Championship game

Bubba will watch the national championship for anything. I mean that. The Bubbas of America would gather and watch the national championship of marble shooting if they still had one. Last week it was the NCAA National Championship of College Basketball. March Madness if you will. I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch the only game I watched all year. The Memphis Tigers and Kansas Jay Hawks were the two that made it to the big game. Memphis was supposed to be the best by far and win by a lot, but the Jay Hawks had not read those polls.

I want to be careful here so I don't do a Don Imus. So, read this all the way thru and not a part of it and maybe I won't get so much mail. This is just an observation on my part and an opinion on the game itself. When the starting players were introduced, both teams were all African American. There wasn't a Chinese, Caucasian, Indian, Korean, Arab, Mexican, Russian, Japanese, or a Guam person among them, just black players, nothing else. Where is the diversity in that? I remember a time when people of other races were "forced" to be on the teams so it would be more diverse. Why has that been done away with? By the same token, there were no black people in either the band and the cheerleaders were all lily white. No black, no brown, no red, or yellow, just white people. Young people watching that game last night, got the message that black people can play basketball, but they can't play musical instruments in a band or dance … Man, times have changed. I wonder if anyone will complain about this. I doubt it because if they did, they would be called racist. Only "people of color" can bring it up and I'm just a "typical white person," according to Senator Obama! But, I have a good heart and believe in the dream Dr. King died for. That is; that the best are chosen regardless of the color of their skin. I wonder why we still have to have "quotas" and "affirmative action" to get into college, but obviously not to play those universities sports programs. As I say times have changed. I just wonder if the change is what it was supposed to have been.

I didn't like the game. I just can't get into seven foot men running around in their underwear jamming and slamming a ball thru a hoop. They were a sight to behold. I bet there were 374 pounds of tattoos on both teams. One player had so many tattoos that it was hard to tell if he had any skin. The "Boys from River City" as the Memphis team likes to be called, didn't even have anyone from the great state of Tennessee on the team. They were from New York City, Detroit, and California. There was one young man from Kansas, he was white with red hair and sat on the bench all night. I wonder if he would getsome tattoos if they would let him play. It was a "macho" thing, not a game. They hit each other, flung elbows, "dissed" each other, called each other names and tried to see who could out-tattoo the other one.

Kansas went ahead with 9:55 minutes left in the first half and never looked back. They were the most fit and when the player with the skull tattoo with a dagger sticking out of it, and blood dripping from the knife made the three pointer to extend the game into overtime, they were the best team by far.

I wonder if he ever thought about the fact that a skull would not have any blood in it to drip, if you stuck a knife into it. Probably not, but he also had six tribal bands on his arms, and I bet he didn't know the tribe of a single one of them!

In the overtime period, Memphis got behind and never caught up. They didn't make a basket for a full five minutes after Bleeding Skull made the three-pointer to extend the game.

I think it was because they were trying to read all the other players tattoos and got confused by the message they were sending out. I'm not sure of that, but it seemed that way to me. The entire team has the graduation rate of below room temperature and I'd be willing to bet none of them are "Smarter than a Fifth Grader."

To me it was a sad thing to watch. I didn't see a gentleman in the game, not one. I never saw one bit of sportsmanship, but I do think I saw one play ran in the second half. When the player with the list of names from his shoulder to his elbow actually passed the ball twice, I'm not sure it was an actual play, but I think it was.

If you want to see the beauty of the game, you should have watched the women play in the National Championship. Stanford and Tennessee played the game "under the rim," running plays, and working hard to be great athletes. Pat Summitt, the coach at Tennessee has NEVER had a lady play for her that did not get her degree at the University of Tennessee and you gotta have an IQ of above average to even get into Stanford, so I enjoyed watching them play the game and not have try to slam dunk every point just so they can call the player they went over for the jam a name and refer to her momma's family lineage.

"If you want to see the game played as it should be, watch the women play it"…I wish I had said that, but I didn't. The immortal John Wooten said that just last year. Who is he? Just the greatest basketball coach that ever lived!! Ten national championships at UCLA, that's all. I think he knows a little bit about the game.

All I know is that last night reminded me of why I don't get into basketball anymore.

Just thought you'd like to know…