There’s really only one thing worse than being wrong: being loud-wrong. This dude is a good guy all in all, but to say he’s passionate about sports is putting it mildly. And since I work in an office of mostly dorky engineers (me included) and program managers, most of the athletic opinions he espouses go unchallenged no matter how ridiculous they may seem. (Said coworker has made a B-Court All-Star appearance once before as the coworker who boasted he could bench press 225 lb., close to double his own weight…yea.) Most of the time, I ignore him and go about my business, but he's been in rare form lately. Here’s some of the doozies I couldn’t quite lay off of over the past few weeks.
Oh, s***!
In sports betting, picking against the spread is a 100% random process.
There are no good short basketball players.
No good basketball players come from small high school programs
An average team from our company adult intramural basketball league could beat the majority of the country’s high school basketball teams.
He’s annoying to argue with partially because he always assumes he’s right no matter what. He also often doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. For example, when I asked what he had based any of these hyperbolic basketball statements off of, it wasn’t from a lot of experience playing or watching basketball…it was based off of the heights of and common high schools where college prospects were listed on recruiting websites.
Arguing with him about this stuff is also obnoxious partially because there is an element of truth to most of his opinions. Yes, there is a degree of randomness to picking against the spread because that’s the way sports work in general, but there’s a reason people with enough resources and brains can actually make a lot of money off of sports betting. Yes, height obviously is a huge factor in basketball, but not every good basketball player is 6’8”. And what exactly qualifies as “good?” Division 1 players only? Yes, there are certain high schools like Dematha and Oak Hill that are basketball factories, churning out pro prospects like an assembly line, but did every high profile baller come out of schools like that? The answer would be “no.” And I have watched a lot of high school basketball over my lifetime, and I know the level of play of a lot of the players in this work league…let’s just say that last statement is not even close to true.
If you stay in a discussion with him long enough, you will usually find that these statements cover up some hidden agenda of his. He stinks at picking games against the spread, or he is short and stinks at basketball; therefore, all short people must stink at basketball, and so on…today was another doozy that, even with my voice so hoarse that it is barely audible, I couldn’t lay off of: Maryland’s drop in men’s basketball ticket prices shows just how crappy their athletic program is.
What…wait…what? Ok, yes…Maryland’s athletic program is in a particular state of suck-titude right now. The football team is awful. They have had to cut certain sports because they aren’t raking in enough money. Their move to the Big 10 was a pure money-grab. And even the men’s basketball team has been successful to a degree, but not to the standards they had made for themselves as of late. But…what?
Exactly.
Even if Maryland’s athletic program was flourishing, why wouldn’t they do that this time of year? Students are home on winter break. The gym is going to be half-full, especially if they’re playing schools like Monmouth and Stony Brook. You might as well get as many people through the gate as you can so you can sell as many sodas and hot dogs as possible. This idea made just as much sense when Maryland wasn't financially in the tank. But if you hang around just long enough, you will find out that the genesis of this statement has to do with said coworker’s comparison to athletic fandom in this part of the country to that of somewhere like the University of Florida, where he grew up near and roots for to this day.
Comparing collegiate sport support between a place like Washington, DC, and just about any SEC school is silly. There are a million things to do and see in and around DC, and its population is absurdly transient. It’s a Redskins’ town and a basketball town, but hometown support for any other team or school fluctuates depending on who’s hot in that moment. SEC-country is a completely different culture, where many schools like Arkansas and Alabama have little competition to hold onto people’s attention. Schools from that pocket of the country produce fanatical (and sometimes radical) supporters that steal each other’s mascots and poison each other’s historic trees. The craziest (and dumbest) thing Terp fans do is burn their own couches in the street. This doesn’t make sports fans from this area better or worse…it just makes them different.
Ok, maybe that's a little bit crazy too...but mostly just dumb.
And that’s the point. Save your over-generalized and mostly unfounded opinions, dude. They’re not going to fly over here! I don’t mean to pick on this guy…but I will continue to do so here because I enjoy it!
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