EL BARRIO, EL FALLS – Following up yesterday’s piece is not easy but nothing in life is. With that, let’s get to the fun stuff by focusing on the Olympics (spit!) and NCAA Basketball, especially its king of corruption. Sticking to my patent-pending formula, we will have a Song of the Week followed by Sports Stuff. In today’s mix: USA Owns Canada, John Calipari, Leslie Jones…
Song of the Week: A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how I hate nursery rhymes, that I usually played my daughter classy music. Well, I did it again the other day. While giving her a bath, I put on some Coltrane for her. My wife walks in and says, “This sounds like the greatest Starbucks lounge ever.” I bellow, “This is Coltrane!” So in honor of that moment, I am gonna pick one of the songs, we were listening to. Take a listen to Lush Life by John Coltrane as our Song of the Week.
USA Owns Canada: The Canadians love the Winter Olympics. It is their one chance to shine – since they are a cold weather country. As we also know, they love their hockey. So it was with great pride when I looked up saw that the USA Women had defeated the Canadian Women in Ice Hockey to win the Gold. I thought to myself: ‘Men, those tears are going to be delicious.’ Then, I heard something even more insane, the USA defeated Canada in Curling the same day! Take that you bunch of ice jaborneys!! USA!!! USA!!! It doesn’t really matter in the long run, but bragging rights are precious. Especially if you live close to the border and are friends with loads of them like I am up here in Niagara/Buffalo.
Leslie Jones: We all know that person, who after his football team wins the first game of the season, starts talking about an undefeated run. Well for this great nation, that person is actress/comedian Leslie Jones, the USA Olympic Super Fan. Between her twitter and Instagram feed, you have a person that lives for the Olympics. Apparently her meltdown after the USA defeated Canada in Women’s hockey in the middle of the night, was apparently epic. It was so memorable that one of the players gave her a big shout-out yesterday during an interview. She is just a crazy fan like your lovable aunt or uncle, insanely patriotic and is fun to watch act a fool. Track her down on social media and check out her antics.
John Calipari: It was only a matter of time before corruption allegations would appear at Kentucky. Coming as no surprise to those that have followed Calipari’s career, there are now rumors the Feds are investigating him… and how his program has operated. I used the term “corruption” because it’s about more than recruitment violations. It’s an outright system of pay-to-play and win now. I have long supported players getting paid, so that is not my issue. My issue is how a guy like him gets so much credit for being a great coach while his fellow Italian-American basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, does a better job in Women’s Basketball with out the bribes and dirt. Coach Cal coach was at UMass and after he left, their championship was taken away for violations. Same thing happened after he left Memphis. What am I missing? Why does this guy keep getting rewarded? After you win, the NCAA can do what it wants but nobody cares. You think people are now not gonna remember his Memphis team with fondness? Or that people are not gonna talk about the great players on that team. The fact that they were cheats is completely irrelevant.
Leave your thoughts below and come back tomorrow for another gem of a column by Cheesy Bruin. You can also find us on Twitter – @JunoirBlaber, @MeetTheMatts & @Matt_McCarthy00, Instagram – @MeetTheMatts – and Facebook – Meet The Matts.
