Tuesday Thoughts

It’s Tuesday. Bearcats Blog has thoughts. Combining them makes Tuesday thoughts. That’s how a blog works. 

There has not been a whole lot of talk about the Cincinnati spring game, held last Saturday. That’s mainly because it seemed like it was very boring. From what I gathered, there were some plays, and then 1 on 1 drills and a general lack of anything interesting. The most promising bit came at the hands of Walter Stewart. From his defensive end position, he registered 3 sacks. That might not speak too highly of whoever was trying to guard him that they let a first time defensive end spank them, but let’s look at the positives for Walter. Oh, I thought of a nickname. We can say that Walter Stew is nightmare brew. Huh huh? Yeah, that’s not very good at all.

It seemed like there was definitely a spark missing from the game this year. Last season, we had Butch Jones in his first game, and they broke out all sorts of things. DJ Woods threw a reverse pass. This season, I dunno. Brian Bennett of ESPN had maybe the shortest write up of anything I’ve ever seen him write. He said that Stewart was the defensive MVP, Danny Milligan the offensive MVP but who cares, and Kenbrell Thompkins didn’t play. That was it. BB couldn’t even write 2 sentences.

Spring games are kind of weird to talk about at great detail. They are the essence of meaningless. They are played in the spring for one. The teams haven’t really been practicing that long before hand. They don’t really do anything that resembles good football. Yet, they are big ratings draws on ESPNU. People love to watch football in this country. Everyone wants to see the next star before the season starts. Everyone wants to see the new faces and if they can live up to the hype. It’s like a spring training game that no one would watch, except the old people in Florida or Arizona. The only difference is, that people in Alabama, and Auburn, and Notre Dame, and LSU and so on and so on are insane and eat football up. Spring football is a boom in places that don’t have pro teams to care about. They make the college teams the pro teams. Places like Kentucky are a local example. Louisville and Kentucky pack the place for basketball. It doesn’t matter if they are good, or if they are bad. They sell out. When the teams have any kind of momentum for football, they sell out. The same goes for the other teams, but reversed. There will never be a day when college sports is without scandal when we live in times that college teams are treated like pro teams. That’s the truth. There is always going to be one person at one school who wants theirs to be the best, and they will pull out all the stops to make that happen. Look at Oklahoma State. T Boone Pickens wants them to be a national power, and he’s putting in a ton of money to make it so. One has to assume what OSU is doing in front of the public, overzealous people who want the Cowboys to climb to power are doing behind closed doors. Recruiting is a dirty, dirty game. We probably hear less than 5% of what actually happens with the fraud. That’s another topic for another day. Before I close this paragraph, no, I’m not saying Oklahoma State is cheating. 

Cincinnati sports fans are kind of insane. Reds fans are being especially irrational lately. The Reds are still in first place, yet people are reacting like they are 2-98. They struggled with the Pirates, and people act like the season is over now. It’s not even Easter. I think that’s more of a sign of the reactionary times we are living in right now. Games can’t just happen anymore. There has to be a huge story behind every one. I think a lot of that is because of the football culture that we are now living in. In the NFL and college, you have such a short window, and everything is highly important. 1 or 2 slip ups in college, and your title hopes go to shreads. The NFL has become even more extreme, where it seems like every game is the most important game of the season. Not all of the games are the most important. That mentality runs into baseball and basketball. Now that it’s the NBA playoffs, thinking like that is coming back into style. The Bulls struggled with the Pacers twice, that means they can’t win the NBA title. The Spurs lost to Memphis? That means they are going to lose in the first round. It’s becoming a snap decision society. No one really wants to let things marinate. Journalism has become the same way. It’s he who hesistates is lost. It use to be he who has the worst story is lost. That doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all FIRST. I find it very annoying. As fans, we can all be irrational at times. I’m sure that there were a lot of irrational things said during the basketball season and football season. We can’t help it. The people who get paid, they are the ones that should help it. Take that sports media, and media in general. You just got put in your place. This was about the Reds. The fans need to chill. Once they fall out of first place, feel free to start your bitching. As long as they are still in front of everyone, don’t be that person. You can complain about the following people freely though: Matt Maloney, Nick Masset, Juan Francisco, and that might be it. Just those three. And LeCure if you find him annoying. Oh, and you can complain about shoplifting Leake. That’s all. Enjoy the good times. That’s another thing that has seemingly disappeared, enjoying the good times. The NCAA tournament was a lot of fun for me. Why? Because I savored the win over Missouri. It was so sweet to be back in the tournament, and win a game. Not every team gets to do either of those things. We got to do both. Granted, some of that might be that my expectations of beating UConn were very low, but you have to take delight in things when you can. I talked myself into the UConn game, as you might have noticed when I picked UC to win. If you re-read the Missouri write up, the vibe of this was the last win of the season is totally there. I thought that when I wrote it, and almost scrapped the whole thing because it seemed negative in a way.

Well, that’s about all that’s in the thought tank for today. I’m bad a finishing posts. I can’t just end them, I need to think of an ending. That’s not really working out today. I need a closing phrase. It’s up to you, readers. Think of a closing line. Send suggestions on twitter or facebook or in the comments. Have a nice week.