INDIANAPOLIS. College Bowl, the '60's quiz show that pitted Phi Beta Kappas from competing colleges against each other, is set to return this fall as the NCAA fights to put the "student" back in "student-athlete" after recent embarrassments such as Vince Young's single-digit score on the Wonderlic exam.
"We talked to Vince about it," said NCAA President Myles Brand, referring to the University of Texas quarterback who scored only six out of a possible fifty points on the aptitude test administered by the NFL. "In his defense, six is the most you can score on a single play in football, so we're not going to come down too hard on him."
Instead, taking a cue from the producers of "The New Hollywood Squares", the NCAA will sponsor "The New College Bowl", a souped-up version of the show that National Honor Society Presidents watched on Saturday afternoons as dreams of full-boat academic scholarships glided through their already-crowded brains.
The fuel that's been added to the intellectual fire this time around? A high-stakes Texas Hold 'Em format in which student contestants can wager their schools' endowments on questions like "Name King Lear's three daughters in reverse alphabetical order."
"We were brainstorming one night and I said--Hey, if Harvard is so smart, let them go all in on the flop, instead of just sitting up there in Massachusetts sneering at the rest of the country," Brand said. Harvard University's endowment was valued at $25.9 billion as of the end of 2005.
Even at the height of its popularity, College Bowl never attracted more than a miniscule audience. Its most lasting impression on the American consciousness may have been left by the movie "Diner", in which Kevin Bacon, playing Timothy Fenwick, Jr., mocks contestants as he watches the show.
In the same movie Steve Guttenberg, playing Eddie Simmons, gives his fiancee a test on the history of the Baltimore Colts as a condition to finalizing their marriage, but Brand said there were no plans to add pro football as a category. "We've got to be careful we don't cause our young people to lose their amateur standing," he said.
The most famous College Bowl matchup was undoubtedly the triple-overtime match between the University of Chicago and Brandeis University that was won on a last-second "Hail Mary" by Eugene Firke, a pre-med major from Chicago, who correctly named all elements of the periodic table in pig Latin, begininng with "ydrogenhay".
CUMMING, Georgia. Tiffany Marie Shoemaker and Naomi Wingate were getting along fine at a Mary Kay Cosmetics party at a friend's house in this exclusive Atlanta suburb last Thursday night.
"Naomi has two little girls, and so do I, so we were kinda commiserating. Then we discovered we both went to Randolph-Macon Woman's College, so we shared some fun memories about the good ol' days," Tiffany said, smiling through artificially whitened teeth as she straightened her pleated skirt.
Things turned sour when the two women told each other what sororities they had belonged to, however. "Tiffany's a Tri-Delt, which is basically the biggest bunch of snots in the South," said Naomi. "She's a 'Kite'," said Tiffany Marie, the derogatory term for a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, a competing sorority.
Tiffany said Naomi looked like a model from a farm implement catalog, and Naomi replied that Tiffany should stuff her Talbot's handbag someplace where no one would have to look at it, it was so ugly. When their hostess asked them to take their dispute outside, they did, along with their "seconds", two Junior Leaguers with needlepoint headbands who would assist them as they joined a growing number of women taking up a sport previously reserved for Southern gentlemen--dueling.
Since it was Tiffany who issued the challenge, Naomi chooses the weapons from a standard menu; Salad Shooter, Aqua-Net Spray-On Gel or Pam Cooking Spray. The distance between the combatants is shortened from forty paces to twenty due to the contestants' lack of strength. "My momma wouldn't let me play sports, 'cause she says chunky upper arms aren't ladylike," says Tiffany Marie.
Some Southern men say they view this latest feminist inroad into a formerly all-male preserve as troubling. "If the ladies are going to start shooting at each other, who are we gonna defend?" said Ashley Wilkes VIII. "It's the only quality time guys get to spend together other than hunting, fishing, watching football, drinking, cussing, watching basketball and smoking cigars," he explained. "Oh--did I mention spring football?"
Naomi picks Salad Shooters, and says she'll risk her husband's wrath for a few hair-raising moments of excitement as she contemplates the prospect of a slice of cucumber whizzing past her ear. "We've been cooped up in our air-conditioned kitty-boxes for too long," she complains. "Why is it only the men who get to go outside and do stupid stuff?"
NEW YORK. Representatives of ten elite liberal arts colleges today announced that they will form a new athletic conference in the hope of drawing automatic bids to the Bowl Championship Series and the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament for their high IQ student-athletes.
