Friday, April 20, 2007

Busy time (but not news-wise)

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. Schoolwork is keeping me busy, and there wasn't really anything much to write about. I suppose I could give you a breakdown of the rosters for the spring game tomorrow, but that would be about as informative as it would be boring (and pointless).

I guess I will take this opportunity to get something off my chest. Usually I like to keep the message board stuff off here, because it's well taken care of on its own. However, this week marked a sad anniversary in Big 8/12 sports history, as April 16th marked the 11th year since former Nebraska QB (and a native of Goodland, Kan.) died in a plane crash.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm a full supporter of heckling other programs and their players, as long as it's witty and creative and not mean-spirited. That's part of what makes college sports so great, because fans actually care enough to come up with stinging cheers for other players. For examples of what I consider funny, see Missouri's Antlers circa the Billy Tubbs incident(when they ran out on the court in jogging suits and one guy with a cardboard car ran them over). For examples of what I don't find funny, see Missouri's Antlers pretty much ever since. There's a fine line to be toed between good taste and outright cheap shots.

The inhabitants of a certain K-State Internet message board (I won't dignify it by linking it) have pole-vaulted over that line of decency by making light of Berringer's death in a most distasteful way. If you happen to be one of them, do us all a favor: go to the nearest grocery store/pharmacy, buy a large bottle of ibuprofen, and go home and take every single pill in the bottle (note: don't actually do this).

Going to K-State football games is one of my favorite activities. However, it's always marred by one or two people in my area who are loud, foul-mouthed (and it's hard to offend me) and just generally despicable human beings. It's the same at other schools that I've been to (and a fairly high concentration of them in Lawrence on a certain September evening a few years ago...). We've seen bad things like this before, including the "Sal is dead, go big red" cheer at Nebraska during the Colorado game in the early 90s. Unfortunately, our assholes decided to make themselves known to the world on the Internet recently. They are not representative of K-State fans as a whole.

At least we can yell "get a room!" to the clingy girls who commit PDA with their boyfriends all game long.

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In order to toughen up the players for this year's football season, Coach Prince had the football players go through a morning workout with the soldiers at Fort Riley in January. I'm not going to be so ridiculous as to claim this is going to get us another win or two next fall, but I do like Prince's ability to think outside the box and use his available resources (a large military base 20 miles away) to give the players a change from the monotony of workouts. Also, here's hoping the coaches don't have to post any more locker-room notices of Fort Riley soldiers who won't return from Iraq alive.

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Have a great weekend everyone. Good luck to the Royals as they take on the division-leading Twins at the K this weekend, as well as the Bat Cats as they are host to the Dirt-Burglars this weekend. We need a series win in that one.

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