Archive for the ‘ncaa’ tag
Hemingway on the NCAA’s Best #
Something of a sequel to Teams We Hate, John Frank Weaver imagines for McSweeney’s what Hemingway would have to say about the NCAA Tournament.
North Carolina Tar Heels
Roy Williams is soft. His hands look manicured. They have never pulled tobacco from the dirt. He has never gutted a fish fresh from the sea. Soldiers shoot soft men in the back rather than follow them into battle. Williams should look out. He should watch his back. But junior forward Tyler Hansbrough is a 2-ton bull in baby-blue shorts. When he broke his nose last year, he saw red. He charged. His horns went down and gored opposing players. I would fight with this man. I would die for him. If a bullet met him, I would cradle his head till he left this earth. After the platoon’s soldiers shoot Roy Williams in the back, they’ll follow Sergeant Hansbrough into combat. Hansbrough and UNC charge to the Elite Eight.
Teams We Hate #
Slate’s compiled a fun little feature for March Madness time. A rundown of eleven teams that they hate, and for various reasons. Of Baylor, Bryan Curtis says this:
Hate is not a word I would use to describe Baylor, the red-brick university conveniently located mere yards from Interstate 35 in Waco, Texas. As any Big 12 alum will tell you, playing the Bears, who hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament in 20 years, inspires a different emotion: fear. Fear of losing to a massively inferior opponent, fear of bowing before the runt of the conference. This season, after Texas A&M dropped a five-overtime game to the Bears, the Aggies were serenaded with chants of “worse than Bay-lor!” by opposing fans. The joke was that such a fate was unimaginable.