"The TV money's there for the taking," said Dr. Sumner Farnsworth, an internationally-known nuclear physicist who will be the league's first commissioner. "All we've got to do is field the teams and we can fund a tenure-track position and a new particle accelerator at every school."
The Metrosexual Conference will be composed of New York University, Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Case Western Reserve, Washington University in St. Louis, the Unversity of Pennsylvania, Carnegie-Mellon University, Reed College, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown. All are located in or near major urban areas, where the term "metrosexual" has come to refer to men with an orientation towards the arts and culture who are not necessarily ####.
Metrosexual League coaches say they won't be "in it to win it" and hope to instill more important values in their players. "Say we're down by five touchdowns to a Big Ten school with two minutes left," said Carnegie-Mellon quarterback coach and drama professor Patricia Highsmith-Jones. "Rather than throw some stupid, sectarian 'Hail Mary' pass I would like to see our guys reflect a little and maybe present a tableau vivant to the crowd on the futility of life and absurdity of the universe."
In keeping with Robert Frost's famous dictum that a liberal is a person too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel, cheerleaders for Metrosexual Conference schools will only cheer when their opponents score. "We need to be sensitive to the fact that our graduates will go on to earn a lot more money than kids at some of the cow colleges we'll be playing," said Highsmith-Jones. "When our opponents score, we'll yell, 'That's all right, that's okay--you're going to work for us someday!'"
NCAA officials promised to review the league's application carefully, but expressed concern that lowering the bar of athletic quality would encourage schools to engage in low-budget recruiting abuses. "Some of these kids with high SAT scores come from homes where a hardback edition of Dickens is a big deal," said Bob Saccomandi, an NCAA compliance officer. "Give them a cappucino and a ticket to a Belmondo flick and they feel like they got a muscle car and a freshman cheerleader for the weekend."
LOS ANGELES, California. USC head football coach Pete Carroll today demanded a recount of the Trojans' 41-38 loss to Texas in the Rose Bowl following the disclosure that Longhorns' quarterback Vince Young answered just six of 50 questions correctly on the Wonderlic test, the intelligence exam used by NFL teams to rate college players.
"That was a high scoring game, and Young had 467 total yards. You're telling me he did all that in his head, without a calculator?" Carroll said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Facing a fourth-and-five with 19 seconds left on the clock, Young scored the game-winning touchdown on an eight-yard scramble. Southern California, whose double-Heisman duo of Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush produced 939 total yards, failed to advance into field goal range as time expired. Had the two teams' offenses continued in opposite directions averaging 4.2 yards per play, how long would it have taken for them to meet in NFL Europe? Show your calculations.
Carroll said he and his assistants would spend some time over the next few days proofreading the Texas roster to bolster their case. "We already found a kid--Ramonce Taylor--who apparently doesn't know how to spell 'Romance'. My guess is their score will go way down by the time we're through."
Young, who lost out to USC's Reggie Bush in this year's Heisman Trophy voting, defended his mental credentials in the face of Carroll's sore-loser crusade. "Tell him to close his eyes, say the words 'bonehead lateral' and see who comes to mind."
KANSAS CITY, Mo. #### Vermeil has been coach of the year at every level of football from Pop Warner to the pros. He's got nothing left to prove.
That may explain why the man who won a Super Bowl with the Rams in 1999 is looking to try something different now that he's retired from the Chiefs, and will take a position with Lifetime Television for Women writing sob-story screenplays.
"Football has been great to me, but it's time to follow my dream," Vermeil said with a lump in his throat at a press conference here today. The emotional California native has worn his emotions on his sleeve throughout his career, often bursting into tears when his defense forces a turnover, or a kick coverage team pins an opponent inside its twenty-yard line.
"Our kids and our grandkids are grown, so this team became my kids," Vermeil said as he fought back sniffles. Quarterback Trent Green came up to complain that Tony Gonzalez wasn't sharing the Legos, and Vermeil warned the tight end to play nice or he'd tell team owner Lamar Hunt to trade him to Buffalo.
Lifetime TV is 50% owned by The Walt Disney Company and targets female audiences with "disease-of-the-week" films, real-life accounts of husbands who forget their wives' birthdays, and other domestic tragedies.
Vermeil, the oldest coach in the NFL until his retirement at 69, holds the state record for the longest distance driven by a senior citizen with a turn signal on according to the Missouri Highway Patrol. Vermeil traveled the length of Interstate 70 from St. Louis to Kansas City, a distance of 250 miles, with his right blinker flashing when he took over as head coach of the Chiefs in 2001.
