Pooh's Hateration

I am angry. Filled with rage. Sputtering, even.

I feel that strongly about having to root for Florida in tonight's national championship game. I think Billy Donovan is a prick, a hucksterish Rick Pitino wannabe, and another one of those college coaches who are far better in the recruiting living room than on the sidelines (looking at you, Jim Calhoun. And you, Roy Williams. And you, John Calipari. And especially you, Bobby freaking Huggins) And I have to root for him.

Because I hate this UCLA team more. In another sporting context, their style would be derided as "overly negative", "scientific" or perhaps just "cynical". One-Nil to the ArsenalBruins and all that. Yes, yes, they've played great defense, well coached, blahbittyblah. Because of course Ben Howland has coached them to be the best FT defense team of all time. Anytime you can hold your opponent to 46% from the line you're doing something right. Right?

And by right, I mean 'being lucky that the 4 worst games played this tourney have been played by our opponents' and being on the receiving end of a World-Class choke job by the 'Stache & Co. So now we get Bill Walton walking into NBA arenas singing stupid fight songs, off-key, wearing Greatful Dead tie-dye yelling out "U-C-LLLLLLLA" (I actually like that cheer, in general) about this being "the greatest teaaaaamm of allll tiiiiiiiime. Throw it down Mbah a Moute, throw it down!" The bile rises inside of me.

Much of my distaste in unabashedly aesthetic. 50-45 games suck. Scoring 20 points in the second half and still winning sucks. Your offense being dribble for 33 seconds, throw up a 25-footer and either hope it goes in or that you get a put back because your big guys have been continuously donkey-punching their man the entire game (O and D, 40 minutes of 5-on-5 state of constant foul. It's fan-tastic.) sucks. NASCAR is more entertaing than a UCLA game. So is cricket.

And let's not talk about every Los Angelino you know puffing their chest out and already crowing about the 12th banner, as if, A) they were alive for the first 10, B) could pick George Zidek, J.R. Henderson or Cam Dollar out of a lineup, C) could have named more than 2 of UCLA's players OR their coach two weeks ago or D) weren't crowing about USC being the greatest e-vah 3 short months ago.

Basically, to paraphrase a friend from a decade ago, I know a little something about basketball, so I know you can't root for UCLA tonight. (Unless you picked them to go all the way, in which case you're not wrong, you're just an asshole.)

Go Gators. You have no idea how much that hurt me.