Sports Christmas - Francesca Hates Obama For Picking Chalk, Is Wrong, Promptly Picks Chalk

Thanks to our vacation (Looking for a place to go? Go here.) and the preparation therefore, our blogging record has been spotty the last few weeks.  But now we're back, refreshed and ready to write about things that likely only interest us.  It's glorious!!

Being as smooth as we are, we were able to plan our vacation to sync perfectly with our second favorite time of the year - Sports Christmas (or March Madness if you don't believe that he died so we could watch basketball for four days straight every year).  So on Sports Christmas Eve, we found ourselves slooooowly driving past the scenic vistas and views that are Staten Island, in the holiday spirit and in need of some sports knowledge.

(On a side note:  If you're from New Jersey, don't fly out of JFK.  It's the type of decision that seems eminently reasonable 3 months before your vacation when saving $300 seems like the greatest thing in the world.  But when the alarm goes off a 3:30 in the morning for a 7:30 flight, you just feel ridiculous.  Add in the fact that they apparently don't believe in road maintenance in either Brooklyn or Queens and it's a no-brainer to pay a few extra dollars rather than go off-roading at 70 mph in the dark on 4 hours of sleep.)

We'd been running at a deficit since the night before when the ESPN feed at our hotel, not the real ESPN but some weird amalgamation of all its different channels, decided inexplicably to follow Western Kentucky's epic comeback over the Sugerbaker University Fighting Delta Burke's with some show about elderly women playing soccer instead of BYU's even more epic comeback over Iona.  So we went to the radio.

We first tried ESPN radio and the "Michael Kay Show."  It speaks volumes of the quality of afternoon New York sports radio that on most days the best option is to listen to the Yankeee play-by-play announcer's show with an unfiguratively huge head and penchant for using unnecessary SAT words.  But given the fact that Francesa's pomposity grows exponentially with each passing day, it is.  Unfortunately, Kay must have been busy having awkward conversations with his supposed buddy Al Leiter and singular Stephen A. Smith was sitting in.  That shit is nonnegotiable, so we headed back to WFAN and "Mike's On" (the show has undergone drastic changes from its most recent incarnation as "Mike'd Up," none more so than the old and new intro songs which were apparently done by the same company that did the endings for "Mass Effect 3.")

After less than five minutes of bloviating, we'd already surrendered our quest for knowledge and settled for opinions.  Unassailable opinions.  As a long-time listener ("first-time, long time"), we've always known Mike to be difficult.  But in the years since his Dawg ran away, he's become only more insufferable and without an equal like the Angry Puppy to check him, facts simply have bearing.  Instead of mellowing, he's become one of those unyielding older gentlemen that nobody can stand because he thinks anyone with a differing opinion is absolutely wrong and is willing to fight (and belittle you) until you simply give up and walk away.  Or in Mike's case, hang up in disgust.  He's like a slightly less jovial version of Bobby Knight.

Still, most times it's tolerable.  For all his faults, Francesa has been around a long time and does now a ton, particularly when it comes to the NFL (Pah-cells) and the Yahnks (Jetah).  You can deal with his being uninformed when it comes to pretty much everything else.  His outdated opinions are always kind of quaint.  But when he's just plain lazy and wrong?  We can't just let that go.

Like when he decided (completely unprovoked, to the extend ESPN's constant presence isn't considered endlessly provoking) to shit on ESPN's Barack-etology (yuck) and President Obama's selections.  As repeated fawteen times because he can no longer fill 5 hours of airtime with original thought, his argument was two-fold: (1) who cahes; and (2) the President picked too much chawk.  Who cares?  Really?  We live in a country that hasn't elected a president with facial hair since the turn of the fucking century (and not even the most recent century).  Or had a major party candidate since 1948 when Dewey and his stache ran.  (How'd that work for him?)  Or a non-Christian.  Or a fat guy.  (Taft was a fat, bearded, non-Christian but he's most remembered for getting stuck in a bathtub.)  Shit, we had to suffer through 8 years of the dumber Bush (terrr) because people wanted to have a beer (do a line?) with the guy.  We're a society of fickle assholes and we do care.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we all fucking care what the leader of the free world thinks about the 5-12 match-ups.  We're all such shallow dicks that his entire campaign strategy in Kentucky and North Carolina might go out the window with his pick of the Tar Heels.  (You know at least one consultant tried to talk him into Ohio State.  That Sullinger sure is a winner, Barry!!)

And he didn't even pick all chalk.  Obama did what every single sane person who plays these damn brackets did, picked a few upsets in the first couple of rounds (VCU, Xavier, Virginia, West Virginia, NC State) and went with the bigger, better teams in the end.  What was he supposed to do, pick Belmont for the Sweet Sixteen and ruin his bracket at 5:30 on Friday like we did?  Or maybe he could have just punted his entire bracket like Francesanilly.  The man is supposed to be smart and principled.  He's not supposed to pick Lehigh or Norfolk State.  That's what stupid people do. (Results don't always validate decisions.)  Should the man risk his reelection by having Kentucky get picked off in the Sweet Sixteen?  Or risk angering the Michiganders?  That's a worse campaign strategy than turning our country intro a socialist dictatorship (HE HAS TO BE STOPPED!!)

Sure, last year was cute when Final Four had a combined seed total of 26.  But way more often that number ends up closer to 5 or 6.  We all remember George Mason, Butler and VCU because they were anomalies.  But the dirty little secret about March Madness (It's not really dirty.  Or a secret.  But that sounded like something someone would write) is that it is getting significantly harder to predict.  In fact it's almost impossible.  There will always be reasoned and predictable upsets (like VCU or NC State this year) but it's likely we'll be seeing even more of the "impossible" ones, like Lehigh or Norfolk State, each year.  Not only do the long term effect of the NBA exodus of top players from top programs even the field when compared to senior laden mid-majors rising up in cycles, but now, more than ever, we're seeing really good players like C.J. McCullom or Isaiah Cannan going to places where they can play and star, rather than being complimentary players at bigger programs.  The result is that except for Kentucky (who uses a totally unique blueprint) and UNC (who got lucky and had 3 certain lottery picks return to school) and their absurd rosters, there's really no difference between the 2 seeds and the 15 seeds.  How many times before has Lehigh had a player who was better than everyone Duke had to offer?  The effect is that the world of college basketball is becoming flat.  So what do you do when that happens?

Make like your President and go with the chawk.