March Madness - Try Coaching Madness

Since my bracket is already practically worthless, I figured I'd take this time to do a little blogging. In the spirit of March Madness, I thought I'd share a little story with you.

Shortly after graduating from IU, I took a volunteer position coaching Bloomington Indiana's Special Olympic basketball team. I had some experience working with this population, and with my athletic background, I was an easy choice as a Co-Head Coach.

This particular team had won the state championship the previous 2 years. Needless to say, there was some degree of pressure and expectation that came with this position.

Coaching was another story altogether. While trying to teach a proper bounce pass, I also had to deal with the guy, who's first words to me were, "I'm Jordan, just get me the ball. I'm Jordan." Getting this guy to not shoot every time he touched the ball was a full time job in and of itself.

While trying to teach the fundamentals of a 1-2-2 Zone Full Court Press Defense, I had to keep the guy focused, who had no idea what deodorant and/or a shower was.

During games, making sure everyone played was always a challenge. Especially when our Jr. Bobby Knight would throw a chair onto the court. Something he'd do at lease 3 times a game.

You think the AAU parents are bad? You think the soccer mom is tough to deal with. You haven't seen anything until you've dealt with one of these psycho parents.

Yeah, I know, a lot of pressure. Good thing we had our secret weapons. We had 3 guys on our team that were just really stupid. Really stupid. Stupid to the point where the state of Indiana considered them to have an actual disability. Great for me though. I'd stagger their minutes so that I had at least 2 of them on the floor at all times.

I remember our very first game. There was this guy on the other team with one normal arm, and then one chicken wing arm that he couldn't use at all. Funny thing was, he had a great shot. This guy was going nuts on us. At halftime, we were down 16 points and this guy had most of their points.

During my halftime pep talk, I got a little fired up. In front of the whole team, I challenged our best ringer to guard Chicken Wing the rest of the game. "Everywhere he goes, I want you right there with him. If he goes to the bathroom, you're going with him. If he goes to McDonalds, I want you sitting right next to him." My ringer ate up the attention and my team loved it.

Chicken Wing ended up not scoring again, and we won the game. To this day, I can very clearly remember how pitiful and dejected he looked every time he tried to shoot a one-handed J with my ringer hanging all over him. I got a few punches on my express ticket to hell for that one.

Have a great weekend everyone, and enjoy the games!

Baba Ganoush, OUT.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

I can't really say I'm a Colts fan, but I did live in Indiana for 11 years. As I've said before, I think it's great we're having an all Midwest Super Bowl.

It should be a great game, and since I have to root for someone, I'm picking the Colts. I honestly think the Colts will win. I think the Colts O and the Bears D will be a wash. In the end, the Colts have a much better Defense than the Bears Offense, which should prove to be the difference.

Now, let's get to the good stuff! I'm going to rate my top 5 Super Bowl commercials, and a few other Top 5s. I'm going to try to do this in real time, but might get a little side tracked with pizza deliveries, refreshing beers, and screaming kids.

Here we go:

My Top 5 SB Commercials

1 - I really liked this Chevy commercial. The best part was formula 1 race car driver Johnny O'Connell rapping along to a song as his car is lowered off a truck.

Chevrolet: Everybody Loves a Chevy

2 - Two guys kissing over a Snickers, classic!

Snicker: Kiss



3 - Budweiser, as always, put out a lot of SB commercials. Most of them were just okay, but I thought this one was really funny.

Bud Light: Rock Paper Scissors Beer



4 - The CareerBuilder.Com commercials were great. This one was the best, but they were all good. The guy in that "promotion pit" that was covered in Post-Its was comedy!

CareerBuilder: Office Jungle Fight



5 - Rollin' VIP baby!

Worst Super Bowl Commercials

1 - The PepsiCo commercials have been terrible. I've counted 2 separate Sierra Mist commercials and 2 separate Doritos commercials. I understand the Doritos commercials were made by people who won contests, but bad nontheless.

And seriously - Sierra Mist? Not Pepsi, not Diet Pepsi, and not even Mountain Dew? Come on now!

4 separate PepsiCo commercials, at how many millions of dollars? It's nice to see my former company utilizing their dollars so wisely. Which is actually why they're my former company.

