March Madness

Another weekend come and gone. My NCAA basketball picks are proving to be quite off this year, but Pitt and Georgetown are advancing so it's all good. Went to Chi-town to catch a few games this past Friday. An odd situation, the tickets were procured through a “friend of a friend of a friend” who was told to meet ‘a guy’ in a rest stop near O'Hare International Airport. After unsuccessfully selling my friend on a pyramid scheme we got the tickets and headed to the game.

First game, Georgia Tech vs. UNLV. Kind of boring. I picked GT, but they lost. The true highlight was the pathetic mascot of Georgia Tech, Buzz, the Yellow Jacket, which had NO SPIRIT! Clad in Chuck Taylors he seemed to be an indie rocker drafted into this position at the last second as he had perfected only two moves: a celebratory fist pump more suitable for punk rock shows and an apathetic shaking of the ‘stinger’. Poor Buzz didn’t dance or rev up the crowd, he spent more time flirting with the UNLV cheerleaders! Buzz also failed to perform his patented ‘Buzz flip’. This pathetic critter is a previous winner of mascot of the year. The results of this Atlanta based poll are dubious at best, either way the person playing Buzz needs some serious training to live up to the Buzz legacy. A friend recommended that 'the bee' be hoisted up on strings and fly around the stadium. That would have been wonderful, at least emerging from some sort of hive would have added character. The GT cheerleaders were equally boring with only 5 men and 3 ladies who just stood around and CLAPPED to the music, occasionally hoisting the gals up and letting them shake their pom-pons. UNLV’s Showgirls style performance was more worthy with serious booty shaking and a cowboy (Runnin’ Rebel) mascot who danced around and could sorta keep rhythm.

The Badgers barely won against unknowns Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but the Texas Islanders won based on the mascot alone. I don’t know what an “Islander” is in Texas. Perhaps it is a part-Polynesian, part-German/Mexican Texan with a tiki face and grass skirt. Izzy the Islander danced it up and had some real pride is his/her job with slides, shaking, fist pumps, and serious movement (Izzy had rhythm, so probably was a woman). The Texas A&M CC Blue Crew also did a good job with their cheering (rather boisterous and animated) despite being outnumbered and overshadowed by the local Badgers squad.

Besides the shoddy performance by Buzz I was struck by the fact that most songs by the bands were old rock tunes. What was once a novelty with DJs sampling the Compton High School Marching Band’s rendition of 'Low Rider,' it is now commonplace for college bands to play such anthems as ‘Ring of Fire’, ‘Low Rider’, or ‘Iron Man’ --so much for fight songs.

NCAA consumption with the unhealthy food, high prices, regional rivalries, sensory overload, and sitting all day was too much for me, add to that a long car ride, and stomach full of heavy Chicago Pie and I was beat. Let’s hope Pitt wins this thing and we can move on with our lives.