From: Shawn Badgley
To: John Razook
Time: 9:49pm, Jan. 15
John:
I dip my quill at halftime of the Missouri-Kansas “Border Battle.” I lament the term “Border Battle” – mostly because any interstate college sports rivalry that employs it is competing with every other interstate college sports rivalry; that is to say, there are more than a few borders in the United States, for all of you a few years removed from your fifth-grade social studies class; to belabor this, Columbia and Lawrence are not even nestling border cities as, say, El Paso and Juarez are (UTEP and Universidad de la Juarez would have a legitimate “Border Battle” claim if they ever scheduled each other) – almost as much I do Austin calling itself the “River City.”
You are the “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austin. Must you laughably throw your 10-gallon hats and backward burnt-orange caps into the ring of river cities? You want to take on, oh, I don’t know, Iquitos, Peru? Or maybe Cairo? Wouldn’t a few spots in the Fertile Crescent have a claim? You want me to stay in the States? OK. St. Louis. Game over.
So, back to border battles.
The MU-KU iteration is happening right now, and it’s one hell of a game. The second half is under way. Forty-eight all at the first TV timeout. Mike Anderson’s quote at the half about his Tigers, a hard-luck 0-3 in the Big XII: “five guys out there committed to rebounding and committed to defense.” I love this guy. I knew there was something about him when his UAB Blazers bounced Kentucky in the tournament a few years ago.
By the way, John, what the hell is with you and dance flops Kansas, anyway? Why don’t you marry them, man? We are talking about a team that lost to Oral Roberts this season. I don’t care who you are or how deep you go: You lose to Oral Roberts, and the only thing you’re even close to guaranteed is candidacy for first No. 1 seed to lose to a 16. Oral Roberts sounds like a troupe of male hygienists moonlighting as escorts, but they’re really Golden Eagles who represent an Oklahoma college founded by a televangelist. Please.
Kansas is starting to run away with this thing at the 13-minute mark. Sorry for the bad karma, Mizzou. At least Scott Van Pelt and Neil Everett are in attendance.
So, colonel, I missed your show last week and haven’t been in touch, otherwise. I want to apologize for that, fella. It’s true that I didn’t attend the MU-UT game at the Erwin Center last week as planned. This is because I attended an informational meeting for an adult-league baseball team called the Austin Blues. It’s possible that I will make said team and play 40 games from April through September. I would likely be their oldest member at the tender age of 29, a sort of Jake Taylor, if you will, complete with half-naked angry cringe as hot coffee is spilled on me at the slap-happy hands of an heiress. Surely this will prove to be eminently blogable. That night, for instance, I was drunk by 9pm and refused to drive to Headhunters to hear your band wail out cacophonous dirges in the wake of Oklahoma State’s collapse.
Then, this weekend, I made a drenched yet inevitably Dante-esque journey into the hellwell of Houston, where my younger brother ran in a half-marathon while his wife tried out for the local Roller Derby team. Both did excellent and admirable work bespeaking their excellent and admirable selves, and I love them. My lovable and couth mom – who, as you’ll recall, attended the latest of her many World Series with me this year, where she aided and abetted me when I burgled a box of souvenir cups – was also there.
So, I didn’t see Virginia Tech beat North Carolina or Clemson finally go down to Maryland. I didn’t see USC almost edge UCLA or Iowa State almost beat Kansas.
I am seeing Mizzou up 68-65 on the Jayhawks with five minutes to go, though. And I saw eventual mother of my children, Ivory Latta, lead the Lady Heels over UConn earlier this evening. Bring on the slippery conditions. I have enough string cheese and ginger ale to last me through Tuesday.
:sb
UPDATES: Kansas beats Mizzou in the Phog, 80-77. The best of the Big XII – and maybe the NCAA Men’s Div. I – slate so far.
This article appears in January 12 • 2007.