Sportsmanship

I was reading ESPN.com when I came across Rick Reilly's post condemning a coach in Texas that continually runs up the score against clearly inferior teams.  Here is the text of the post:

I am not generally a spiteful man. I pat toddlers' haircuts, donate to the glee club and mostly greet the world with open arms.

But when I think of coach Greg Wise of Houston's Yates High School, I become darker than Johnny Cash's closet.

The things I would like to do to Coach Wise would curl an executioner's toes. For starters, I'd like to see him dipped in seal butter and dropped into a polar bear's cage.

Coach Wise is the hammerhead who believes it's his right to toast other basketball teams by 100 points. Sometimes more. He thumped Lee High School this season by 135 points, 170-35. Wise's team was up at the half, 100-12. And full-court pressed to the very end!

Wise is to sportsmanship what tsunamis are to beach chairs. So far this season, he's beaten teams by 135, 115, 99 (twice), 98, 90 and 88 points. Trying to get to 100 points in a crushing of Westbury, his players intentionally fouled to stop the clock.

I'd like to clock him.

If Wise doesn't stop, somebody's going to get hurt. In a Feb. 20 home game, Wise refused to pull his foot off the accelerator in a 132-68 fricasseeing of Booker T. Washington. Nobody likes to be humiliated, and this includes fans. Like at some of Yates' games, there was fighting. This time it happened in the parking lot afterward. Shots were fired, though nobody was hurt. This time.

What's it going to take for Houston Independent School District officials to stop Wise? Or suspend him? What's it going to take before Yates principal Ronald Mumphery grows a pair and disciplines his coach? Somebody dying? "These are tough kids from a tough part of town," says Jacques Armant, coach at Lee, which also lost to Yates by 99. "Beatings like this can turn out to be real dangerous."

At the very least, USA Today ought to remove Yates from its national rankings -- the school is No. 1 -- as a statement about basic sports decency. That'd be the un-Wise thing to do.

This is not war. This is not the pros. There's no bonus for belittling young men in front of their parents and girlfriends. These kids are getting their pants yanked down in front of the whole playground. They don't deserve it.

"A lot of my kids went into a kind of depression after [losing by 135]," says Armant. "They thought the game was over, but when you turn on your radio and every deejay is saying how you got beat for an all-time record, it hurts. I took one kid home, and he said, 'Coach, can you please turn the radio off? I can't take it anymore.'"

On second thought, I'd like Wise to spend a day as a speed bump in the Lee parking lot.

I was unable to reach Wise or Principal Mumphery, but Wise has defended himself by saying he practices pressing and trapping, and that doing anything else during the game would be bad coaching. He's said that all 15 of his players -- 11 of them seniors -- play. "The [third string] deserves the chance to play hard and compete too," Wise has said.

Yes, those kids deserve to play hard and compete -- every day in scrimmages against the best team in Texas. In games against schools with no chance, they need to back off. Basketball isn't Greg Wise's personal vanity mirror. He needs to say, "We're going to work on passing. Anyone shoots and they're running stairs at the Astrodome."

But Wise won't say that because Wise is about Wise. He's after records. He wants teenage scalps. He tried to break the record for most 100-point games in a row (and failed). He did set the state record for points in one game (170).

And I wouldn't be surprised if he goes for the national record of 211. If he gets it, I hope they add an *:

*Set by Yates High School, Classless of 2010.

I could not agree more with this post if the facts are as stated.  This is dispictable behavior and disrespectful to kids themselves and the whole of the institution of interscholastic sports. 

Coach Greg Wise of Houston's Yates High School = FAIL.

Tinsel E - 1 year update

Yesterday, I visited the orthodonist.  It's been just over a year since I got these retched braces, but the orthodontist gave me some good news!!  He likes the way my teeth look, and my next appointment (in 5 weeks) will be to take impressions of my teeth.  The impressions are to make my retainers, which means the following appointment after that (5 weeks after that?), the braces come off!!  YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!

