In the search for futility and some sort of perspective, the last version of UW football to start the season 0-5 was in 1969. With Arizona looming on the horizon in Tucson Saturday, matching an almost 40 year old low water mark does not seem improbable.
Like most fairy tales that end with a feeling of warmth and magic dust, a winless v1969 managed to knock off WSU 30-21 in the final game of the season, thus avoiding the dubious distinction of going 0 for 10. However, in the post-game shower of LSD, prayer circles, wayward activism, and Rainier, the ideals propagated amidst the peace movement are responsible for the current detriment of UW football, our empathetic military and the ineptitude of enabled consumers.
In a striking parallel to the less than auspicious start and circumstances surrounding this dismal season, v1969 played six ranked opponents, including a date at home with #1 Ohio State in a 41-14 defeat. While there exists a very good chance that 2008 may end without a single victory, it must be noted that legendary Coach Jim Owens turned things around the next year and the team won six games in 1970, including two against ranked opponents thanks to a quarterback named Sonny. Though Tyrone Willingam is not Jim Owens and Jake Locker is a hybrid of the modern game and lacks Sixkiller's nuances in the pocket, anything is possible in the world of college football.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Another Harrowing Weekend from the College Gridiron
Jake Locker's thumb still screams in agony and for reform. When will the multi-talented athlete sign with a MLB franchise and enjoy a success similar to Washingtonians Grady Sizemore, Tim Lincecum, Willie Bloomquist, and Matt Tuiasosopo? A career in the bigs is the right choice considering the complete lack of emphasis on winning from the UW administration. A situation that has deteriorated to blind acceptance, much like the Tribune's hold on the Cubs.
My game score predictions could have started for the Husky defense Saturday night, as I was correct only 34 out of 53 times, or 34 to 19 in a game scoring format. 34-19 has historical significance and was actually the final score of the 1987 Apple Cup match-up. In Chris Chandler's final home game, the Dawgs were able to throttle a productive Cougar offense featuring Timm Rosenbach, secure a bowl bid and ultimately end the season with a pedestrian 7-4-1 record. How times have changed. The Don James era was nearly two years away from a complete redefinition from an x's and o's and recruitment perspective. Names such as Emtman, Bryant, Smith, Kennedy and Brunell began to appear in the school's media guide as the groundwork was set for a national championship.
I distinctively remember Demouy Williams zigzagging his way for a punt return touchdown late in the game, the stadium shaking from 74,000 voices, and the refined hate between the Huskies and Cougars spilling over to isolated skirmishes in the stands- the flashbulbs and fists continuously connecting with their targets on the blustery November afternoon.
My game score predictions could have started for the Husky defense Saturday night, as I was correct only 34 out of 53 times, or 34 to 19 in a game scoring format. 34-19 has historical significance and was actually the final score of the 1987 Apple Cup match-up. In Chris Chandler's final home game, the Dawgs were able to throttle a productive Cougar offense featuring Timm Rosenbach, secure a bowl bid and ultimately end the season with a pedestrian 7-4-1 record. How times have changed. The Don James era was nearly two years away from a complete redefinition from an x's and o's and recruitment perspective. Names such as Emtman, Bryant, Smith, Kennedy and Brunell began to appear in the school's media guide as the groundwork was set for a national championship.
I distinctively remember Demouy Williams zigzagging his way for a punt return touchdown late in the game, the stadium shaking from 74,000 voices, and the refined hate between the Huskies and Cougars spilling over to isolated skirmishes in the stands- the flashbulbs and fists continuously connecting with their targets on the blustery November afternoon.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Another Crazy Season
In my first season of attempting to predict every major college football game and results from the tailgate drinking contests, I have enjoyed some moderate success. So far I have gone 204 Paternos and 56 Willinghams for a 79% clip.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Folly of Institution; Reliving the Sooner Massacre
Dusk bled into morning. The nine month lull and solitude from the sun forgotten in the stark light.
No, this early day was like the rebirth of the phoenix, a true Northwest Indian summer day. One of only three on the average calendar, where Seattle can be justified as the emerald city, at least from a climatological point of view. Somewhere in Fremont a goth or queen is blaming the ills of the piercing sun’s rays and global warming on the actions of another human being or big business. What a shame. Where is Carl Sagan to surmise our apparent pathway towards the spindly glacial web of global cooling that will eventually envelope the North American continent in a mass freezer ice block of perpetual Winter?
Truly, an auspicious beginning to a new chapter in life after a night of cougar hunting. In reverence to fellow pioneers Sir David Attenborough, Teddy Roosevelt and Steve Irwin, the men who witnessed first hand the pulsating richness of the African veldt, the lure of the prey and the beat of the heart from the predator, dripping in a combative effervescence. Modern times bring an alteration to the characters, though the spirit lives on. No, I did not brandish a weapon capable of inflicting a lethal force, however I was equipped, and resonating a thermal inclination for the company of a counterpart. Of course, my prey was lust and the thought of a conquest was in the forefront of my mind and instinct. As the modern term for a refined woman or cougar has evolved into a four letter acronym similar to the word MILK, the stakes have risen. I enjoyed the diversity of pelicans, flamencos and a virtual rainbow of tropical birds, swooping in the summit of the modern high rises. Their necks and limbs curved delicately and sensuously. The varying scents from the rare orchids and the humid jungle of the crowd, a riveting dichotomy to a crisp evening.
