- It was a Saturday for favorites in college football. Nine of the top 10 teams in the country won, with only #10 Penn State suffering a defeat. The big dogs ran roughshod over subpar competition, with the lone exception being Florida, which scraped by in a 30-24 win over uppity Ole Miss. Otherwise, USC rolled over Washington State, #2 LSU handled #12 South Carolina in Baton Rouge by a 28-16 margin and Oklahoma was sitting by and watching it all unfold after thumping in-state rival Tulsa 62-21 on Friday night. The biggest thrashing doled out by a top team was Ohio State and its whooping of overmatched Northwestern by a score of 58-7. It’s hard to tell which is the more embarrassing loss for the Wildcats; this pummeling by the Buckeyes or last week’s home loss to the team that had the longest losing streak in the nation, the Duke Blue Devils. Coincidentally, the Dukies saw their winning “streak” end at one after dropping a 46-43 decision to Navy. One losing streak that didn’t end was Notre Dame’s run of losses to start the season, a streak standing at four games after the Irish were defeated 31-14 by Michigan State.
- How’s that taste, Seattle? Your professional basketball team has publicly asked an arbitrator to let it out of its lease at Key Arena so it can bolt from your city and move to a new location, probably Oklahoma City. Unless the SuperSonics can garner a deal for a new arena by the time the season kicks off next month, the team wants an arbitrator to give it the right to void the last three years of their arena lease. “As we approach the Oct. 31 deadline, we've seen nothing tangible,” Sonics chairman Clay Bennett said Friday, referring to movement toward a new, $500 million building and the deadline he created after the team filed a demand for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association this week. Ah, who doesn’t call AAA when they have a mishap along the road….well, usually that road is an actual road with asphalt and lane lines, not the road to a sparkling new basketball arena. Bennett is hoping for a decision from a three-person arbitration panel by January, which would give the Sonics plenty of time to file relocation papers with the NBA, which has a March 1 deadline for teams wishing to relocate for the next season to notify the league of their intentions. So Seattle as six weeks to capitulate to the request for a new arena or its basketball team is going to leave for Oklahoma City, where…..the Sonics are already angling for a new arena to replace OKC’s current basketball arena, the Ford Center? WTF?!?!? They’re not even there yet and already they want Oklahoma City to get them a new arena because their current one isn't good enough? Don’t believe me? Listen to Bennett in his own words: “I absolutely know the team can survive and be profitable in Oklahoma City,” Bennett said. “The Ford Center [there] is quite adequate -- but another building would be needed in the future.” Yes, that’s right, we’re anxious to come to your city…..so long as you don’t intend on making us play in that crap hole you call an arena for more than a couple years. Doesn’t it all just give you the warm fuzzies, seeing a team so concerned with its fans and making sure they’re loyal to those who support the team and make it possible for it to exist in the first place? By concerned for its fans, of course, I mean they don’t care at all about them and are looking only at their own financial interests to the extent that they’re willing to stiff, screw over or hold a gun to the head of anyone involved in this whole mess so long as it gets them the best deal for a new arena.
- Have you ever wanted to watch an hour and a half of footage featuring two dorky, pathetic losers for whom talking to an actual girl is frightening enough to send them into a full-fledged panic attack? If so, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is the movie for you, because it follows two men in their quest to be the world’s top player in one of the most popular arcade video games of all time. Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Fla., is one of the two losers, er, subjects of the documentary. Mitchell is clearly the pinnacle of cool and manliness, as his “career” achievements include having the first-ever perfect score on Pac Man and being named the Video Game Player of the Century in 1999. I’m sure he can’t go more than five minutes without a hot chick hitting on him because he’s obviously just what any girl is looking for. His rival, Steve Wiebe of Seattle, is a high school science teacher with a wife and kids who plays religiously on a Donkey Kong machine in his garage. The plot of the documentary centers on Wiebe breaking Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong, a mark that had stood for 25 years, and mailing a video of his record-breaking performance (yes, this loser videotapes himself playing video games) and mailing it in to Walter Day, an Iowa man who runs a gaming website and is the chief scorekeeper for competitive gaming. Mitchell, clearly under the impression that he is something other than a 40-something, never-kissed-a-girl, needs-a-life loser, disputes the claim and so Wiebe travels all the way to Florida for a head-to-head challenge. The true humor in this is that these two dorks are so totally serious and intense about all of this, all the while oblivious to how absurd and pathetic they look to the rest of the world. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I’ll just say that you will be both stunned that such massive losers exist in this world and thoroughly amused by how incredibly stupid these two tools look in their quest for “greatness.”
