Dumping Them Out: March Madness
Welcome back to a very special March Madness episode of Dumping Them Out. For me, the thing about watching March Madness this year is that I haven't vaped since Wednesday. I've still been using nicotine pouches a bit, but my nicotine intake has been way down. And pouches just don't hit even close to as satisfyingly as a vape does. So I've been very irritable. When watching basketball Friday night, I couldn't help but find myself getting exceptionally pissed off at games that weren't going to my liking. I think it's because of the nicotine.
Which means I've been thinking some really mean things about college basketball players. Things I'm not proud of. I was watching my #ExperianBusters team (Xavier) at a bar with my fiancee on Friday night, responsibly enjoying a smash burger and a non-alcoholic Corona's. As Illinois was beating up on Xavier, I found myself thinking, "This Illinois team is the biggest group of fucking losers I've seen in my entire life. They don't have a single player who doesn't look like a distant relative of Shane Gillis. If I cheered for a team who relied on shooting three-pointers the way they do I would be embarrassed. Literally I would rather go 0-30 than win playing like that. And their nickname is racist. If the NCAA wasn't a corrupt organization who only cared about money their entire program would be banned from competition."
That's not like me. I don't really feel that way. I'm better than that. Also, at the bar that night, they changed the TV I was watching to UConn-Oklahoma, forcing me to rotate my chair slightly to the left. Those fucking pricks. All because the entire bar was there to watch, and loudly cheering for UConn. How dare them. I've never wanted a team to win more than Oklahoma that night.
Let's see what else had me uncharacteristically pissed off. I got mad at the word 'chalk' on Friday night too. Every other tweet about the tournament was "What a chalky year", "This bracket is so chalk", "I knew this tournament would go chalk". "There has to be another word for when games go as expected. If there isn't, we need to come up with one. Or maybe a few. Where does 'chalk' even come from? Apparently it's something to do with horse racing? Idk. I go 51 weeks of the year without hearing the word chalk once, then in 2 days I hear it so many times it completely loses it's meaning.
Also.. the Freezing Cold Takes account. That fucking loser. When St. John's lost yesterday, of all the people in the world, of all the ball knowing Twitter accounts dedicated to giving serious college basketball… Freezing Cold Takes decided to come after little ol' me.
What the hell Takes? Am I really the #1 St. John's believer on the internet? There was nobody else in the world of college basketball who liked St. John's in the tournament? I suppose I should be flattered. And might I just say, Old Takes Exposing people for incorrectly picking the college basketball National Champion… that's a little cheap. March Madness must be shooting fish in a barrel for that guy. It's the one time of year in all of sports where everybody in America basically has a gun to their head and are forced to pick a champion. Does everybody who's bracket gets busted get dunked on? Who did Old Takes Exposed have going all the way. I feel like he should have to put that on the record.
I know I tweeted it out and everything, so that's a little different. I'm not actually mad at Takes. He's just doing the same cowardly thing he's always done. I only say that to bring me to my next point, which is the only reason Takes came across my tweet is because Rico Bosco apparently had it bookmarked as part of his crusade against St. John's basketball.
I didn't even care about St. John's. I randomly bought a ticket to the Big East Championship game and thought "Wow this is a fun basketball team" and sent a tweet. But it's tough to be called out for an incorrect pick by Rico Bosco and not come back at him. Not because of anything I have against Rico. I love Rico. I've been a Ryder since day 1. There's just so much to come back at him with. It's hard to not take the low hanging fruit. As much as Old Takes Exposed can throw a dart blindfolded and hit a person with an incorrect national champion pick, there's even more to choose from with Rico. I mean look at this…
I didn't want to take any pleasure in Alabama getting knocked out of the tournament. I actually think they can win. Labaron Philon might be my favorite player to watch in college basketball. But when you're talking shit on the back of Alabama basketball being "your team", when you've only cheered for them since Nate Oates realized if he responds to your texts and has a manager send a jumpsuit that his school will get some good Barstool promotion… you just put it on a tee for people. Except it's on a tee in the way a ball is put on a tee for a 6-year old tee-ball player who's lightyears of the other kids his age, and every time he walks up to the plate he's like, "C'mon Dad… this is embarrassing… just pitch me the ball like you do in the backyard". Yeah he can get a base hit 100% of the time, but it's not fun if it's not a challenge.
One more thing as I'm watching the end of this Florida-UConn game. Betting college basketball is just fucking crazy. UConn covered the +9.5 in the end. But they were winning the whole second half, and were a bounce or two away from losing my double digits. The final score of college basketball games just doesn't reflect how the game went at all. You're just playing Russian roulette with a 19-year old kids' ability to hit free throws down the stretch. That's all it is. Nothing even matters until the final 3 minutes. It's a fun rude. But it's an insane one to get on. No other sport can you handicap a game perfectly and wind up losing as frequently as it happens in college basketball.