Fortunately, my prey was able to escape in the most eloquent way possible and I was left alone to bask in the true sunlight of the mid morning. I was not allowed the luxury to brood as the touch of college football and the sounds of thundering drums faintly danced within my mind. The Okies were invading the Montlake cut and with a sense of anticipation reverence for the college game, the shackles from my previous evening’s frailty dissolved into the soft lemon wind.
My father arrived with the meticulous demeanor of a brazen cosmologist, casting the very fabric of the universe against itself at speeds bordering the race with a light beam. At 1:45pm, the frailties of the hunt now completely banished to the past as we loaded the car for the trip to the parking lot bordering the stadium, the 520 bridge already burst at the seem to the West. Those not encapsulated by the magic of college football simply caught in another log jam in the seeping current of the pretzels and tapestries of freeways. I imagined their frustration and angst trickling at first into reality with each sequence of gas, break, honk, until the final tremor of the uncontrollable manifesting itself in illustrious epithets directed at the politicians, Microsofties and the migration of Californians from the mid 1980’s, then yuppies in foreign cars, but since tempered by the reality of age and the sobering properties of the evergreen forests, subtle rains, and families. The radio was oddly silent as we traded predictions and barbs about the game, each of us making side bets as to when our cheering would degrade to witty shots at the women’s volleyball team and the audacity of William Gerberding forcing Don James to make only one choice. Of course it has never since been the same.
Dad was actually in an upbeat mood considering the anticipated doom and annihilation we were about to witness at the hands of a superior football team and functioning athletic department. He talked of a golf game Thursday in which he hosted three friends who happened to be fellow alums for another lap around the old track. The story was marred by the divine comedy of old age, the reality that as long as you live, the universe just keeps slicing an imperceptible piece out of you here and there until by the time the golden realm of existence is reached, there is just enough left to beg for mercy; and the realization sets in that the idea of eternal nothingness never felt so comfortable. Like turning the pillow over on a hot summer night or drinking a wonderfully icy beer in the tundra of the holiday season, the thought of a wonderful and competent death is such a simple answer next to a lifetime of fearing the end. The constant quest of exploring ways to reanimate the past or present, daunting and exhaustive against the ills of an unknown future.
The whole plot around the golf game revolved around attempting to locate a motorized cart for a guy in the group who could barely walk. “Ribs” was a guy from the old neighborhood, an athlete back in his day, the shadows of the UW casting its tendrils of influence on himself and all the Montlake boys. Interestingly enough the entire foursome enjoyed their childhood within walking distance of Husky Stadium, selling papers to gain admittance into games or simply throwing the football around the sidewalks and willows near Lake Washington until their arms were sore, and in their imaginations they were one day closer to becoming the great Don Heinrich or Hugh McElhenny. Now, 55 years later his bi-pedal motion was compromised by the chronic wear and tear of previous knee injuries, arthritis and life. Unbeknown to the chums from the neighborhood, a senior women’s tournament was being held that morning and motorized carts were at a premium. Dad finally took matters into his own hands, using his charming rhetoric and refined people skills to negotiate a cart away from a woman in the back of the parking lot. Of course these maverick tactics could not go unnoticed from the disapproving gaze of the head golf pro, himself a UW supporter. Even though the manner in which he heisted the vehicle proved to be the highlight of the actually golfing day, it will be graciously lost in history that Dad finished his round down a few dollars, with “Ribs” enjoying the majority of the winnings with a limp and a wry smile.
After exiting the 520 freeway, we merged onto Montlake in a sea of traffic, just a few blocks away from the stadium lot. Already, a steady throng of people like a metered cavalry in purple and gold and a few in red kept up with the car. We sat in a content silence, hoping that hope itself was a tangible ideal and wishing in the bottom of our hearts that the looming reality would somehow bestow mercy on thousands of people including ourselves, parched for a beautiful and complete performance that can only be manifested in the Saturdays of late summer and autumn. I sat with my blank notepad in the seat of the car as we entered the candy store of chaos, where rules are constantly made to be broken and in a matter of seconds one can be struck down by a bolt of pure disappointment and agony, only to be resurrected by a minute treasure of exuberance, the beauty and brilliance of the little things in life, dusted and decorated with the magic of the unknown and deemed a variation of special in the confines of each and everyone’s heart.
A group of Okies successfully made the trek from Fort Bridger on the Oregon trail via the Barlow trail. The group of portly men led the woman and children all dressed in red and white across the middle of traffic armed with a simple open fist to signify the lines of cars to stop three vehicles in front of us. We stopped cold. My father utters some choice words under his breath. A crosswalk is nowhere to be found. I catch a state trooper on the sidewalk with a look of disdain and he yells at me through the open window in a nonchalant voice, “They’re all Clay Bennett’s relatives.” I laugh heartily inside, imagining the 200 things wrong with the statement.
