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So Why Hasn't Tijuana A&M won the BCS Every Year?

If the gang at the Onion went out drinking with the folks from South Park and they started thinking about college football, they could never have come up with a crueler, more accurate, more hilarious satire of college football than the "scandal" at Ohio State which resulted in the resignation of coach Jim Tressel.

Try to say this sentence aloud without laughing. Players were trading in memorabilia for tattoos. Now add the following sentence. That's a serious NCAA rules violation. Cap off the paragraph with this one. Tressel KNEW that, and tried to cover up the misdeed.

Can't do it, can you? You shouldn't worry. There is no other possible reaction but derision and scorn, the just laughter normal humans have at the expense of the pretentious and foolish (so often one and the same). What stronger evidence can there ever be that everyone in college football -- players, coaches, administrators, college presidents, Lee Corso -- is at bottom an idiot? Or rather, is someone driven idiotic by greed and hypocrisy.

You traded something of cash value for a tattoo? Dude, don't they have finance classes at OSU? A tattoo has got to be the ultimate nonliquid asset. I have respect for guys who ignore NCAA rules to get their hands on money or a sweet ride. At this point in 21st century America, getting an under-the-table tattoo is about like getting an under-the-table necktie. Limited imagination is a terrible thing to waste a mind with.

Mr. President, Mr. AD, Coach: You covered up THIS crime? Wasn't this the one to throw to the NCAA wolves so that the stories about the cars, cash, and the infinite number of violations everyone knows but couldn't prove Ohio State had done never saw the light of day? Here was a gift from the god of thieves, a set of patsies and scapegoats made to order. The nature of the violation itself has America thinking, "Gosh, these players are dumb." The nature of your actions has our nation thinking "not as dumb as the adults in Columbus, though."

As for the NCAA, laughter has been the only alternative to weeping for many decades. Imagine being a grown man whose job in life is worrying about where some tackle got that dragon on his buttocks. Imagine being at the meeting where tattoos were defined as an illegal payment. Didn't anyone say, "if kids are dumb enough to trade jerseys for tattoos, let 'em." It surely falls into what the great 19th century Tammany Hall leader George Washington Plunkitt called "honest graft." Nobody gets rich off of GETTING a tattoo.

Of course, the way the Ohio State deal has been going, maybe players were shaving points for tattoos. Which would be even funnier.

I like college football. I like college basketball. What helps me most to like is the fact I know it's all crooked, and I don't care. The leaders of men molding student-athletes. They've all got their hands in each other's pockets looking for the wallets. It's morality as slapstick comedy.

The stuffier the shirt, the funnier it is when its wearer falls into the open manhole. Doesn't come any stuffier than Ohio State. Or Jim Tressel.

I wonder. Does the sousaphone player in the marching band who dots the script "i" before every home game have any tattoos? And if so, how'd he get 'em?

posted by Michael Gee @ 7:17 PM