Dumping Them Out: NCAA Refs
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out
Here's a take I've had on weed for the longest time. It's a take that deep down I know is wrong. A take that I'm sure can be proven incorrect by science. But I've been smoking weed since I was 16 years old. I no longer smoke as much as I used to, but there was a good 5 year stretch there where I was smoking multiple times a day (sorry for bragging I know how cool that sounds).
But my take is, throughout my entire weed smoking career, I've never once been able to tell the difference between indica, sativa, and hybrids. They're all the fucking same to me. I have half a mind to think that the marketing of indica vs sativa is just completely made up. Never once have I smoked sativa and thought, "Wow I feel energized and motivated". That's an insane concept to me. When I smoke weed, no matter what weed it is, I enjoy myself for about 30 minutes. Then I spend the next couple of hours dwelling on every single mistake/awkward interaction I've had in my life. Then I think about how I'm going to die someday. Then I put on a comfort podcast (Cum Town) to distract me from my thoughts until my high wears off. No matter what strain of weed I smoke, that's the exact experience I have. I think weed strains are fake news.
I might just start using Dumping Them Out to share old tweets from complete strangers. Just tweets I find hilarious. This gem from 2018 came across my desk today.
With all do respect to Miles and his oozing knife wound, that's one of the funniest Easter tweets I've seen. It's even better than this tweet from 2018 that I stole from someone funnier than me in order to get 13 likes.
I'm not proud about doing that, but it happened. But as quirky and topical as my stolen joke was, it's not nearly as funny as the "oozing wound, beware of stabbers, incest tweet". That has to be the best tweet in the history of Easter.
Did anybody else see this TikTok posted yesterday about over inflated basketball in the NCAA Tournament?
I have no clue how legit that guy is. Apparently he's a shooting coach. He sure talks like he knows what he's doing. But whether his TikTok is complete bullshit or not… overinflated balls are all I can think about when I'm watching a game now. Every air ball I attribute to overinflated balls. Then you got crazy fucking people like Doug Gottlieb saying that all POINT GUARDS should carry a pin with them to deflate balls before the game.
That sounds great and all, but that has to be highly illegal right? That's literally what Deflategate was all about. We can't just have PG's deflating balls to their liking across the league, right? That seems like it'd be a problem. Again, that whole video is very possibly bullshit. But this shooting coach is in my head now. Now, every time I see a turnover I'm blaming it on an inflated ball.
I'm watching this Purdue-Tennessee game right now. I hate that I'm even writing about this, because I'm extremely well aware that I DO NOT know ball. But as a casual fan, every weekend, I somehow end up watching a Purdue game. And every Purdue game, Zach Edey goes to the free throw line 100 times. On Twitter, people are always mad about it. I get mad about it too. It seems like every time Edey moves he gets a foul call. But again, what the fuck do it know. I'm just an Indiana fan who gets mad about Purdue. I know I'm biased.
HOWEVER, I did umpire Little League baseball for over a decade. And from doing that, I know for a fact that after the games are over, the officials go back into the locker room and talk about the calls they made. I'm dying to hear what they have to say about their Zach Edey calls. Edey has been getting these calls for years. If every ref in college basketball is making them, then I have to give them SOME benefit of the doubt, and assume they have a good reason for them. I just want to hear what that reason is. I would love to be a fly on the wall for that candid conversation between referees.
Or maybe (and I know this is going to sound like an INSANE idea that nobody has ever brought up before) - can we just have the fucking refs talk to the media for 5 minutes after the game? Why the fuck are we protecting them so much? They're paid good money. They should be able to speak for themselves. I honestly think it would help the refs image if they did thatt. Refs are human too. They should want the opportunity to explain themselves. Even if they have to say "you know what, I'm sorry, I think I fucked up that call"… I feel like that would go a long way. Maybe I'm giving fans too much credit. But when I was an umpire, anytime I had a dad yelling at me about a call, I'd go up to him and say, "Fuck man do you really think I was that off?" That would totally disarm him. Crazy sports Dad's aren't used to that. But when you do that, you can actually have a real conversation about the game.
In the end, they'll either agree or disagree. If I come to the conclusion that I was wrong, then I'll admit it. Nobody is perfect. But at least the fans will respect you for being willing to talk about it. And they can see that you're trying to get better. That's only going to help the ref's image. But if we keep shielding these refs from having to take any real accountability, the refs are never going to get better, and fans are just going to keep hating them. There has to be some communication between the media and the refs. We've gone way too long without it.