We turn into the parking lot, two and a half hours before the game and just in time to discover that our normal spot was overtaken by two RV’s and a table topped with a gas powered blender. I wonder if it’s a full moon.
Finally we find a place to stop and graze in the middle third of a long line of vehicles. The situation does not appear futile, as the possibility exists of gaining an early exit before the general intoxication of the collective tailgate kicks in. Ensconced in a bout of nostalgia, outside I am smiling, but internally I mull over an ex girlfriend, a balanced mixture of guilt and dread casting a group of vampire butterflies at the walls of my gizzard. We spend an inordinate amount of time harnessing our own genetics and learning to love ourselves, so at the specific point when that one person drifts into our pathway or vise versa, the very ideals of reality are bent like the upper remains of a rundown chain link fence succumbing to rust and the continued generations of climbers who frown upon the simple use of a nearby gate. I know that she would be in her element here, engaging all those within a mile radius, and finding a feasible amount of good and lively conversation with each unique encounter. Lugging a full red plastic cup of Budweiser around in one hand with a burning cigarette clamped between a finger and the cup, she would drink the liquid proudly while listening to upscale women haggle over the choice of either chardonnay or a bagel. Her glamour and sophistication evident despite the circumstances. We are all old souls to an extent, the patterns and grooves in our mind marked from a lifetime of inner voices and external stimuli. Similar to our faint ancestors rooted to the tepid tide pools on the Australian coast, we simply react to world based on billions of calculations made by billions of cells, the entire subsystem of the massive computer functioning on the quantum level. I will never know who she truly is, though I nearly found out. The luxurious awe and wonderment of witnessing a beauty so profound lasting in the conscience, while the painstaking lull of positive feedback and the tidings of love instigates a system wide reboot for a matter of pico moment. I contemplate the wonders of thermalmorphs, photomorphs, the frailty of humanity and the ex until a true Sooner Bumpkin bounds by the car. Complete with daisy dukes, oscillating curves, hair the color of cornsilk, and well, time to move on. History will never remember those who came within feet from the heights of K2 and Everest, or received the undersized trophy with the gold plated “2” that is always hidden with shame on the shelf at the office behind either a book or a photo.
Traditions are constantly forged, dissolved and recycled into the present. My friends from the coast have also endured the banishment from their usual stomping grounds. I parade up to their tent with a smile and yell to the Sombrero man, “Where is the Sooner meat?” “Hey hon, get him some Sooner special,” he barks to his better half. The wife hands me a toothpick with a perfect square of cheese, adjacent to an equally proportional slab of spam. “I’m going to warn you, this meat may be a little old.” “Remember the ponies dragging the Sooner Scooner onto the field in the Orange Bowl?” Was 1985 that long ago?
I walk back to the car, where Dad is lounging on one of his purple director type chairs and holding a big gulp size Bloody Mary. “I asked the Oklahoma fan over there how he got into the parking lot alive." "He told me the key was wearing a Jake Locker jersey.” If only life were that simple.
A black guy flags me down on account of my Eastern Washington Athletics golfing shirt. We expound upon the glory days of youth and competition. In a battle of witticism, much to my delight and surprise, I discover that I was the most efficient bench warmer between us. Waving the towel above the frosted artificial turf, still in the early afternoon shadows of the stadium, I kept the bench heated with an enthusiasm and passion reserved for the trenches inhabited by the hogs. I reiterate to my new friend the tale of how I endured a badly sprained ankle in practice and at the home opener with a blind surge of adrenaline and lust for glory, I plopped down on the training table and demanded that my ankle be taped, even though I wasn’t slated to play that afternoon. He laughs, while I can still feel the sting from the resulting rebuttal from one of the assistant coaches to my freshman decision.
Like a prism of lightning and lasers, the surface of the lake shimmers in the direct sunlight like a rare jewel. The once somber waters, refreshing and delicate with the tickle of the milfoil in the shallows, lay enhanced by the ultraviolet display. I walk gradually down the hallway of intoxication, pensively touching the artful numbness of surrender as the grandstand of the stadium fills in and the crowd gathers in a conglomeration of a single entity. Clearly this is the first stage of the alcohol softening and alternating and already hazy reality. I enjoy an internalized chuckle as I envision how I would be generalized or labeled in the hierarchy of the tailgate. From the token drunk attention whore who like the state of Missouri wants to show me, but I don’t want to see the cankles, to the paint chip munching super fan or the crown royal and lazyboy lounging old-timer, I deliberate as to the appropriate words to describe my role and social status. I am simply the roamer. Not attached to any specific party or group, I frighten mothers and daughters alike with my easy going pretty boy demeanor. Of course, the woman can sense it from miles away that my charming exterior merely masks the brute force of a hunter and I ruffle the feathers of feathers in the gray area between passion and hatred. However, the guys love me. My married friends adhere to the notion that the grass is always greener on the single side of the fence and attempt to relive their acts roaming vicariously through my freewheeling soul. The largest and boisterous of the parties attempt to assimilate the roamer and it takes a strong will to politely decline the ceaseless offers of shots or conversations about the wild past that may or may not have been part of legitimate history. In a network television moment, Gilbert O’sullivan’s Alone Again, plays gently as I the roamer, drift ceaselessly and nuturally from destination to destination under an ominous sky and unsettling future.
