College Football Analysis for the Uninformed Part One

Memo from the Boss:

Headley – 2014 was too dreadful to be funny and 2015 doesn’t look hopeful. Talk about sports for your New Years post. I know you don’t know anything about the subject, but do the best you can.

Walter Bego – Go Figure Reads

So today begins the playoff for the NCAA college football Bowl Division national championship. This is opposed to the NCAA national championship in their playoff division… and their other playoff divisions. There’s also the NAIA’s playoff division for schools too small to be owned by multi-national corporations, the AARP touch football, run slowly, and try not to break a hip playoff division, and the pros who are different from the college guys because they don’t have to pay someone to write term papers for them.

What do you say we just scrap the NCAA, NAIA, NSA, IRS, AARP and anything else that uses letters to hide their name?

This afternoon we have the Florida State Seminoles against the Oregon Ducks, and then tonight we have the Ohio State Buckeyes against the Alabama Crimson Tide.

What – no SUNY Albany Great Danes?

Let’s forget the Xs and Os (along with the other 24 letters in the alphabet,) and focus on how the mascots would fare against each other.

Game One – Seminoles against Ducks

Seminoles are Native Americans that once wandered the territory we now know as Florida and Georgia. They were nomadic hunters from a number of Native American tribes and were known for their independence and fierceness in combat.

Ducks are waterfowl that can fly and taste really good with Dim Sum.

The Seminoles have sharp spears, and keen hunting skills; the ducks have webbed feet, and look cute when the walk.

Too easy – there has to be a catch here. I better go with the Ducks.

Game Two – Buckeyes against Crimson Tide

      Buckeyes are nuts. Really, they’re nuts that come from trees. They don’t do anything except provide ammo for nasty little kids that like to throw things. They don’t even taste good.

I know what a tide is – it’s a phenomenon of (among other factors,) the rotation of the earth and the moon’s effect on large bodies of water – usually oceans. I’ve never known it to be crimson, though I remember something about a red tide when algae with high mercury levels clog the shore and poison everything.

What am I supposed to do with this? You throw a bunch of nuts into a poisoned ocean and they bob around for a while, collecting mercury residue until the tide brings them to shore? This could be the most boring game of football since Howard Cosell retired.

But!!!!!!!!!!!! Mercury laden water is NOT the mascot for the Crimson Tide! An elephant is, because as everyone knows, elephants can always be found bobbing through the tide in the Gulf of Mexico near where Alabama has its 37 feet of coastline.

Elephants eat nuts; nuts can’t do anything to elephants. They can’t even run away without nasty children to throw them.

Again – too easy. I better go with the Buckeyes.

So, our National Championship game (not to be confused with all the other National Championship games,) will be the Oregon Ducks vs. the Ohio State Buckeyes, (assuming that neither Dim Sum nor mercury poisoning interfere.)

Please inform your bookie that you got your tip from Headley Hauser’s Just Plain Stupid blog, (so I can get my cut when you lose.)

What about the pros? I’ll give it a shot. Name the four teams involved…

What? Twelve teams!? I better wait until they whittle that down a bit.

Yes, it's a replay video, but I like it, and football games are 40% replays and 40% beer commercials.

March Madness

The following was an article I wrote for a magazine which went bust just before it could appear. I disavow any connection. Subsequently, it’s been included in the Bethlehem Writers Group anthology, Once Around the Sun. Amazon link

A Spouse’s Guide to March Madness

by Headley Hauser

Relating to a spouse during March Madness isn’t all that complicated, really. It’s all about laundry and Tic Tack Toe.

I’m not exactly Dr. Phil. The closest I’ve come to a long-term relationship was with a hardy Swedish ivy. It died after seven years of accidental neglect. So, how I am qualified to write a spouse’s guide to anything?

Well . . .I’m a guy. I know how guys think, and when I say spouse, I’m not talking about husbands, I’m talking about women, or as we single men call them . . . . We never really learned what to call them. That’s why we’re single men.

