Football programs are almost exclusively run by men. Men, on occasion, buy expensive crap they don’t need, like an XBox 360, Cadillac CTS, or six South African hookers on the credit card during a wild weekend in Jo’burg. (Man, do they get testy when your card’s declined. Or so we’re told…we just remember waking up with staples in our back on the veldt in front of a very confused safari van full of Israeli tourists.)

The University of Arizona Athletic Department obviously fell for the OOH SHINY THING! card when they announced the purchase of a SportsMotion system for use by Wildcat athletic teams. (HT: The Wiz) Cost: $325,000, according to XOS Systems, the Florida-based company that cranks these things out. What does the athletic department plan on doing with this?

The idea is similar to a basketball player being form-fitted with an outfit with sensors to capture precise movements for a video game, such as “NBA Jam,” said Albert Tsai, XOS’s vice president of advanced research and development.

Albert reps himself some Sega Genesis! If they don’t have the feature where a basketball player who makes more than three shots in a row bursts into flames, the U got gipped here. We used to thrash bitches with Rony Seikaly and Harold “Baby Jordan” Miner, and if we were an athletically gifted 6′10″ 18 year old–which we’re the opposite of, by the way–this would be a key selling point of any campus visit, along with complete wireless internet access, fat-bottomed girls in hot pants and go-go boots, and the presence of live, potentially man-eating animals on campus.

The SportsMotion system would allow players to capture their motions and create entire virtual environments for them to practice in, which if we were in charge would mean that the U of Arizona has purchased the largest, most expensive game of Tekken ever created. Capturing you and your friends’ invidual motions and turning them into hilariously unintimidating fatality moves? Well worth the $320K, no matter what the state auditor says.

Our killer move would be the “espresso bitch slap.”