I arrive in the comfortable confines of the seats just as UW fields the kick-off. The theme music has stopped and the buzz and electricity from the crowd tickles the neck. The perfect day removes a bit of the salt from the wound pried open by the thousands of empty seats around the perimeter the stadium and a sea of red in the end zone at the closed end of the horseshoe. Has Captain Husky finally exercised his options to move to the upper deck? I extend a weary gaze to the right to see who will inhabit the seats next to my father and me. It is not enough that the University has raised Tyee dues and tickets prices while the level of football has regressed into a stasis of mediocrity, apparently the seats next to us are reserved for the important boosters of opposing teams. After enduring the chatter and hypocrisy of the unyielding faith of two Mormons during the BYU debacle, I was anxious to see if we were once again winners in the seating lottery. I smile as three children and two parents are settled into the adjacent seats. I wonder why Brian Bosworth, Billy Tubbs or the governor of Oklahoma turned down the privilege of being our game neighbors?
The Pups refrain from running a draw on first down, but go three and out in the series. The crowd responds with a reverberating cheer of "Go Huskies" during a media timeout. Tyrone Willingham cringes for the first time of many. After securing a short punt the Sooners push though the soft underbelly of the UW defense and walk into the endzone. Husky voice Bob Rondeau would describe the nature of the drive as “frighteningly easy”. The first internal curse word session flashes though my brain intermixed with bureaucracy and university. I calm myself and merely smile on account of the little girl in the seat next to my Dad. Similar to the state of Washington, which owns the dubious distinction of having the highest government per capita in the union, the trickle down effect on the university is apparent on a variety of levels. To the regents and academics within the scholastic infrastructure, football is threat to the very principles and quest for ideological control. Title nine notwithstanding, the entity of the university operates under the pretense of an Ivy League institution, even though the majority of the funding comes through the taxpayers in the state. The flawed logic that UW perceives itself as a private organization proves dangerous on many levels. The simple formula that college football is the driving force in funding entire athletic departments is completely overlooked through a veil of arrogance, greed, and fear. I cannot refrain from entertaining these frustrating thoughts as I watch the team that I love being annihilated in every phase of the game. For some, what happens to UW on the field is justice to the young men who work tirelessly each day to prepare. This is their Coliseum, a vindication towards their own pathetic lives as they search in vain to alter the days of youth. The stinking, awkward, flawed days of feeling tiny in such a large and daunting world, yet possessing the facilities to understand the true vastness of reality. And now 30 years later, they search for a fleeting perspective, a grasp of some sort of order in a chaotic world. Who should herd the sheeple? Who should enable the poor? Who should disarm the last bastions of humanity’s savage notion and usher a race towards the binds of utopia? In a sickening reinvention of self, life as we know it becomes a mere consequence of envy.
UW offensive coordinator Tim Lappano calls four straight draw plays on first down, while the Sooner’s promptly engulf three and in the process send promising USC defector RB Chris Polk to the bench with a separated shoulder or worse. College football is a true celebration of fitness, or the ability to adapt and survive. Dynasties emerge to the pinnacle of excellence and function like the machine lines of efficient industry for a few years, eventually crumbling to the base of mediocrity in a cloud of internecine. I gaze over at the three children and parents and envision how important a role genetics play in the evolution of society. In everyday life we possess strong relationships with friends and adversaries. However, attempt to alter the relationship between a parent and her child and the true nature for survival and competition surfaces. Oklahoma has clearly won the battle today, a metaphor towards the daily fight which endures in the world, our nation, and the pursuit for individualism. The deterioration to socialism at UW and other academic institutions exemplifies a passive control and complacency that if allowed to progress, will undermine a people and a nation.
No, this early day was like the rebirth of the phoenix, a true Northwest Indian summer day. One of only three on the average calendar, where Seattle can be justified as the emerald city, at least from a climatological point of view. Somewhere in Fremont a goth or queen is blaming the ills of the piercing sun’s rays and global warming on the actions of another human being or big business. What a shame. Where is Carl Sagan to surmise our apparent pathway towards the spindly glacial web of global cooling that will eventually envelope the North American continent in a mass freezer ice block of perpetual Winter?
Truly, an auspicious beginning to a new chapter in life after a night of cougar hunting. In reverence to fellow pioneers Sir David Attenborough, Teddy Roosevelt and Steve Irwin, the men who witnessed first hand the pulsating richness of the African veldt, the lure of the prey and the beat of the heart from the predator, dripping in a combative effervescence. Modern times bring an alteration to the characters, though the spirit lives on. No, I did not brandish a weapon capable of inflicting a lethal force, however I was equipped, and resonating a thermal inclination for the company of a counterpart. Of course, my prey was lust and the thought of a conquest was in the forefront of my mind and instinct. As the modern term for a refined woman or cougar has evolved into a four letter acronym similar to the word MILK, the stakes have risen. I enjoyed the diversity of pelicans, flamencos and a virtual rainbow of tropical birds, swooping in the summit of the modern high rises. Their necks and limbs curved delicately and sensuously. The varying scents from the rare orchids and the humid jungle of the crowd, a riveting dichotomy to a crisp evening.