I’ll bet there are women out there saying, “I know a lot more about basketball than my husband/boyfriend/Swedish ivy.” Perhaps so, but do you have the capacity to lie on a couch for three successive extended weekends, and do nothing but ignore women, watch television, and build teetering towers out of dishes and beer cans?

Yup, there are some things we guys will always do better.

“So, Headley,” asks my fictitious female interrogator, “why does my normally active and moderately interesting man vegetate for an entire month listening to Dick Vitale?”

“It’s simple,” I say, squirting my underarms with breath spray (can’t be too careful), “it’s about laundry.”

My best friend growing up was Paul Sender, (not to be confused with Paul Westphal, Chris Paul, or the 1962 Elvis hit, Return to Sender.) Paul had a large open laundry hamper in his room.

This hamper was the primary reason Paul consistently beat me at horse, pig, or any other barnyard animal-themed basketball shooting game. It was also why his room was neater than mine--an excuse I’m sticking to.

Every night before going to bed, Paul got into his PJs and lined up his dirty socks, underwear, pants, GI Joe tee shirt, and even his PF flyers (sneakers that made him run faster and jump higher.) Then, he launched each item into his laundry hamper from the foul line (roughly defined by a line of Legos.) If he went seven for seven, he tossed his little brother in as well, to celebrate.

Big brothers are supposed to do such things.

Now, my mother is a fine woman, but she understood nothing about the formative, therapeutic value of an open laundry hamper, nor did she understand its relationship to subsequent multi-million dollar NBA contracts. She had me put my laundry in a bag, much like those you might see a merchant marine carry--except for the Wild West pictures and the printed words encouraging me to “Ride ‘em Buckaroo.”

The thing about a duffel-type laundry bag is that, when hung from a hook, it has only a tiny opening at its mouth--not big enough to throw a sock in, much less a pair of dungarees, and certainly not Paul Sender’s little brother. With careful aim, you could toss in a marble, so long as it wasn’t a shooter.

Mom didn’t much like marbles in her washing machine.

So you see, basketball is all about our obsession with laundry tossing--that’s why we watch March Madness. If we didn’t, we might chip in and clean up around the house--something men just don’t do.

But if you live with a man, I don’t have to tell you that.

“So,” says my simulated female questioner, “what does Tic Tack Toe have to do with it?”

Isn’t she great? I could never have made this segue without her.

Each young boy’s obsession with Tic Tack Toe is well documented. All you have to do is look at any elementary school lunch table to see the familiar four-line grid, complete with Xs and Os. It’s as ubiquitous as that limerick about scenic Nantucket. But unlike that limerick (which just never gets old,) Tic Tack Toe grids disappear in middle school. Why?

Somewhere around 6^th grade comes the great disillusionment. When played by two enlightened players, Tic Tack Toe always ends up in a draw. All you need to do after your opponent X’s a corner square, is put your O in the . . . . Well, I’m not really sure, but it always comes out a draw.

That’s why men created the March Madness bracket. All those lovely lines reappear in a format that we know will never result in a draw.

If you wish to relate to your significant male in the month of March, all you have to do is fill out your own bracket. It helps if you know nothing about basketball. Choose the teams numbered (that means ranked, but you don’t need to know that) 1 and 2 in each quarter grid to advance all the way to their respective regional finals. Men are too proud and stubborn to recognize how often that happens. Then choose the higher number to advance in every other match-up. Who cares if you lose 20 of your first 32 games? You’ll have all the upsets on your grid. When your man is on the phone with his buddy asking what genius predicted the Fighting Sarah Palins of Alaska Moose-skinning Tech

to beat Florida State in the first round, you can show him your bracket. Suddenly you’re a savant, a hero, one of the guys, with promising hours of conversation about the 2/3 Zone, and set shots off the screen for the rest of the month of March.

Hey, at least he’ll be talking to you.

What you want to foster a meaningful relationship during March? Read someone else’s article.

Here’s a video that warms those relational squishy, pumpy things we keep in our chests.  At least is you love little yellow minions.  I think the German makes them more understandable.