katie's homework assignment
also known as “katie’s sports blog manifesto”
1. If I saw Rick Pitino on the street and he were on fire, I would not even consider stopping.
If you’re a professional coach, your job is to take the pieces you’re given and make them work as well as they possibly can. A coach is just a manager. And sometimes that manager is given shitty pieces he or she didn’t choose. But, at the end of the day, the job of a coach, to cite a Teddy Roosevelt quote that is a close to an “inspirational” ideology that I have, is to “do the best you can, where you are, with what you have.” That’s it. If they can teach and guide people along the way, cool. If they can endear a region’s sports fans to them, great. If they can avoid getting choked by their players, double-plus good. But I can’t stand listening to a coach throw the players under a bus, I can’t stand watching a coach dick around trying to make a point about small things that wouldn’t matter if they were just ignored or going on and on about teaching a 25 year-old who’s been a star for years some skill he somehow never picked up in college or high school or summer leagues. And that’s why I hate Rick Pitino more than most people who have actually done me harm. I mean, there are other coaches I hate for very similar reasons (Larry Brown springs to mind), but I didn’t watch them fuck around with my favorite team for years and waste the talents of many young players along the way, while also being a greasy, arrogant, overpaid, excuse-making tool. And that’s that.
2. It’s just proof that no matter where you live, former professional athletes can kill you
The thing about being a female sports fan is that you have to admire and marvel at the talents of men who pretty much get a free pass to beat, rape, or kill you as long as they are an extremely awesome athletic talent. On the other hand, they will be crucified if they kill a dog or two. I’m not saying dogs aren’t pretty cool, but, you know. anyway, this creates a bit of a strange feminist cognitive dissonance. and then on top of that, I have to deal with a douche like bill simmons making six jokes per podcast about how girls don’t understand sports. oh, and also erectile disfunction drug ads have completely taken professional sports programming hostage. it’s hard out here for a girl.
(please note, rejected item 2 was “never ever ever sleep with an nba player. unless it’s juwan howard and you want to sue him for giving you the herpes.”)
3. without sports, there’d be no next year.
I try hard to be an optimistic person. it’s very difficult for me, but, I think it makes me a better person when I try to look forward to a pleasant future, rather than giving into the shitshow that is life. and sports? sports is the ultimate source of hope. those “without sports…” ads on espn were genius on so many levels, but the “no next year” was always the best one, the one closest to my heart. I may not be able to hope that I can get a better job or get over my ex-boyfriend or deal with whatever is going on in my day-to-day, but every april I can hope that this is the year and every fall I can get excited about the pat’s prospects all over again. and it’s nice to know that even when I can’t have faith in anything else, I can have faith in grown men playing with balls.
4. things I love (aka, lists in place of real content, part 1)
charles barkley, the intricacies of the various salary caps, hot dogs at fenway and crabcakes at camden yards, safeties, shaq, mormons in sports, gays in sports, local sports announcers, pedro martinez, being a sports fan in boston, march madness brackets, pretending to hate soccer just to make people angry, ron artest’s rap career, white men can’t jump, derek jeter’s autobiography.
5. things I hate (aka, part 2)
teal uniforms, non-plural nouns as team names, the wnba, people who care too much about steroids, kobe bryant, the new york yankees, satan’s boyfriend joe buck, the ncaa, archie manning and his awkward sons, rick reilly, field of dreams.