Fortunately, my prey was able to escape in the most eloquent way possible and I was left alone to bask in the true sunlight of the mid morning. I was not allowed the luxury to brood as the touch of college football and the sounds of thundering drums faintly danced within my mind. The Okies were invading the Montlake cut and with a sense of anticipation reverence for the college game, the shackles from my previous evening’s frailty dissolved into the soft lemon wind.
My father arrived with the meticulous demeanor of a brazen cosmologist, casting the very fabric of the universe against itself at speeds bordering the race with a light beam. At 1:45pm, the frailties of the hunt now completely banished to the past as we loaded the car for the trip to the parking lot bordering the stadium, the 520 bridge already burst at the seem to the West. Those not encapsulated by the magic of college football simply caught in another log jam in the seeping current of the pretzels and tapestries of freeways. I imagined their frustration and angst trickling at first into reality with each sequence of gas, break, honk, until the final tremor of the uncontrollable manifesting itself in illustrious epithets directed at the politicians, Microsofties and the migration of Californians from the mid 1980’s, then yuppies in foreign cars, but since tempered by the reality of age and the sobering properties of the evergreen forests, subtle rains, and families. The radio was oddly silent as we traded predictions and barbs about the game, each of us making side bets as to when our cheering would degrade to witty shots at the women’s volleyball team and the audacity of William Gerberding forcing Don James to make only one choice. Of course it has never since been the same.
Dad was actually in an upbeat mood considering the anticipated doom and annihilation we were about to witness at the hands of a superior football team and functioning athletic department. He talked of a golf game Thursday in which he hosted three friends who happened to be fellow alums for another lap around the old track. The story was marred by the divine comedy of old age, the reality that as long as you live, the universe just keeps slicing an imperceptible piece out of you here and there until by the time the golden realm of existence is reached, there is just enough left to beg for mercy; and the realization sets in that the idea of eternal nothingness never felt so comfortable. Like turning the pillow over on a hot summer night or drinking a wonderfully icy beer in the tundra of the holiday season, the thought of a wonderful and competent death is such a simple answer next to a lifetime of fearing the end. The constant quest of exploring ways to reanimate the past or present, daunting and exhaustive against the ills of an unknown future.
The whole plot around the golf game revolved around attempting to locate a motorized cart for a guy in the group who could barely walk. “Ribs” was a guy from the old neighborhood, an athlete back in his day, the shadows of the UW casting its tendrils of influence on himself and all the Montlake boys. Interestingly enough the entire foursome enjoyed their childhood within walking distance of Husky Stadium, selling papers to gain admittance into games or simply throwing the football around the sidewalks and willows near Lake Washington until their arms were sore, and in their imaginations they were one day closer to becoming the great Don Heinrich or Hugh McElhenny. Now, 55 years later his bi-pedal motion was compromised by the chronic wear and tear of previous knee injuries, arthritis and life. Unbeknown to the chums from the neighborhood, a senior women’s tournament was being held that morning and motorized carts were at a premium. Dad finally took matters into his own hands, using his charming rhetoric and refined people skills to negotiate a cart away from a woman in the back of the parking lot. Of course these maverick tactics could not go unnoticed from the disapproving gaze of the head golf pro, himself a UW supporter. Even though the manner in which he heisted the vehicle proved to be the highlight of the actually golfing day, it will be graciously lost in history that Dad finished his round down a few dollars, with “Ribs” enjoying the majority of the winnings with a limp and a wry smile.
After exiting the 520 freeway, we merged onto Montlake in a sea of traffic, just a few blocks away from the stadium lot. Already, a steady throng of people like a metered cavalry in purple and gold and a few in red kept up with the car. We sat in a content silence, hoping that hope itself was a tangible ideal and wishing in the bottom of our hearts that the looming reality would somehow bestow mercy on thousands of people including ourselves, parched for a beautiful and complete performance that can only be manifested in the Saturdays of late summer and autumn. I sat with my blank notepad in the seat of the car as we entered the candy store of chaos, where rules are constantly made to be broken and in a matter of seconds one can be struck down by a bolt of pure disappointment and agony, only to be resurrected by a minute treasure of exuberance, the beauty and brilliance of the little things in life, dusted and decorated with the magic of the unknown and deemed a variation of special in the confines of each and everyone’s heart.
A group of Okies successfully made the trek from Fort Bridger on the Oregon trail via the Barlow trail. The group of portly men led the woman and children all dressed in red and white across the middle of traffic armed with a simple open fist to signify the lines of cars to stop three vehicles in front of us. We stopped cold. My father utters some choice words under his breath. A crosswalk is nowhere to be found. I catch a state trooper on the sidewalk with a look of disdain and he yells at me through the open window in a nonchalant voice, “They’re all Clay Bennett’s relatives.” I laugh heartily inside, imagining the 200 things wrong with the statement.