Naturally, I couldn't get away with no extra torture just because I'm almost done.  They put a rubber band chain(as they call them) around each one of my top teeth brackets to pull all of my top teeth together and close the gaps between them.  These rubber band chains, whether on my top front 4, bottom front 4 or all of my top teeth, give me headaches for the first few days of having them.  Seriously.  Before this, I had no idea your teeth could make your head hurt.  Now I know... ugh.

But the light at the end of the tunnel is there... faint, but there!

NBC's show Chuck and Mackintosh Braun's album The Sound

Last night, Steve and I were catching up on our Must-See-TV that we had DVR'd, specifically, the episodes of Chuck that we hadn't seen yet.  One of the episodes we watched was Chuck vs. First Class, and during one scene, a song was in the background that made me pause.

This is not the first time a tune from Chuck has caught my attention.  In fact, both Steve and I have "Chuck" playlists on our iPods full of tunes from Chuck episodes.  So since I wanted to know what that one tune was, naturally I went out to my favorite Chuck fan-site, ChuckTV.net.  The site has an entire music section broken out by Season and then by episode, and then the tunes per episode.  From there, you can download the tune from iTunes or Amazon directly.  Of course, you can find out what the music is per episode on NBC's official Chuck website, too.  :-)

So which tune caught my attention in the Chuck vs. First Class episode?  The tune Wake Up by Mackintosh Braun.  I went out to iTunes and previewed the entire album, and knew after 5 tunes that I would enjoy the whole album.  It was my first album purchase in a very long time. 

Who is Mackintosh Braun?  According to the Tinderbox Music website:

Mackintosh Braun is an Oregon based electronic duo that is reaching listeners far beyond their local Portland ties. Their debut album "The Sound" is quite frankly a headphone masterpiece, filled with rich detail and soothing vocal harmonies.

"The idea was to create an album that you didn't have to skip through, hopefully this is one of those albums for people." Combining a creative blend of organic instrumentation with electronic clicks and pops, Mackintosh Braun accomplishes a feat that few achieve.

I've been listening to it all morning, and it's awesome.

Tinsel E - Update

Went to the orthodontist yesterday hoping that they'd tell me it was time to make my final appointment.  I was sorely disappointed.  To boot, my teeth are now sore, too.

I've had a rubber band on my right upper incisor for the last 6 weeks to "pull it out" to fix my bite.  Apparently, it didn't move enough for the orthodontist's happiness. 

As they did a number of months ago with my bottom front 4 teeth, they put a rubber band across my 4 front top teeth.  This pulls my front teeth closer together thus creating space between my front 4 teeth and my 2 incisors.  This will allow the rubber band on my right incisor to be more effective and actually pull that tooth out since there will be room now for it to move.

This whole scenario makes my front 4 teeth hurt like hell.  I'm on motrin again in an attempt to get my mind to stop thinking about how much my mouth hurts.  I can't bite into anything either.  I'm losing my patience for this, though admittingly, the results are amazing from what I can see...

I have another appointment March 1, and I'm supposed to be re-evaluated at that time, whatever that means.  Maybe I'll get some good news...

Another one bites the dust

Apparently, our bay window overlooking our backyard has the same properties as my parents' picture windows on their house: it is a magnet for birds to fly into head-on, not realizing there's a hard immovable object there at all. 

So more than once, we have heard a very loud THUNK and in most cases, we don't see the bird when we go to investigate.  In fact, one time, Steve did find the bird, face down in the pacasandra, but alive.  So he picked up the little critter, and put it somewhere where it could recover and fly away at its leisure but also safe from neighbor's outdoor cats.  No easy snacks for you!

But this time, the thunk captured a victim.

Cardinal

A closer look... you an even see the ice/snow on it!

Luckily, DJ didn't notice it while looking out the window, so we avoided some trauma there.  But man... we have a deadly window!