and international) basketball. The most bizarre to me is the strange, non-rectangular key on the court (or lane, or paint, according to your basketball jargon preferences). Anyway, it looks like this:


According to the NBC Olympics site, this strange lane is called a trapezoidal lane. For whatever reason I've always thought it was strange visually (but then again, I was raised on ACC hoops and Jordan's 1990s glory days), but I missed the explanation for why it exists.

A blog entry I read detailed that it was a way to equalize the height of players on the international stage. Making the lane wider closer to the basket means a tall center will have to move further to avoid a 3-second call, which in theory, gives shorter teams a chance to compete with those brimming with taller players. Its intent is that "big men" can't lurk under the basket for extensive periods. The trapezoidal lane should force them to be more mobile, while giving teams with good perimeter shooting some unknown advantage. Despite these intentions, this obstacle has done little to avoid the Redeem Team's Olympic-long dunkfest. Apparently we won't be seeing the trapezoidal lane for much longer, and international hoops will be moving in favor of the NBA (aka non-eye sore) styled rectangular lane starting in 2010.

I still think international hoops have this different lane for the sake of being different, and apparently, so does that blog's author. I extend my kudos and agreement.