Sports

Enough is Enough

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Last night in Tucson:

(University of) Arizona has apologized for a derogatory chant aimed at BYU following the Cougars’ 96-95 upset of the No. 19 Wildcats in Tucson on Saturday night.

Per video of the incident, Wildcats fans chanted an expletive and “Mormons” toward BYU, the flagship school of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as players exited the floor.

If you follow the video at the link you clearly hear that chant in the background.

We can play the “Mad Libs” game where if you swap out “Mormons” for say a racial group or Muslims those students would already have been kicked off campus.

As I have mentioned before, anti-Mormon bigotry is a pervasive form of acceptable hate among our elites and on our campuses. In fact as evidenced by the video, they revel in it. This doesn’t go into the fact that nearly 7% of Arizona is LDS and that church and its members have played a vital role in the state’s history.

I know LDS members take these things in stride, they have seen far worse, but enough is enough. I would hope that the AZ Speaker of the House and President of the Senate have already gotten the Chair of the Arizona Board of Regents and the UofA President on the phone for a nice friendly chat and informed them of the rough ride ahead in the Legislature if they doesn’t deal with the hate.

I’m sure with some analysis of the video feeds we can find the people responsible and I’m willing to bet they are students.

I have two possible solutions. Note neither them involve academic punishment We’ll keep it to the level athletic events and facilities. I guess we could be Trumpian and make an outrageous opening mood (say civil rights charges) to get leverage, but this is just little ole me.

One, the next time BYU is in Tucson for a game eliminate the student section. In fact keep those seats empty. Make it a very public reminder that students are adults and need to behave as such.

Two, from the video identify the worst 100 offenders and ban them from all UofA athletic facilities for a period of five years on pain of prosecution for trespass. I think that would be appropriate. Notice I said “facilities” and not “events” because UofA holds its graduation ceremony in the basketball arena Sorry you kids, cannot come to your graduation, you are banned from the facility. Explain to your families why.

Next week, how to deal with pro-Hamas demonstrators and students who rush the court/field.

The Return of International Villainy

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Less than four weeks into the Second Coming of Trump and the New International Order.

There’s the throw down with Denmark over Arctic security and the status of Greenland.

There was the smack down in Munich by the Ohio Hillbilly (aka JD Vance) of those freedom-crushing European welfare queens.

Then there was the USA-Canada hockey game last night, where they had three fights in the first nine seconds of the game. In addition the hits were epic, especially the ones by Charlie McAvoy on Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid.

By the way, we won.

This was the America we voted for.

Leave aside any of the current trade and other bad blood issues between Canada and the US (and oh, boy), the USA-Canada hockey rivalry runs hot and is great not just for hockey but for sports in general.

International hockey is so much better than those flopping pansies in the soccer World Cup. The fact that the game happened in one of the great hockey cities of the world (Montreal) and the fights were coordinated by two brothers (Matthew and Brady Tkachuk) just made it more epic.

Whether it’s international relations or international sports, the world needs more villains.

The game was part of the “Four Nations Tournament” and somehow I don’t think you are going to get the same passion from the NBA All-Star Game tonight.

More, please.

Not So Random Super Bowl Thoughts…

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First

Somewhere back in the misty halls of my memory I remember that Americans need a communal celebration, a party, about every month or two. That sounds about right, if only because companies need new marketing opportunities and retailers need new merchandise to stock their “seasonal” swing racks.

How else to explain Cinco de Mayo? That Halloween has become more or less an adult holiday? That doesn’t mean it’s all just sacrilegious and fun. Thanksgiving has become the American secular family holiday and Easter is well on its way, fully stripped of its religious significance, to being celebrated as a combination of a paganistic arrival of Spring and a family ham dinner.

So it is with the Super Bowl. The growth of the Super Bowl as a cultural phenomenon of course has matched that of the NFL. However, as the date of the actual game has been extended later into the calendar, its cultural significance has actually grown. Through 1980 the game was generally played on the third Sunday of January, placing it in the uncomfortable position of being a cure for a post-New Year’s hangover.

Now, thanks to an extended regular season, a bye week or two, and an extra round of playoffs, the game is held on the second week of February where it reigns alone. New Year’s Day is long in the rear view mirror, the pall of winter hangs heavy, and America is ready for another party (Valentine’s Day doesn’t count). Given the communal nature of watching sports on TV, the game essentially functions as a combination of a secular holiday and an indoor version of a backyard BBQ.

Second

A bit of family history.

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Random Thoughts (9): Talking About “Football”

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One

The future belongs to the young and by now my view of college football is as antiquated as those sports fans who wistfully remember the Brooklyn Dodgers.

So the College Football Playoff National Championship was played this Monday, did you catch it? An average of 22.1 million viewers did. That sounds like a lot, but it represented a 12% decline from a year ago, and when compared to the top shows for 2024 would rank 54th, just behind Week 17 Sunday Night Football.

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College Football and Memory

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When I started following sports as a kid, I was fascinated by the Dodgers. I hated them, but with that cool stadium, the uniforms, and that LA vibe, I mean, wow. To me they were LA so when I heard some of the older folks starting to reminiscence about the “Brooklyn Dodgers” and that d*** Walter O’Malley, I found their bitterness hard to comprehend. I was seven, the Dodgers were always LA, and these old guys needed to stop living in the past. I didn’t ask them if they tied onions to their belts when they went to the games in Brooklyn, which I heard was the style at the time.

I think I understand them better now.

They have broken up the Pac-12, my conference since I was a kid, for spare parts to feed TV schedules. I’m reminded of Karl Marx and his quip about capitalism changing our social relations.

Living in Arizona, the Pac-12 was the dream. Day-trips out to LA to catch whoever ASU was playing. Five hour drive, hit the In-N-Out Burger in Palm Desert, both driving out and coming back. Living in Arizona you had a love-hate relationship with LA and with California in general, call it an inferiority complex. However, sitting in those stadiums! There was the Rose Bowl when the sun started to set behind the San Gabriel Mountains. Then there was the LA Coliseum. Al Davis was right when he called it a dump, but to go to a game in that place was as close as a western boy was getting to Yankee Stadium

Then there were the weekend trips to places like Eugene and Corvallis. Strange lands of green landscapes, humidity, and this water falling from the sky that they called rain.

That was the Pac-12, our conference, for us westerners. We were in a time zone that played games when the rest of the country went to bed. Games played in places that were either paradise or big sky. Now we are going to places where people want to escape from: Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Iowa.

A little while ago, a friend of mine reminded me before there was a Pac–12 there used to be a Pac 10. In fact he remembered there used to be a Pac-8 before 1978 when they let in the hicks from Arizona, and wow did the rest of the conference kick up a storm. What I saw as permanence was in reality a snapshot in the midst of constant change.

As my friend said, you had 45 years in the Pac, that should be enough. Things change, life moves on.

This Fall, there’s going to be a kid who starts watching college football for the first time and he will think that it’s normal for USC-Rutgers or ASU-Cincinnati to be a conference game. That’s okay, I can live with that. That belongs to him in the same way that for me the Dodgers belong in LA.

However, I’m never going to a conference game in Cincinnati.