We turn into the parking lot, two and a half hours before the game and just in time to discover that our normal spot was overtaken by two RV’s and a table topped with a gas powered blender. I wonder if it’s a full moon.
Finally we find a place to stop and graze in the middle third of a long line of vehicles. The situation does not appear futile, as the possibility exists of gaining an early exit before the general intoxication of the collective tailgate kicks in. Ensconced in a bout of nostalgia, outside I am smiling, but internally I mull over an ex girlfriend, a balanced mixture of guilt and dread casting a group of vampire butterflies at the walls of my gizzard. We spend an inordinate amount of time harnessing our own genetics and learning to love ourselves, so at the specific point when that one person drifts into our pathway or vise versa, the very ideals of reality are bent like the upper remains of a rundown chain link fence succumbing to rust and the continued generations of climbers who frown upon the simple use of a nearby gate. I know that she would be in her element here, engaging all those within a mile radius, and finding a feasible amount of good and lively conversation with each unique encounter. Lugging a full red plastic cup of Budweiser around in one hand with a burning cigarette clamped between a finger and the cup, she would drink the liquid proudly while listening to upscale women haggle over the choice of either chardonnay or a bagel. Her glamour and sophistication evident despite the circumstances. We are all old souls to an extent, the patterns and grooves in our mind marked from a lifetime of inner voices and external stimuli. Similar to our faint ancestors rooted to the tepid tide pools on the Australian coast, we simply react to world based on billions of calculations made by billions of cells, the entire subsystem of the massive computer functioning on the quantum level. I will never know who she truly is, though I nearly found out. The luxurious awe and wonderment of witnessing a beauty so profound lasting in the conscience, while the painstaking lull of positive feedback and the tidings of love instigates a system wide reboot for a matter of pico moment. I contemplate the wonders of thermalmorphs, photomorphs, the frailty of humanity and the ex until a true Sooner Bumpkin bounds by the car. Complete with daisy dukes, oscillating curves, hair the color of cornsilk, and well, time to move on. History will never remember those who came within feet from the heights of K2 and Everest, or received the undersized trophy with the gold plated “2” that is always hidden with shame on the shelf at the office behind either a book or a photo.
Traditions are constantly forged, dissolved and recycled into the present. My friends from the coast have also endured the banishment from their usual stomping grounds. I parade up to their tent with a smile and yell to the Sombrero man, “Where is the Sooner meat?” “Hey hon, get him some Sooner special,” he barks to his better half. The wife hands me a toothpick with a perfect square of cheese, adjacent to an equally proportional slab of spam. “I’m going to warn you, this meat may be a little old.” “Remember the ponies dragging the Sooner Scooner onto the field in the Orange Bowl?” Was 1985 that long ago?
I walk back to the car, where Dad is lounging on one of his purple director type chairs and holding a big gulp size Bloody Mary. “I asked the Oklahoma fan over there how he got into the parking lot alive." "He told me the key was wearing a Jake Locker jersey.” If only life were that simple.
A black guy flags me down on account of my Eastern Washington Athletics golfing shirt. We expound upon the glory days of youth and competition. In a battle of witticism, much to my delight and surprise, I discover that I was the most efficient bench warmer between us. Waving the towel above the frosted artificial turf, still in the early afternoon shadows of the stadium, I kept the bench heated with an enthusiasm and passion reserved for the trenches inhabited by the hogs. I reiterate to my new friend the tale of how I endured a badly sprained ankle in practice and at the home opener with a blind surge of adrenaline and lust for glory, I plopped down on the training table and demanded that my ankle be taped, even though I wasn’t slated to play that afternoon. He laughs, while I can still feel the sting from the resulting rebuttal from one of the assistant coaches to my freshman decision.
Like a prism of lightning and lasers, the surface of the lake shimmers in the direct sunlight like a rare jewel. The once somber waters, refreshing and delicate with the tickle of the milfoil in the shallows, lay enhanced by the ultraviolet display. I walk gradually down the hallway of intoxication, pensively touching the artful numbness of surrender as the grandstand of the stadium fills in and the crowd gathers in a conglomeration of a single entity. Clearly this is the first stage of the alcohol softening and alternating and already hazy reality. I enjoy an internalized chuckle as I envision how I would be generalized or labeled in the hierarchy of the tailgate. From the token drunk attention whore who like the state of Missouri wants to show me, but I don’t want to see the cankles, to the paint chip munching super fan or the crown royal and lazyboy lounging old-timer, I deliberate as to the appropriate words to describe my role and social status. I am simply the roamer. Not attached to any specific party or group, I frighten mothers and daughters alike with my easy going pretty boy demeanor. Of course, the woman can sense it from miles away that my charming exterior merely masks the brute force of a hunter and I ruffle the feathers of feathers in the gray area between passion and hatred. However, the guys love me. My married friends adhere to the notion that the grass is always greener on the single side of the fence and attempt to relive their acts roaming vicariously through my freewheeling soul. The largest and boisterous of the parties attempt to assimilate the roamer and it takes a strong will to politely decline the ceaseless offers of shots or conversations about the wild past that may or may not have been part of legitimate history. In a network television moment, Gilbert O’sullivan’s Alone Again, plays gently as I the roamer, drift ceaselessly and nuturally from destination to destination under an ominous sky and unsettling future.