This Doritos commercial was terrible. First off, you would never see a Family Size product on the same endcap display with regular XL Doritos. Secondly, this display is missing the #1 selling Doritos sku - XL Nacho. Where is the point of sale? Why is the dip merchandised on flex shelving and not a dip shelf? Why is Queso dip not represented on the endcap? Who in the hell picked out the sku mix?

This commercial was not really the worst I saw. However, the people at Frito Lay should be embarrassed by the lack of attention to detail.

2 - GoDaddy.Com enough already. I like hot women and boobs as much as the next guy, but I'm getting really sick of their commercials.

3 - All the crappy CBS commercials for the shows on their network.

What do/did you think?

My Top 5 Random Thoughts

1 - Why in the world do the Bears have a long snapper as one of their captains? Hmm. They just won the coin toss, so maybe he was good luck. Shows what I know.

2 - I am not a huge Prince. I have always liked his music, and have bought the occasional CD. I must say, though, that the halftime show was phenomenal. Prince seems like he is great live. Prince singing Purple Rain, in the rain - does it get any better than that?

3 - The Bear's uniforms look black. I'm sure it's the rain, but they look pretty good. They should dump their alternate orange, and get some black ones.

4 - Too much pizza and beer. I never got to the double chocolate, chocolate cake.

5 - I wonder if the new season of Survivor will be any good?

My Top 5 Game Observations

1 - I was lead to believe the Colts were not going to kick to Devin Hester. They need to NOT kick to him anymore. Kick the ball out of bounds if you have to!

2 - Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. The Bears are great at creating takeaways, but the rain is really affecting the players' ability to hold onto the ball.

3 - Thru 3 quarters, I look like a genius. Colts O and Bears D are pretty much a wash (actually a slight edge to the Colts O, which is just gravy). The Colts D is marking the Bears O look silly. I haven't been a big fan of the anti-Rex Grossman talk that's gone on much of the year. Rex isn't doing anything to silence his critics today though.

4 - Tony Dungy going for it on 4th down with under 2 minutes was a great decision. Don't give the Bears an opportunity to block the kick, and make Grossman drive 80 yards. Just brilliant!

5 - I should have put some sweet action on the game. Then again, if I had, I'm sure things would have been a little different. Wonder what the over/under was?

Baba Ganoush, OUT!

Coach Bobby Knight, We Salute You!

Unless you have been under a rock the past few days, you have probably seen the video footage of Coach "getting his players attention." In case you haven't, here it is:



Despite the fact that Texas Tech AD Gerald Myers had no problem with it, Michael Prince (the player in question) had no problem with it, and Mr. Prince's parents had no problem with it, the media made a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, some media outlets were calling for Coach's firing.

In an ESPN poll of 45,694 people, 72% said Coach did NOT cross the line with his actions on Monday.

A few quotes on the incident:

Prince was quoted in Tuesday's Lubbock Avalanche-Journal as saying, "He was trying to teach me and I had my head down, so he raised my chin up. He was telling me to go out there and don't be afraid to make mistakes. He said I was being too hard on myself."

"His parents were in total shock that anything was made out of this," Bob Knight said. "If Mike had his head hanging over a mistake again I'd flip his chin up tomorrow. I'm trying to get him to be the best player he can be and his parents' answer was that they didn't expect anything else."

It was only two weeks ago that Knight dismissed leading scorer Jarrius Jackson because the senior guard wasn't on the road to being eligible for the second semester and Knight didn't want him playing if he wasn't going to be available past December. "I kept him out of practice for a week and he progressed well and then I let him practice for a week and he progressed well and now I'm letting him play for a week and then we'll see how he's doing," Knight said of Jackson, who is averaging 24.5 points in two games so far this season.

The last situation says all you need to know about Coach. If you send your child to play for Bobby Knight, they will not be taken advantage of to win games. You will send your 18 year old to Lubbock Texas a boy, and he will leave (WITH DEGREE IN HAND) a Man.

I would also like to thank Miles Brand for dismissing the (soon to be) greatest coach in NCAA history from Indiana. As Coach prepares to pass Dean Smith this season for the most victories in NCAA history, I close with top 10 Bobby Knight sound bites.




Maybe if we still had Coach, my Alma Mater wouldn't have lost to Butler. GO IU!!!!!

Baba Ganoush, OUT!