Headline Nausea by Jean Paul Sartrebate
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Basketball bad faith is consciously facing the existential experience of being regularly nauseated by ESPN basketball headlines on its web site. It is knowing there is nothing one can do about it, except not look, and at the same knowing one must look, as one must look at an accident involving a drunk driver and a bicyclist. It is becoming an existential rebel against the headlines by starting to smoke bad European cigarettes and drinking espresso from ceramic shot cups with handles barely wide enough to slip a pipe cleaner through. It is Photo Shopping some Jean Luc Godard film stills and overlaying ghost images of Camus on them, while reading Jean Baudrillard’s road trip into The Void he called “America” hoping to wipe out existentialism once and for all with his own private simulacrum south of Idaho, west of Vegas and east of Eden, only find out that existentialism is harder to kill than crab grass and ultimately that post modernism and post post modernism are no more effective as epistemic herbicides of existentialism than round up is at killing crab grass.
Imagine me wall eyed in a bad suit, with an asymmetric part and owl rimmed glasses caught in a Dick Avedon close up with each of my millions of deep black pores oozing existential angst reading the following.
“7-1 Reed commits to Auburn”
Saaaaay whaaaaat?
Bruce “Toxic" Pearl gets a footer, but Big Man U coached by someone that has not been ordered to leave the game has to make do with a bunch of 6-7 jumping jacks!
Or this: Tom “I’ve Got the Personality of a Caulking Compound Salesman” Crean signs a true power forward at Indiana, while KU has an unused scholarship!
Or this: Minnesota, which denies admission to Gaston Diedhiou from the flipping Canary Islands for not getting a good enough score on his entrance exam, has an experienced footer and an experienced 6-10er returning, when KU can’t return anyone experienced over 6-8 without calling them 6-9. We’re not talking Rick Pitino recruiting for Monsanto Land’s Ice Gophers. We’re talking Richard Pitino–Rick’s frickin’ kid!
Or this: Michigan’s Bellein nominated for sportsmanship! Are you kidding me? A coach that starts that right offensive tackle at center who has to be the only guy that ever actually deserved a stiff screen is considered a good sportsman? If Bellein is a good sportsman then Self is Mother Teresa after a visit to the Hair Club for Men!!!
Or how about this one-two punch of gag me with a camping spoon with a fork on the other end! Celtic Jeff Green gifts G-Town $1M and Ewing comes out of his ligamentis mausoleum and gifts G-Town $3M the same day! What is this? Are John Thompson’s 1.0 and 2.0 shaking down their own players now? Do college basketball players now not only have to play for flipping free, but also PAY the flipping university for the privilege of playing for it for free???
Or this headline which almost caused me to infarct in my Aeron: Bruce “Toxic” Pearl not only landed the footer mentioned above, but the same day he lands top recruit Spenser!! What is the deal here, Bruce? Did someone just open an Auburn branch of the President’s Plunge Protection Team and you, Mr. Go Away and Don’t Coach Until People Forget What You Did at Knoxville, have unlimited, untraceable Hamiltons, or what?
And get this: things are soooooo bad in college basketball now that a Judge has been asked to reject and NCAA Head Injury Deal, like a judge should even have to be asked to reject such a deal!
Oh, but as in all long dark existential nights, things go from dark to totally pitch black too. How does this headline grab you? “Colleges tapping into beer sales for cash flow.”
Where is my flipping old black Borsalino Beret? The one I wear like a yarmulka full of yeast–without a jaunty green beret style tug to one side–the one I wear and look mug shot style into my Dick Avedon close up and show all of my pores and black heads in one black and white shot against some paint peeling off a bad cafe in Paris.
It is not just the obvious market biases of the Essentially Perpetually Stupid Network. Now basketball itself is beginning to imitate the dumbness of ESPN, of the iMirror that covers it. It is like The Sea and the Mirror have become sports coverage and sports.
Help me, help me, help me, I think I am going insane!!!
(Note: All satire sans malice.)
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Headline nausea – it’s why I avoid real news headlines. It wears me out. At least the sports headlines provide a chuckle here and there. Funny you point out Pearl. Must be one hell of a recruiter. Signs guys the minute his “show cause” has expired.
But this was not my expected reading this morning. I am quite sure that this is the only basketball site that could provoke the following:
“Where is my flipping old black Borsalino Beret? The one I wear like a yarmulka full of yeast–without a jaunty green beret style tug to one side–the one I wear and look mug shot style into my Dick Avedon close up and show all of my pores and black heads in one black and white shot against some paint peeling off a bad cafe in Paris.”
I’m still thinking on that one …
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SportsCenter Play Of The Day -
“Colleges tapping into cash sales for beer flow.”
It may require a double-take…
Is “SportsCenter” one of the new Scrabble words?
The best you can hope for is to ask someone a generation older if they flipped out in midlife, too, and they console you with a pat on the back while pouring you a stiff cocktail.
It is not going to get any easier moving forward. When you have your estate sale to trim down what you will be bringing to the sanitarium, make sure to SAVE all that old KU basketball footage you took for granted in the past. It will come in handy, I guarantee.
I have been fortunate from having many quality conversations with players a generation older. They have helped cushion my fall with our current state of affairs. I can’t imagine how they deal with today except to think that they “cut the cord” a few decades ago.
I started my post in sarcasm, and ended with a eulogy.
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“I started my post in sarcasm, and ended with a eulogy.”
Very memorable. And moving.