- Fullbacks are a different breed, even among football players. They’re battering rams, 6’1, 240-pound dudes with no necks whose job it is to blast holes in the defense for the running back to follow and guys who like contact in large doses. That’s how a fullback should be on the field, but that’s not how a fullback should be off the field. Florida State football player Joe Surratt needs to learn that lesson quickly, because he’s landed himself in a whole heap of sh*t by doing things his way. Surratt and FSU teammate Geno Hayes, a junior linebacker for the Seminoles, have been suspended by the school on Friday after they were arrested in a bar fight that resulted in felony charges against Surratt. Surratt, 21, was charged with a felony count of battery on an officer. Hayes, 20, faces three misdemeanor counts: assault on an officer, resisting arrest without violence and disorderly conduct, a Tallahassee police spokesman stated. Hayes and Surratt were arrested early Friday at a bar near the Florida State campus, police and school officials said. Police said Hayes had to be subdued with a Taser and Surratt struck a police officer. On a side note, props to Hayes for forcing officers to break out their Tasers. someone has to carry on that longstanding athlete tradition and it’s great to see the next generation of knucklehead players step forward to carry the torch. Not to be done, Surratt took a swing at an officer, albeit in a misguided attempt to take up for his teammate. This whole incident got started when officers were patrolling outside of Potbelly’s Bar in Tallahassee, looking for underage drinkers. They spotted Hayes, 20, screaming profanities and waving his arms, so they decided to talk with him. He resisted and became aggressive before his friends pulled him away. Still, when officers tried to cuff him, he resisted, necessitating the Taser blast. Surratt was standing nearby and tried to help out his friend, but an officer pushed him away and Surratt went with the obvious response – striking the officer. Thus, the two teammates got to share a real bonding experience, being arrested and booked together and spending the night in jail together. All of this happened on an off week for the FSU football team, so of course this is a clear indication that the players made good use of their down time.
- Must be something about the surname Simpson that bestows incredible stupidity on the bearer. One Simpson is facing eleven criminal charges, including 10 felonies, after a commando-style raid on a Las Vegas hotel room, while another Simpson was arrested yesterday at Boston’s Logan International Airport after walking into the airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweatshirt as an alleged fashion statement. Star Simpson, an MIT student flying out of Logan Intl., was arrested at gunpoint after airport security spotted her ensemble and judged her to be a threat. Simpson contends her sweater was art; authorities chose to label it as a fake bomb, thus the arrest. Hey Star, maybe you’re right and your sweater is a fashion statement. The statement is, “Hey, I’m a moron with bad fashion sense who just got arrested because couldn’t wear semi-normal clothes like everyone else.” Heck, you’d be better off wearing a turban or Muslim attire to an airport than you could be donning a shirt with a computer circuit board and wiring on it. After all, the government has so far overstepped its bounds in the name of national security that they can spy on all of your communication without reason and keep extensive files on anyone that might even be a remote threat in the next five decades, so it’s logical to assume that they’re going to overreact to this sort of situation in the name of safety. Now would be a good time to get rid of that “Nuclear Bomb on Board” t-shirt you’ve been itching to wear, Star, maybe just go with a plain t-shirt next time and save yourself the hassle of being arrested as a terrorism suspect.
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