As a man who wears athletic shorts and t-shirts purchased at gas stations, I am hardly a fashionista. I, however, am very perturbed by the recent plague to fall on Columbus, Ohio: fedoras. It seems like I can't go out anywhere in Columbus without my eyes being stabbed by some chach-ball wearing one of these things at a ridiculous angle.
99.9% of the time, I don't really care what cloths and rags you use to cover your naked body, but unless you're a suave Cuban musician (HINT: you're not), there is simply no excuse to wear a freaking fedora.
When I see somebody rocking a fedora in public, I assume they don't have any actual friends. They might have people who associate with them and lead them into believing they're friends, but if the fedora-idiot had any honest-to-goodness friends, there's no way they'd allow him to go out in public.
Do you associate with somebody who wears a fedora? Why haven't you clowned them into oblivion and/or deleted them from your life? THIS IS COLUMBUS; OUR JAZZ SCENE AIN'T POPPIN' ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN THE EXPLODING NUMBER OF FERAL FEDORAS WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS. PUSH. THE. FEDORAS. INTO. THE. SEA!!!!!!
***END PSA TRANSMISSION***
We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast. It's Monday, or whatever. (I can't tell time without a sundial, and I skipped Gregorian calendar day in school; so I'm out here kinda winging this stuff until my mom finishes her famous lasagna and summons me from her basement for breakfast. Please don't call the cops.)
A BAD IDEA: WILL MUSCHAMP TAUNTED A POLICE CANINE, GOT ARRESTED. What was it old friend Will Muschamp said about the level of responsibility coaches bear for their players' off-the-field actions? SOMEBODY RUN THAT BACK FOR ME.
[Coaches] are 100% responsible.
Well, it turns out a sanctimonious attitude can have some drawbacks. At 4:15 AM on Sunday morning, Gainesville police responded to a disturbance at a Gainesville nightclub. There, they found by-stander and starting Florida middle linebacker Antonio Morrison. When police went to make arrests, Morrison started barking and antagonizing a trained police dog. When police told Morrison to step to the front of the line and tried to arrest him, he resisted. He was charged with interfering with police business by harassing a police animal and resisting arrest/obstructing justice without violence.
Morrison, who was arrested last month after refusing to pay a cover charge and informing the bouncer "I am Antonio!" before punching him, has been suspended for the first two games of Florida's 2013 campaign at least. I don't know why though, because according to Muschamp's logic, the head coach is 100% responsible for this action; at the very least Florida should be missing their head coach for those first two games as well. Anything else would be hypocritical of such an obviously principled man.
Since Antonio Morrison wasn't recruited or coached by Urban Meyer, it will be interesting to see how Mike Bianchi and other clucking handkerchief-wavers in the national media go about indicting Ohio State's head coach when Morrison inevitably murders somebody five years from now.
THE BUNGLING NCAA. There is an on-going effort to file a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA in regards to their handling of concussions/other head injuries, especially in football. Late Friday, thousands of pages of NCAA internal documents and depositions were filed in federal court as part of that motion. In internal emails, NCAA staffers mocked the safety efforts of David Klossner, the organization's director of health and safety:
“Dave is hot/heavy on the concussion stuff,” wrote Ty Halpin, the director of playing rules administration. “He’s been trying to force our rules committees to put in rules that are not good — I think I’ve finally convinced him to calm down.”
“He reminds me of a cartoon character,” responded Nicole Bracken, the associate director of research.
“HA! I think you’re right about that!” Halpin wrote.
HA! Hours before these documents were filed in court, the NCAA attempted to head the matter off by donating $399,999 to study the long-term affects of concussions. (Here's a hint from a layman: they're probably not good.) Yet, some of the actions of NCAA members contradict the organization's pledge to player safety. From the same Washington Times article:
— A 2009 email from a University of Georgia assistant football trainer discussed potential NCAA concussion legislation and admitted athletes were returned to games after suffering concussions.
“I personally have seen an athlete knocked unconscious and return in the same quarter in recent years,” Dean Crowell wrote in an email to Klossner and several others.
...
— An internal NCAA survey released in 2010 showed 50 percent of responding schools didn’t require a concussed athlete to see a physician and around half would return an athlete to the same game after suffering a concussion. Just 66 percent of schools used baseline testing; of those that didn’t, 70 percent indicated cost was a factor and 48 percent regarded the process as too time-consuming.
I think it should be a primary violation for anyone in the NCAA to email one of their co-workers at this point. ***Jim Tressel, sitting on a pile of Big Ten championship rings in Akron, nods wistfully***
Della Valle, shown here priming to destroy Euro competition.DELLA VALLE IS ITALIAN FOR MVP. Amedeo Della Valle, OSU's Italian basketball import, has been tearing up the European U-20's competition this summer. He's had ice pumping through his veins and has hit a number of buzzer-beaters, but it turns out he's been pretty good for the other 98% of the game as well: De Valle was named European U-20 Championship MVP as he led Italy to the championship.
I'm no Thad Matta, and the European U-20's are no Big Ten, but I think Ohio State should make Amedeo Della Valle their closer: bring him in to music and light effects with the game on the line. Then when he ices a shot, he can strut off the court calmly like, "Did you idiots expect anything else?" It would be high-level trolling that would result in so many salty tears of opposing fans and it would be glorious.
GUITON CAN MOVE HEAVEN & EARTH, NOT FURNITURE. Smooth jazz prodigy and the man Tom Herman calls "the best backup quarterback in the country," Kenny Guiton is a man with many admirers ever since he substituted for an injured Braxton Miller during last year's Purdue game and up-ended the Boilermaker's upset bid. According to Bob Hunter of the Columbus Dispatch, Guiton has been healing this summer due to a fractured hand he hurt when it got caught between two pieces of furniture while moving into a new apartment. (Moving: still the worst.)
Between this, Marcus Baugh murdering brain cells at Charlie Bear and Jordan Hall slicing his foot open on a piece of glass while letting his dog out and missing the 2012 campaign, I say we just ban Summer since it is obviously more dangerous to OSU players than the actual football season.
THOSE WMDs. Jim Boeheim is either old or dead... The Spy Who Loved... Catch up on Breaking Bad in nine minutes... Saddam Hussein was awarded the key to Detroit in 1980... The Hunt for Illegal Egg Collectors... Bee Rustlers are on the loose... A Tennessee man stole human ashes because he thought it was cocaine... UNC's academic scandal just keeps growing... That's messed up... Chris Withrow is a first-balloter for the "Looks like a Closer Hall of Fame"... Annual reminder: Will Hill was a beast at Twitter... Heroin in New England: More abundant and deadly... Kanye West dumped a paparazzi this weekend... Pride of Ohio: Marion... Braxton Howell's The Damn LP...