I arrive in the comfortable confines of the seats just as UW fields the kick-off. The theme music has stopped and the buzz and electricity from the crowd tickles the neck. The perfect day removes a bit of the salt from the wound pried open by the thousands of empty seats around the perimeter the stadium and a sea of red in the end zone at the closed end of the horseshoe. Has Captain Husky finally exercised his options to move to the upper deck? I extend a weary gaze to the right to see who will inhabit the seats next to my father and me. It is not enough that the University has raised Tyee dues and tickets prices while the level of football has regressed into a stasis of mediocrity, apparently the seats next to us are reserved for the important boosters of opposing teams. After enduring the chatter and hypocrisy of the unyielding faith of two Mormons during the BYU debacle, I was anxious to see if we were once again winners in the seating lottery. I smile as three children and two parents are settled into the adjacent seats. I wonder why Brian Bosworth, Billy Tubbs or the governor of Oklahoma turned down the privilege of being our game neighbors?
The Pups refrain from running a draw on first down, but go three and out in the series. The crowd responds with a reverberating cheer of "Go Huskies" during a media timeout. Tyrone Willingham cringes for the first time of many. After securing a short punt the Sooners push though the soft underbelly of the UW defense and walk into the endzone. Husky voice Bob Rondeau would describe the nature of the drive as “frighteningly easy”. The first internal curse word session flashes though my brain intermixed with bureaucracy and university. I calm myself and merely smile on account of the little girl in the seat next to my Dad. Similar to the state of Washington, which owns the dubious distinction of having the highest government per capita in the union, the trickle down effect on the university is apparent on a variety of levels. To the regents and academics within the scholastic infrastructure, football is threat to the very principles and quest for ideological control. Title nine notwithstanding, the entity of the university operates under the pretense of an Ivy League institution, even though the majority of the funding comes through the taxpayers in the state. The flawed logic that UW perceives itself as a private organization proves dangerous on many levels. The simple formula that college football is the driving force in funding entire athletic departments is completely overlooked through a veil of arrogance, greed, and fear. I cannot refrain from entertaining these frustrating thoughts as I watch the team that I love being annihilated in every phase of the game. For some, what happens to UW on the field is justice to the young men who work tirelessly each day to prepare. This is their Coliseum, a vindication towards their own pathetic lives as they search in vain to alter the days of youth. The stinking, awkward, flawed days of feeling tiny in such a large and daunting world, yet possessing the facilities to understand the true vastness of reality. And now 30 years later, they search for a fleeting perspective, a grasp of some sort of order in a chaotic world. Who should herd the sheeple? Who should enable the poor? Who should disarm the last bastions of humanity’s savage notion and usher a race towards the binds of utopia? In a sickening reinvention of self, life as we know it becomes a mere consequence of envy.
UW offensive coordinator Tim Lappano calls four straight draw plays on first down, while the Sooner’s promptly engulf three and in the process send promising USC defector RB Chris Polk to the bench with a separated shoulder or worse. College football is a true celebration of fitness, or the ability to adapt and survive. Dynasties emerge to the pinnacle of excellence and function like the machine lines of efficient industry for a few years, eventually crumbling to the base of mediocrity in a cloud of internecine. I gaze over at the three children and parents and envision how important a role genetics play in the evolution of society. In everyday life we possess strong relationships with friends and adversaries. However, attempt to alter the relationship between a parent and her child and the true nature for survival and competition surfaces. Oklahoma has clearly won the battle today, a metaphor towards the daily fight which endures in the world, our nation, and the pursuit for individualism. The deterioration to socialism at UW and other academic institutions exemplifies a passive control and complacency that if allowed to progress, will undermine a people and a nation.
Monday, September 8, 2008
BYU Rants
The ball is tossed behind the head. The arduous journey 3 minute forgotten. Five painful years of sickening lows and total defeats momentarily erased in the brilliant sunlight.
To be the pulsating adrenaline amidst Jake Locker’s being. The joy and competitive thrill so refined and complete as to escape in a primal yowl, the subconscious seeking to grab 320 pound teammates and jump high in the air while encapsulated by the ascending thunder from 70,000 fans. Disbelief turns to invincibility as an excited wind blows around the lower bowl of the stadium.
To have the whole experience whisked away in a pico-second, the gods of fate mocking the degradation of free will.
Twenty years into the future and the basic framework of college football has withstood the test of time and the endless furtive debates. Except for two minor differences, the landscape of Saturday in autumn remains as familiar as the turning of the leaves. Robots programmed by nano-chips imperceptible to the naked eye, have replaced the twenty two young men on the field. There are no winners or losers in the cavernous and nearly empty stadiums, only the celebratory pageantry of passive brainwashing and the soft clinking of metal on metal and the machines cannot exceed five miles per hour. For those who pine for the real experience of Saturdays and the thrill of battle, cyberspace is able to accommodate an acceptable reality.
