Disappointment

I saw this and thought it was pretty clever of The Los Angeles Times to shatter expectations and give us a Naomi Klein sports column instead of the usual stuff about the depredations of multinational corporations:

It turned out, though, to just be a mistake -- the column's by Bob Baker. I agree, though, that it'd be really nice to see the Red Sox improbably lose. I am, however, considering violating my general anti-Boston principles to root for BU in college football, since there'd just be something awesomely bizarre about a team from the northeast winning a national championship. I mean, sure, it used to happen regularly before world war one but that was a long time ago.

Comments

You might want to realize that BC is the team with the shot at winning the national title.

Posted by Haggai | October 27, 2007 3:04 PM

What are you, Matt, another cheesy Yankees fan?

This just isn't your century, is it?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | October 27, 2007 3:07 PM

You might want to realize that BC is the team with the shot at winning the national title.

BU losing it's football team was one of those things that has galvanized opponents of Title IX, despite the fact that it was never clear that Title IX was really responsible for dropping football, and the fact that BU's football team was utterly terrible for years and years.

Posted by Freddie | October 27, 2007 3:08 PM

*Its

Posted by Freddie | October 27, 2007 3:10 PM

Matt shows his Harvard credentials by mixing up BC and BU.

Posted by Rob | October 27, 2007 3:14 PM

BC will make it to the title game, I believe, but they'll lose. If not against the Buckeyes, then against LSU.

Everyone in the college football intelligencia was predicting that it'd be an off-year for the Buckeyes, who are odds-on favorites to win the Big 10 Championship for the third straight year. Everyone in Buckeye Nation is feeling great about this year's team, especially considering last year's disappointing loss to Florida in the BCS Championship game.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | October 27, 2007 3:23 PM

Matt shows his ny credentials by confusing bc with bu.

Posted by berger | October 27, 2007 3:28 PM

If Bob Baker thinks MLB's playoffs last too long, I can't imagine what he thinks about the NBA.

Posted by Peter | October 27, 2007 3:32 PM

I guess all the good nicknames were taken and someone, somewhere, had to settle for "Buckeyes."

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | October 27, 2007 3:37 PM

matt, matt matt....

have you ever even been to boston (not cambridge, BOSTON!)

as a once-proud alum of boston UNIVERSITY (which is not boston COLLEGE), the sixth-largest and most poorly-endowed private university in the country, i have to correct you and freddie, above. it is true that the two schools are on opposite ends of the same street, but there the similarity pretty much ends. bc is a jesuit school. bu started out as a methodist school (like smu in dallas), and the theology school still is.

freddie, bu president john silber might have blamed title ix for dropping football, but it was a smokescreen. in fact he hated college football altogether; he hated everything that might make students (and therefore alumni) remember college fondly. see endowment, above. he came to bu from the u of texas, where he was chairman of the philosophy dept and later dean of the college of arts and sciences. while at tx, he was known to loathe the culture of big-time sports, especially football. the fact that it raised huge amounts of $$ for the university apparently never influenced his thinking. he tried to drop football several times at bu, and finally in 1997 got enough dissenters off the board that he was able to do so.

also bu's team was sporadically terrible, (especially when they were still playing a major college schedule) but also sporadically good; they played in the div 1a championship game in the 90's.

Posted by harveykek | October 27, 2007 4:18 PM

Everyone in Buckeye Nation is feeling great about this year's team, especially considering last year's disappointing loss to Florida in the BCS Championship game.

Ohio State is where they are because they play a cream puff schedule in a terrible conference. If they were in the SEC they'd have at least 3 losses by now.

Posted by Freddie | October 27, 2007 4:31 PM

Silber's best comment on the matter was "They don't have football at the Sorbonne, do they?"

Posted by SMK | October 27, 2007 4:32 PM

Meanwhile, it looks more and more likely that my least favorite player will be going to my beloved Bulls. What to do?

Posted by Freddie | October 27, 2007 4:34 PM

there'd just be something awesomely bizarre about a team from the northeast winning a national championship

Well, in the not-too-distant past, Penn State won national championships in 1982 and 1986, and was robbed of a share of it in 1994 by the old bowl system.

Posted by right | October 27, 2007 4:38 PM

Heh!

