The Unbearable Terpness of Being

Watching a live ESPN GameCast (on ESPN.com, brought to you by ESPN Sports on ABC) of a game between Wake Forest and my alma mater last night, I had a sudden, startling and partially crushing realization. I AM Maryland Basketball. No, not in the Nik Caner-Suckley way. Nor in the way that my best players through the past 5-6 years are: a Snakeman ala James Earl Jones in Conan: The Barbarian, a cross-eyed point guard who may or may not have punched a gay guy in the face for being gay, a guy whose best chance of getting a shot off in the NBA came in a car while driving near the White House, and the nephew of the mayor for the “Greatest City in America.”*

No, I mean it in the metaphorical way that people mean things when they are trying to come to a point, and want to use an inanimate object or non-sensical antecedent to obfuscate their point, albeit poetically. I mean it in the way that I could just have easily replaced the 200 words above with: “I am probably the most maddeningly inconsistent person I know.” But I didn’t, so now you will read through at least a few paragraphs stretching the limits of personification of a sports team, all to find out that the one sentence above, combined with a “I am also great at times” would have sufficed. So it goes. If that all becomes too boring, go look at this (warning, PDF), and realize your life could be more boring…you could find that page exciting, like I do.

So, Maryland. They’ve beaten UNC in Chapel Hill, and lost to the mighty Bobcats of Ohio (4th in the MAC, bitches!!!) in Comcast. They are 4-3 in road games in the ACC, but still rest firmly on the bubble to make the NCAA tournament. Even within games, they take 10 point leads, then piss them away with failed alley-oops and off-the-foot dribbling. (Note: That means dribbling the ball off one’s foot, not a white boy’s misbegotten attempt to use some version of “off-da-chain”….though of course if you read critically for context, you would know that, and wouldn’t need this note, moron)

Such is my life, and in all facets. I can be an extraordinary worker for extended periods of time. I finish in hours what takes others weeks. I routinely solve the long-standing problems of a team with 2-3 sentences delivered after minutes of thought. However, I also will sit around and blog about how great a worker I am when others around me are helping each other prepare for an enormous project vital to the continuation of our group. I take entire days off of real work to look for jobs and read about basketball similarities, but even then, I don’t DO those things particularly well or consistently.

Case in point: I own a fantasy baseball keeper team with Phil. We are defending champs (by “we,” I of course mean our pooled money, since I do 99% of the work and he bitches about Matt Holliday not even being a real person), and have a studly rotation of keepers that give us a leg up on competing again this year. I LOVE fantasy baseball, and am very good at it (those two are completely unconnected, I’m sure). I took a free trial of Amazon Prime in mid-January just so I could pre-order 9 different baseball books, at least half of which are in some ways predictative of the coming season. And yet…I have barely read the predictative books; I have started, but not completed, a spreadsheet that would make things easier for me to follow at the draft; and I have yet to formulate any sort of plan for the coming season, or sense of what others’ plans might be. The draft continues to approach, and I do nothing, hoping that Phil will somehow contribute, which is basically like risking my entire team on Cole Hamels staying healthy (if Phil even knew who Cole Hamels was).***

On a personal level, I have to assume that Laura and my friends have figured out that I will be a pretty average friend or lover, respectively (hah…that means I have sex with my friends, see), about 50% of the time, with the other half of the time clearly split between “careless douche” and the “greatest person in America.”** (Yeah, my asterisks are out of order…screw off) I also have to assume that this is probably a fucking annoying-as-hell trait. Luckily, today is not in the 25% of the time I don’t give a shit about your feelings.

Anyway, this post has no “catch,” or really a “point,” per se. Just a note that I am somewhat heavily invested in the Terps doing well the rest of the year, but not necessarily for the common reasons.

 UPDATE: Ouch.

*Everything written on street benches is 100% accurate, so I have no worries that Baltimore can fully back this claim up. Also, that Freddie both “wuz heer” and “sux dix.”

** I scrawled this on a park bench I passed in Baltimore today, so it is true.

*** Phil, this is what Cole Hamels’ ass looks like, just FYI. I know that’s how you remember men. See….’cause you’re gay!!!! Beware of any Steve Blakes in the area.