"I came out of the clover-leaf at St. Charles and just completely forgot about it!"
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. Scientists at the National Institute of Occupational Health today released findings showing that sports team mascots live shortened lives due to adverse working conditions.
The longitudinal research, which tracked two generations of high school, college and pro mascots, revealed that individuals who don tiger, bulldog and other animal outfits to entertain spectators at sporting events have a shorter life expectancy than non-mascots.
Dennis Radik, a mascot for the Seekonk, Mass. Quahogs, a minor league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, said the research confirmed his experience. "It gets hot in those outfits and you get dehydrated. Plus the fans think they can just haul off and belt you." A quahog is a thick-shelled clam, but Radik's costume consists only of a thin layer of foam rubber stretched over a chicken-wire frame.
Dr. Evan Steinberg, a veterinary epidemiologist, said that the team of scientists who worked on the study developed a precise calculus for determining the effect that life as a mascot has on a person's longevity.
"We found that feline mascots--lions, tigers, jaguars, wildcats--could expect their lives to be measured in cat years," he said. "Canine mascots--bulldogs and terriers--you project their life spans in dog years."
Steinberg ran the numbers to show that a 20-year old Georgetown student who wore that school's forty-pound bulldog costume over the course of a Big East basketball season would be considered 141 years old in dog mascot years. An LSU student of the same age who dressed as that team's tiger totem would be 107 in cat mascot years.
"We have to educate kids that putting on that big fuzzy outfit is a real risk," Steinberg said. "Being a mascot is as dangerous as smoking, driving without a seatbelt, or calling an escort service."
FOXBORO, Mass. In a sharply-worded warning, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue cautioned New England head coach Bill Belichick to "keep his offense out of the single-wing era" after the Patriots used a long-moribund technique to score an extra point against the Miami Dolphins today.
Belichick called aging Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie's number for a dropkick extra point, and in his post-game press conference threatened to revive other early twentieth-century plays if necessary to reach the Super Bowl for the third year in a row, and fourth in the last five.
"We're looking at the quick kick, the Statue of Liberty, and the student-body sweep," Belichick said. "We'll use every socket wrench in the tool box."
There had not been in a successful drop-kick in the NFL since 1941 before Flutie connected in the fourth quarter of New England's season-ending loss to the Miami Dolphins. Tagliabue said he would ask league officials to monitor the Patriots' offense next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars to ensure that they are not unfairly reviving plays that have fallen into well-deserved disuse.
"Belichik thinks he's a genius because he's read a couple of football books instead of just the waffle-house menus other coaches carry on the sidelines," Tagliabue said. "We have a pro football Hall of Fame in Canton for people who are into history. Fans don't want to watch that stuff on TV."
Tagliabue particularly cautioned Belichik against using the Flying Wedge, which was outlawed by President Theodore Roosevelt after several student fatalities in the early years of his administration.
For his part, Belichick was unapologetic. "As Victor Hugo used to say when we were assistant coaches with the Browns, 'There's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and gone.'"
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana. Emboldened by the NCAA's decision to bar teams with Native American nicknames from post-season tournaments, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals today demonstrated at the athletic group's headquarters in an effort to ban mascots based on non-human animals as well.
"There is nothing so demeaning to a tiger or a lion as to sit in a cage while a zookeeper watches Penn State or LSU on TV," said Heather Ulrich, PETA spokesperson. "Wild beasts have feelings too."
The ban would extend to insects such as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Ulrich added, even though she admitted to swatting mosquitoes herself. "Sometimes the personal isn't political."
Under PETA's proposal, the only teams allowed to compete in the NCAA's March Madness, BCS and College World Series tournaments would be those named after colors, vegetation, forces of nature, minerals and regional human sub-groups such as the "Sooners" of Oklahoma and the "Hoosiers" of Indiana. "We couldn't care less about people," Ulrich explained.
The Stanford Cardinal, a color-based name that is symbolized by a undergraduate dressed as a tree, could thus pass muster on either of two grounds, she noted, "although how that guy ever gets a date is beyond me."
Asked to provide member schools with an easy-to-remember yardstick to determine whether their mascot would be permitted under the PETA proposal, Ulrich's colleague Michelle Shaloob said, "Miami Hurricanes--fine, UCLA Bruins--nein."