Posted by Big Tent Democrat | October 27, 2007 4:41 PM

I could easily root for BC if they hadn't turncoated away from the Big East. They have absolutely no bidness being in the ACC and I will easily root for whoever is playing them (unless of course it is VT or Miami - the other turncoats). Between Seminoles, Terps, and Tigers - someone should kick some Eagle ass.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | October 27, 2007 4:57 PM

my general anti-Boston principles

Man, you are like the incarnation of the asshole New Yorker. If Red Sox fans and Pats fans often seem a little overzealous with their hatred of Nw York, it's generally a reaction to exposure to ignorant affected snobs like you. Go vote Republican if you hate Boston so much.

Posted by vanya | October 27, 2007 6:04 PM

"Go vote Republican if you hate Boston so much"

Calm down there. I've been to Bruins games that erupt into spontaneous chants of "Yankees suck" pretty regularly. You're taking this a little too personally.

Posted by mad6798j | October 27, 2007 6:11 PM

Baseball is a game for 10 and 11 year old boys. I think the last World Series I paid attention to had Koufax on the mound.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 27, 2007 6:19 PM

Jeffrey, while I'm sure you have a lot of pent up anger towards your parents for naming you in honor of the President of the Confederacy, that's no reason to insult people for the crime of having an attention span greater than thirty seconds.

Posted by washerdreyer | October 27, 2007 6:51 PM

Penn State is not a Northeast school; it is from the Midwest. Spend an hour there and learn why.

Posted by Jamey | October 27, 2007 7:51 PM

By all means, root for the Jesus-loving, fascist-owned Rocky Mountain Watery Piss team. If they win, it will be shouted throughout the land about what a victory over East Coast secularism it was. Me, I'm going with the badasses who can actually play some ball, but to each his own.

Posted by calling all toasters | October 27, 2007 8:05 PM

Blah, blah, blah, the playoffs go too long.

Go Sox!

Posted by Phil | October 27, 2007 8:14 PM

Re: vanya's comment.

Yglesias, like many of my Manhattanite friends, cannot help the fact that he is an asshole New Yorker, just like I can't help the fact that Boston reared me into a hyper-aggressive driver via its strange melange of cowpaths, one way streets, and interstate highways. So I don't think we should hold it against him; needless to say, he's wrong on all things Boston, and the Red Sox are far superior in every way to the Rockies, but we needn't get too angry.

Posted by Ben Cronin | October 27, 2007 10:06 PM

Matt was just paying tribute to Halloween.

BU=Boo.

Get it?

Nevermind. Just tryin' to help.

Posted by John S. | October 27, 2007 11:51 PM

that would be bc. can i go to harvard now please? seriously, matt, starbucks is hiring.

Posted by ben smith | October 28, 2007 12:47 AM

ask matt who "jacoby" is and he will tell you "a famous shakespearean actor."

Posted by JC | October 28, 2007 12:54 AM

At the time Ohio State chose its nickname, a Buckeye also referred to a person from Ohio because it had already acquired the nickname the Buckeye State in honor of the Buckeye Tree. So it's like a Hoosier, in a way. It's an awesome nickname and Brutus the Buckeye is an awesome mascot.

And even if Ohio State has a cream-puff schedule in a terrible conference, at the end of the day we're still undefeated and nobody in the SEC is. Rules are rules, and if we win out the regular season we're going to the championship game for the second year in a row. All the SEC-loving Buckeye-haters in the world can cringe, but we've been dominant in every game thus far.

Also, while I don't dispute that the SEC is America's top conference, I can't understand why people keep asserting that the Big 10 is terrible. Does anyone seriously think a top Big East or even a Big 12 team would beat Ohio State, Wisconsin, or Michigan? Oklahoma MAYBE. If by terrible you mean not the SEC or Pac-10, then you have a pretty condensed attitude regarding college football. Ohio State has the nation's best defense.

Now, I'm biased. I'm a student at Ohio State and a lifelong Buckeye fanatic, so feel free to take my intoxicated assessment with a pinch of salt. We steamrolled over Penn State tonight the same way Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman is going to steamroll over Republican opponent Bill Todd in this year's election. We're going to win the national title in January of the same year we vote to send a Democrat to the White House. Life is great in the Buckeye state.

