UPSTATE. upstate. UPSTATE. upstate? UPSTATE.
With college football now firmly in the pre-spring practice doldrums, everyone’s watching basketball, a sport played indoors by men who are either completely gay, or totally homophobic. The wonders that must occur in those lockerrooms!
Basketball: a safe place for men of all preferences. Especially Tim.
We’ll confess that we’re so basketball averse we didn’t even watch the national title game last year. The game. With Florida. The national title one. That’s how little we care about squeaky shoes, fourteen thousand timeouts, and a sport where Duke can succeed with consistency across three decades.
However, interest in quality theme music prevails, though, and we may have a team to follow besides Florida and their misunderstood Ugly Betty of a forward, Joakim Noah: South Carolina-Upstate. Their homemade theme song samples NBA Jams, the greatest basketball video game ever, whch merits mention and subsequent digression below concerning the video game prowess of Rony Seikaly.
(Rony Seikaly could bury half-courters blindfolded in that game. Under the coordinated twitching of Cuddles Swindle’s fingers, he’d spend half the game “on fire” and raining hell down on my poor Golden State Warriors Tim Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin. Even cheat code Bill Clinton couldn’t extinguish the ouzo-fueled fire of Seikaly, who in retirement took up the hobby of fucking every model he could get his hands on in South Beach while, in our imagination at least, hearing the trademark dialogue from NBA Jam in his head while flawlessly executing the Havana Banana on a Peruvian car model: “he’s on fire!!!”)
Rony Seikaly: unstoppable three-shooter and supermodel-fucker.
We digress. The thesis of the following piece: Upstate. Upstate? Upstate. UPSTATE. (HT: Troy.)
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1
Hook'em Tide says:
One reasone basketball sucks:
Any game where it is PROPER STRATEGY to INTENTIONALLY BREAK THE RULES (aka fouling if you’re behind in the end) is in my view a flawed game. The end-game of basketball does not resemble the grace and pace of a fluid competition, rather, it resembles the bile in my bathroom sink.
Orson, I would submit that everyone go watch “300″, for doing so will fulfill sports-bloodlust more than lamesketball will.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am
2
PJ from NU in SF says:
Basketball was invented to keep football players in shape. ‘Nuff said.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:48 am
3
gosouthgohard says:
how can anyone listen to that whole song all the way through? brevity is the soul of ballin’.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:48 am
4
Nick says:
Everyone knows the only cheat code worth a damn was GEORGE Clinton, p-funk was making it rain!
March 9th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
5
Snowedin'Bama says:
I reread the post while playing the “theme music.” I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or jump out of the window onto the ice-covered bricks below while begging God to pop my eardrums. Then I remembered to press STOP. The blessed sound of silence and police sirens.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
6
Seven Years in Gainesville says:
#1:
Agreed, but rather than throwing out the (admittedly a little gay) baby with the bathwater, the rule can be changed thusly:
In the last two minutes of each half, a non-shooting foul when a team is in the “bonus” results in one foul shot AND the ball back.
It’s so simple and perfect. Which is why it will never happen.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
7
Whitey says:
Isn’t it “Mitch” Richmond?
And the “intentional” foul rule is the biggest crock of shit in the history of sportsdom.
Yes, the dude attempting to undress the point guard from behind was “going for the ball.”
Wow… that really did sound gay.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
8
Nick says:
He might have meant Tim Hardaway, I think Richmond was on the Bullets or Kings by the time that game came out
March 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
9
Orson Swindle says:
We’d swear it was Mitch Richmond and Mullin.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
10
Orson Swindle says:
Nope, you’re correct–ironically, it was Hardaway. We actually used Richmond over at Sacramento with Waymon Tisdale because Richmond’s numbers in that game were wackedly off-the-charts.
This is why we write about college football.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
11
Rashaan Salaam says:
Run TMC fellas!
Mitch Richmond
Chris Mullen (St. Johns?!?!?)
Tim Hardaway
March 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
12
Rashaan Salaam says:
By the way, Chris Mullin, how did he escape continual beatings growing up in Queens?
March 9th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
13
Nick says:
Thanks Orson, glad to know the blisters I got playing that game for hours paid off in the end.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
14
Halleck T. says:
I watch just enough basketball to continually confuse Rony Seikaly with Dwyane Schintzius. Rony DOES NOT enjoy having tennis balls thrown at him:
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/050726classic.php
March 9th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
15
haveatakeanddontsuck says:
Being a Bama fan, I’m all about football, but college basketball does their postseason right.
March 9th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
16
Whitey says:
Because he was Chris “Mambo” Mullins.
LJ and ‘Zo were my boys. Even bought the Grandmama shoes with the #2 on the laces bib and the Teal Jersey.
Nothing like a 6′2′ 200 lb white boy rockin’ that look.
March 9th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
17
PeteJayhawk says:
Your passion for NBA Jam is so strong it caused you to slip into the dreaded first-person. Wow.
March 9th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
18
Kanu says:
Seikaly was to NBA Jam what LT was to the original Tecmo Bowl. Except LT was really that good in life.
Not familiar with Cuddles level of wizardry, but I could take Seikaly with GP & Shawn Kemp against most mere mortals.
March 9th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
19
CK says:
Isiah Thomas was the best rebounder in the game. I don’t know why and I don’t know how.
But he got every freaking board.
March 9th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
20
Odell 51 says:
Mitch Richmond was that game. It’s funny how I was reading that and thinking about Mitch Richmond and everyone agree’s that he was unstoppable.
He was what Bo Jackson was in Tecmo Super Bowl.
A God
March 9th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
21
PW says:
I could be mistaken, but Orson might’ve been making a reference to former Nascar driver Tim Richmond who died of AIDS sometime in the 80’s or early 90’s. Also allegedly gay.
March 9th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
22
RonMexico says:
This was a pretty funny post by a michigan fan.
http://ghostsofwaynefontes.blogspot.com/2007/03/no-more-tears-now-i-will-think-about.html#links
March 9th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
23
Newspaper Hack says:
Al Gore was solid in the post (gratuitous rim-shot).
USC-Upstate has only been around for a little while, actually. It was USC-Spartanburg, but then they merged that campus with USC-Aiken, and we got satellite campus synergy.
BTW — anybody else still have their heads up the ass of NCAA ‘07? That fucking game has fight songs running in my head at all times. And to get extra-nerdy, I made up teams of my newspaper, my friend’s alt-weekly and several other papers between Virginia and South Carolina and imported them into the Sun Belt. I can say this — the Washington Post plays a tough game, and the Charlotte Observer’s blue turf makes me nauseous. And the Richmond Times-Dispatch not only looks like the Raiders, they play like them too (circa 1970s) — dirrrrrrrty.
And who’s my coach? Hunter Thompson, natch.
March 10th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
24
Gator KK says:
In my neck of the woods every kid’s initial NBA Jam experience went like this:
“Hey cool I’m gonna be Chicago, gotta get Michael Jor…WHO THE HELL IS THAT GUY WITH THE GOGGLES NEXT TO SCOTTIE PIPPEN?” Poor Horace.
March 10th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
25
akijikan says:
Bright Eyes has a song called “you will? you? will. you? will. you? will.”
March 11th, 2007 at 7:19 am