The abolishment of competition and the effects on all major sports was not a result of a singular incident, rather a gradual deterioration of the values surrounding individuality. Through general carelessness and the technology of the web, the factors of political correctness, socialism and guilt combined to forge a society functioning tediously like an anthill. Those who had strived for control, were now in the ironic position of not being able to yield their power. In other words, the activists had become workers and comrades, never realizing that they were indirectly serving a fruitless coalescence, a damaged mass mind. For the Benthams and Descartes of the past, the structured brilliance of imagined utopia was in fact a trap for humanity, a veritable evolutionary cul-de-sac. So much for the grand scheme of liberalism.
From Jake Locker’s taunting penalty, to the case of the third string running back at California who sued the university for equal playing time and won, the college game was simply allowed to decline. Forgotten or simply ignored was the prowess of television money from football in the athletic department budget. In response to drilling for oil in Alaska, an anti-capitalistic backlash was successful in removing at first the peripheral symbols of the military industrial complex. One of the initial causalities was professional sports, followed by college football. As the verbiage of “equal” took over legal documents, the first NBA game under the influences of cultural changes gone wild, rivaled the Westminster Dog Show combined with Woodstock and hempfest, complete with a circus. As the first quarter ended, not one basket had been scored by the gold fish in the bowl under the basket. A stench of B.C. hash and manure filled the arena and as the spotlight of captured a man hugging a bonsai tree in the third deck, a thunderous applause erupted from the crowd. It was not until the following morning that it was noticed that the synthetic white fibers of the nets had been replaced by a series of blinding topaz beads.
To be the pulsating adrenaline amidst Jake Locker’s being. The joy and competitive thrill so refined and complete as to escape in a primal yowl, the subconscious seeking to grab 320 pound teammates and jump high in the air while encapsulated by the ascending thunder from 70,000 fans. Disbelief turns to invincibility as an excited wind blows around the lower bowl of the stadium.
To have the whole experience whisked away in a pico-second, the gods of fate mocking the degradation of free will.
Twenty years into the future and the basic framework of college football has withstood the test of time and the endless furtive debates. Except for two minor differences, the landscape of Saturday in autumn remains as familiar as the turning of the leaves. Robots programmed by nano-chips imperceptible to the naked eye, have replaced the twenty two young men on the field. There are no winners or losers in the cavernous and nearly empty stadiums, only the celebratory pageantry of passive brainwashing and the soft clinking of metal on metal and the machines cannot exceed five miles per hour. For those who pine for the real experience of Saturdays and the thrill of battle, cyberspace is able to accommodate an acceptable reality.
The abolishment of competition and the effects on all major sports was not a result of a singular incident, rather a gradual deterioration of the values surrounding individuality. Through general carelessness and the technology of the web, the factors of political correctness, socialism and guilt combined to forge a society functioning tediously like an anthill. Those who had strived for control, were now in the ironic position of not being able to yield their power. In other words, the activists had become workers and comrades, never realizing that they were indirectly serving a fruitless coalescence, a damaged mass mind. For the Benthams and Descartes of the past, the structured brilliance of imagined utopia was in fact a trap for humanity, a veritable evolutionary cul-de-sac. So much for the grand scheme of liberalism.
From Jake Locker’s taunting penalty, to the case of the third string running back at California who sued the university for equal playing time and won, the college game was simply allowed to decline. Forgotten or simply ignored was the prowess of television money from football in the athletic department budget. In response to drilling for oil in Alaska, an anti-capitalistic backlash was successful in removing at first the peripheral symbols of the military industrial complex. One of the initial causalities was professional sports, followed by college football. As the verbiage of “equal” took over legal documents, the first NBA game under the influences of cultural changes gone wild, rivaled the Westminster Dog Show combined with Woodstock and hempfest, complete with a circus. As the first quarter ended, not one basket had been scored by the gold fish in the bowl under the basket. A stench of B.C. hash and manure filled the arena and as the spotlight of captured a man hugging a bonsai tree in the third deck, a thunderous applause erupted from the crowd. It was not until the following morning that it was noticed that the synthetic white fibers of the nets had been replaced by a series of blinding topaz beads.
------
In reverence to serious debate, the ending of the BYU-UW contest will remain eternally marred by controversy. Jake Locker made the big play and for anyone who understands the intensity of the gridiron and the random jets of adrenaline, the feeling of joy is nearly indescribable. That being said, BYU clearly dominated a young Husky defense converting 12 of 14 third downs. Could UW have slowed down an efficient Cougar attack in overtime?
Clearly, it is not within the parameters of the officiating crew to surmise the outcome of a game. Yes, the Huskies should have converted the 35 yard extra point. Yes, the audacity of Tyrone Willingham to have one finger up, when the old saying goes, “Go for the win at home and the tie on the road.” is disheartening. Yes, the interpretation of the celebration rule was suspect. Will anyone remember how entertaining a game this was between two well-matched teams? No. Will BYU go through their schedule unscathed? No.
The NCAA rules committee must be held accountable for authoring a rule which leaves room for vast debate and puts a lasting constraint on both players and fans.
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