If any SEC-lover wants to compare SAT scores with the Big 10, be my guess.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | October 28, 2007 1:08 AM

If any SEC-lover wants to compare SAT scores with the Big 10, be my guess.

I know that's not ironic, really. But it is pretty funny.

Posted by Freddie | October 28, 2007 1:18 AM

I love it when sports breaks out here.
The last avoid-the-sweep moment came in the 7th inning last night, Matt. Tonight, plucky cancer-survivor Jon Lester closes out the Rockies and their Personal Lord And Saviors.
Oh, and LSU kicks everybody's ass in the BCS title game. If not them, then I'm rooting for Arizona State-Kansas in a battle of the undefeated, untied, and un-cared-about.

Posted by charles pierce | October 28, 2007 8:27 AM

CP: Who knew that the Deity was such a crummy manager?

Also, it is not impossible that in one 12 month period, Boston teams will win the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Championship, Stanley Cup, and College football championship.

The downside of this is that the world will undoubtedly end at that point.

Posted by John Casey | October 28, 2007 9:45 AM

Does anyone seriously think a top Big East or even a Big 12 team would beat Ohio State, Wisconsin, or Michigan?

I will now point out that a top Southern Conference team(App St) beat Michigan, and another one(Citadel) was tied with Wisconsin at the half. So you're top teams in the Big 10 are 1-1 against the SoCon this year. In all fairness the SoCon is usually the strongest conference in I-AA, but considered yourself owned.

Posted by guineapigfury | October 28, 2007 10:33 AM

Also, it is not impossible that in one 12 month period, Boston teams will win the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Championship, Stanley Cup, and College football championship.

I thought the Bruins were bad? Although if you told the American public they had won the Stanley Cup when in fact they hadn't, there wouldn't be more than 12 people who knew you were wrong.

Posted by Freddie | October 28, 2007 12:34 PM

Matthew Struhar writes: "At the time Ohio State chose its nickname, a Buckeye also referred to a person from Ohio because it had already acquired the nickname the Buckeye State in honor of the Buckeye Tree. So it's like a Hoosier, in a way. It's an awesome nickname and Brutus the Buckeye is an awesome mascot."

Since when do 12 year olds post here?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | October 28, 2007 12:38 PM

This is arguably the most ignorant Yglesias post, evah.

Posted by ProfD | October 28, 2007 12:47 PM

Take it easy MoeLarryandJesus, at least he didn't refer to it as THE Ohio State.

Posted by guineapigfury | October 28, 2007 1:44 PM

While I am a New Yorker, my hatred of Boston is completely unbiased. Any city with such a fucked-up collection of cul-de-sacs and roundabouts should be nuked. We'd give you fair warning, of course. Not that it would help -- you'd all get so fucking lost in all of your roundabouts that you would never make it out of there in time.

Posted by jim | October 28, 2007 2:58 PM

in honor of the Buckeye Tree

Was watching the OSU-PSU game last night, and the wife asks "why do they have marijuana leaves on their helmets?"

Heh.

Posted by Al | October 28, 2007 3:28 PM

I know a bazillion people have commented on this already, but I will gladly join the piling on: You spent four years in the Boston area and don't know the difference between BC and BU? That conveys "anti-Boston sentiments" more than what sports teams you root for.

Posted by James Kabala | October 28, 2007 4:18 PM

"At the time Ohio State chose its nickname, a Buckeye also referred to a person from Ohio because it had already acquired the nickname the Buckeye State in honor of the Buckeye Tree. So it's like a Hoosier, in a way."

I resent the comparison. "Hoosier" is a word of mysterious origins that means nothing whatsoever except "native of Indiana." Buckeyes are nuts. 'Nuff said.

But given that Indiana has beaten Ohio State in football exactly 3 times since World War II, I'll admit that it's probably better to be a Buckeye than a Hoosier on Saturdays in the fall.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 28, 2007 8:46 PM

Sox in FOUR!

And the Yankees, led by a senile guy who is a convicted Repiglican liar, haven't won in this century and their best player has opted out of his contract.

Good times. GOOD TIMES!

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | October 29, 2007 12:43 AM

jim-- They're called "rotaries."

Posted by Sox beat Jesus in 4 | October 29, 2007 9:17 AM