If the NCAA agrees to PETA's demand the Iowa State Cyclones would be unaffected by the new policy, but assistant football coach Ogden Fry was not mollified by this fact. "I don't like to be on the same side of any issue with your wing-nut liberals," he explained. "The guys at the coffee shop will give me grief for the rest of my natural born days."
BOULDER, Colorado. The University of Colorado announced today that it has hired Dan Hawkins, head coach at Boise State University, to replace Gary Barnett, a two-time Big 12 Coach of the Year whose tenure with the Buffaloes was plagued by controversy.
Hawkins is a student of philosophy, often exhorting his players with quotes from the likes of Lao Tse, Mother Teresa, and A. J. Ayer, the father of logical positivism.
"Coach was a great motivator," said Boise State lineback Karl Hedlund. "One time we were down two touchdowns to Fresno State at half-time, and Hawk walks into the locker room with this book by Wittgenstein and reads one sentence to us--'We should be willing to call anything a thing.' We got the message, and went back out second half and stomped 'em like a bug."
Other Big 12 teams vowed not to be outspent in the arms race for analytical firepower. Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel said he had made an offer to an expert on Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, to become his receivers coach. "The housewives of Konigsberg used to set their clocks by the moment when Kant walked by their kitchen windows. I want our wide-outs to run their routes with the same precision."
Nebraska coach Bill Callahan was skeptical of putting too much emphasis on philosophy. "It's great to have somebody to explain the futility of life to your kids when they're puking their guts up during two-a-day practices in August, but you've still got to execute." He said he would ask the Cornhusker Boosters club to fund a non-tenure track professorship in medieval philosophy to help out on special teams, especially punt coverage. "I want somebody who knows Duns Scotus and can keep our average punt return allowed down around five or six yards," Callahan said.
Under Barnett, the Colorado football program was accused of plying high school recruits with drugs, alcohol and sexual favors. Hawkins said he would use the example of Mother Teresa to attract the best schoolboy talent to his program. "We're gonna bring in some nuns for national letter-of-intent day," he said. "Mother Teresa was a saint, but she also knew how to party."
The NCAA has taken a bold first step to tackle the biggest problem in college sports.
Mascots.
As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not.
Academic scandals, steroids, hookers for high school recruits--those issues can wait. The guys and gals who patrol the sidelines in funny outfits--that's what corrupting America's impressionable youth.
The NCAA's edict bars ethnic nicknames or mascots deemed "hostile or abusive" from NCAA tournaments after this year. So beginning in 2006, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame will be ineligible for March Madness, right?
Not quite. While teams with ethnic mascots are common at the collegiate level--opponents tremble when the Bethany College Swedes take the field--the abusive nature of a team's totem depends on the views of self-appointed group spokesmen.
The NCAA's action targets only images of Native Americans and was prompted by organizations such as the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, whose claim to speak on behalf of tribal groups is dubious. A Sports Illustrated poll found that 83% of Native Americans had no objection to the San Diego State Aztecs and similar nicknames. In Florida, officials of the Seminole tribe say they will support Florida State in a legal challenge to the new rule.
The groups that pushed for the ban on tournament appearances wanted the NCAA to go further and bar member schools from using ethnic names at all. In a remarkable display of judicial restraint, the NCAA decided it lacked the power to toss the Edinboro University Fighting Scots into the dustbin of history.
Lest you think your alma mater’s mascot is safe, however, remember that the source of today’s laughter often becomes tomorrow’s reality.People used to joke that when the trial lawyers were through with the tobacco companies they would turn to fast food as their next source of regular income.
Ha-ha.Eighteen states have now enacted so-called “cheeseburger laws” after suits were filed against restaurant chains alleging that they caused a particular glutton’s health problems.
So if ethnic nicknames are so offensive, why is there no chorus of grumbling Greeks at the gates when the USC Trojans play, and no protests by Dutch Master look-alikes at New York Knickerbocker games?The answer is that these groups long ago subordinated their ethnic identities to their status as Americans.They melted into the multicultural pot that is one of the sources of our strength, rather than remain in a state of perpetual umbrage to fuel their cash flow.
What’s in a name, asked Juliet, since a rose by any other would smell as sweet.She was right, and idealistic attempts to change the world by fiddling with the names of sports teams have failed in the past.
In 1997 the Washington Bullets changed their name to the Washington Wizards out of concern that their ballistic monicker encouraged violence.Eight years later, Washington remains the murder capital of America, with 45.8 fatalities per 100,000 residents.And the team, unlike a rose, still stinks.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
