Ed O’Bannon

  • 05 Apr 2013 at 11:04 AM
  • Sports

Amateur Athletics Is A Sham. Girlfriend Don’t Care.

By

My dear sweet girlfriend Stephanie doesn’t understand sports. To nothing and no one in particular, she will say “How can anyone get upset over the results of a game?” I mentally catalog my responses. That it’s a shared culture and every result arrives like a cascade of memories, connecting fathers and sons and entire families. Place and time all wrapped up and held within a blowout victory or a narrow loss. I get frustrated. I realize that she could never understand this compulsion. I would have better luck explaining what the color blue is. Words fail me as this column attests to on a semi-weekly basis. And my mind instinctively reaches for every illogical thing she does, from the interminably long morning routine to the row of bras, neatly displayed on a table in her living room. Explain the bras, Stephanie! If you’re such a cold, calculating machine, explain the terrifyingly ordered row of bras on the table!

This all happens in the span of fifteen seconds. And at the end of the psychic meltdown, I look over and see Stephanie staring off into space, not caring about sports or even those who care about sports. She doesn’t care about the question or the answer, I realize.

My dear sweet girlfriend Stephanie trolls me on a regular basis.

Let’s talk sports…

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Amateur Athletics Is A Sham. Girlfriend Don’t Care.”

11 Comments

Non-Sequiturs: 03.19.13

By

* A Big Ten Commissioner filed a declaration claiming that the Big Ten will stop competitive collegiate athletics if Ed O’Bannon wins his lawsuit. This level of disingenuous blackmail is why we invented sanctions, people. [Sports Illustrated]

* On the heels of a federal judge allowing service through Facebook, a Texas lawmaker wants to make service of process over Facebook the rule rather than the exception. [IT-Lex]

* The next time you feel embarrassed by a U.S. politician, note that this Japanese city council member refuses to remove his wrestling mask. America doesn’t have anyone that clownish in office… she resigned the governorship in 2009. [Lowering the Bar]

* Everyone always talks about plain language contracts. Here’s how someone actually wrote “Terms and Conditions” that a user might actually read. [Associate's Mind]

* Once again, the Supreme Court comes down to the Breyer-Thomas coalition against the Scalia-Ginsburg coalition. [ABA Journal]

* Slate’s Jessica Grose weighs in on the suicide of Cynthia Wachenheim reported here last week. [Slate]

* And here, just for fun, see if you can guess who said these quotes: Spongebob Squarepants or Friedrich Nietzsche. Surprisingly harder than you’d think. [Buzzfeed]

2 Comments

Ed O’Bannon Might Kill the NCAA But Not The System

By

I don’t particularly like the NCAA and I enjoy their legal difficulties as much as the next guy. As a devout college sports fan, the usually arbitrary and always backward business side of the NCAA (including the affiliated schools and “non-profit” bowl associations) causes me great consternation.

Apparently, the incomparable Charles P. Pierce shares my disdain for the lumbering excuse for a fair and credible sanctioning body that currently governs collegiate athletics.

In a sharp Grantland piece, Pierce revisits the Ed O’Bannon-led class-action case against the NCAA and video game manufacturer EA over their combined efforts to profit in perpetuity from the likenesses of unpaid “student ath-o-letes.” (Take it away Eric Cartman!) But I think Pierce is overselling the extent to which a possible O’Bannon victory would really change the college sports landscape….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Ed O’Bannon Might Kill the NCAA But Not The System”

3 Comments
Page 1 of 1131512345...11315