Rant#11: How About a Div1 Cyber School?

I have an idea. Let’s create on an on-line college with a Division 1 basketball team. I say “let’s” because my computer skills are non-existent. The instructions for this blog indicated that a monkey could get it going in a half hour - it took me three days. I remain hopeful that someday I’ll figure out how to include photos and maybe, just maybe, some color. I like to say that I’m kicking it old school. I’d like saying that more if describing a blog as “old school” made any sense.

Anyway, this idea for a Div1 on-line hoop squad is chock full of positives:

1.Low Overhead - Or better put, no overhead. The way I see it, the only drain on our profits will be the cost of bus tickets to get our 12 players to the games. What do we do if our point guard lives in Spokane and there’s a game in Miami? Tell him to leave early.

Wait a minute. We really only need 5 players. To be safe we could go with six. Wow, in a matter of seconds I just cut our expenses in half. I am clearly a budgetary genius. If only Henry Paulson had given me a call.

2.Practice Optional - As for practice, I see two alternatives. One is just don’t practice. You know, the Allen Iverson approach. University of North Florida practiced every day last year and won a whopping 3 games. How much worse could we be if we don’t practice at all?

Other option is to set up a virtual practice with each player showing up as one of those CNN Election night holograms. Though I’m not sure if a hologram could catch a chest pass.

3.Home Away From Home - The lack of a home arena may seem like an issue. And I’ll concede that our student section will be quite sparse. It’ll pretty much consist of the players on the bench. Given that I just cut that down to one guy, we’ll have to make sure he’s really vocal.

But take the Harlem Globetrotters. They don’t have a home court and everyone loves them. We will be the Globetrotters of college hoops. Well, maybe more like that team that the Globetrotters always beat, the Washington Generals. Yes, we’ll be the Washington Generals of college basketball. But we might not want to make that our motto.

Now, if we eventually want to have our own arena, we could. As an on-line school, we can put it anywhere. This is something non-on-line schools can’t do. Like the University of Utah. That school is forever stuck in the hell that is Utah. We don’t have that problem.

4.Class Attendance Ease: Other schools are always suspending players for skipping class. That will never be an issue for us. If anyone ever asks one of our players when he was last at class, all he has to do is open his lap top and say, “Right now.”

5.Recruiting – Now you might be thinking, “How can we get a kid to play for us when he could play for a school like Duke instead? That’s simple. We can’t. Nor can most of the other 347 Div1 schools. NJIT lost 51 straight games before finally wining last week. Yet they get players to go there. Or imagine trying to recruit for Bryant – that’s the school that just lost to NJIT. “Come play for us. We lost to the team that never wins.”

But being a cyber school provides some unique recruiting advantages. The fact that the players will be living at home gives us a great pitch line: “You’ll get a home cooked meal every night.”

We’d also be able to recruit in the biggest untapped source of basketball talent – America’s prison system. It’s really only game time that they’d have to be out of shackles. We just have to convince a warden to grant some furloughs.


There are a few decisions that need to be made. Such as the degrees we’d offer, our name, and the team’s nickname.

Degrees Offered:

1.Basket weaving – No other course of study has been more maligned than basket weaving. I took a look at a basket the other day, and that weaving is intricate. I’m not confident that our players would be able achieve the necessary weaving skills. We might want to instead go with bag making. Or better yet, bag filling – you know, the grocery store style.

2.Welding – This subject took a hit a few years back when my beloved St. Bonaventure Bonnies claimed that one of its players had a 2-year degree when he only had a welding certificate. I think that the welding player didn’t get enough credit for his expertise. I went to college for 4 years, then law school for 3 more and I can’t weld to save my life.

Moreover, last week two different Massachusetts residents burned down their homes while trying to use a blowtorch. This proves either a) welding is not easy or b) I’m not the only idiot in Massachusetts. Just to be safe, if we go with welding we should probably make sure that none of our players is from The Bay State.


Name For Cyber School:

Something mythological would be appropriate, given that we’re kind of a farce. I’ve always liked that firebird called the Phoenix. So I came up with Phoenix College. But, amazingly, there’s another on-line school with almost the same name.

There’s actually a whole bunch of these colleges. One’s called CTU. Jack Bauer must be the dean. Another’s Graceland University. Upon graduation all students receive a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Then there’s Bellevue U. They took Stanford’s mantra of Knowledge is Power and gave it a twist: Prozac is Power.

I say with go with University of USA. Everyone already knows our chant. (U-S-A! U-S-A!) And we’ll get free publicity at each Olympics.

Nicknames:

The Bloggers – I figure instead of having “Nike” on the jerseys, we could go with “DaveBarendsCollegeHoopHumor.blogspot.com.” Or maybe not.

The Virus – I’m just not sure we’d find someone to dress up as the mascot. It’s one thing to run around as a bulldog or a bird, but quite another to be – vomit.

The Spam – Loved this one until I realized our team color would have to be pink.

The Tangled Web – I originally thought this was a clever use of a Shakespearean line. Minor problem though, “tangled web” wasn’t written by Shakespeare. (Thank God for Google. That might have been embarrassing.) So instead of being Shakespearean, it’s really just pretentious. And that’s not the University of USA.

Nope, my vote for a nickname is the Non-Hypocrites. As opposed to other schools we aren’t going to pretend to be something we’re not. We were created for one reason – to make money from our team. Other schools just don’t admit it. Really, would University of Kentucky even exist if it ended its basketball team? You can bet Ashley Judd wouldn’t be showing up for the calculus lectures.

We also won’t lie about our ability to win as opposed to say Long Island University. According to its media guide for this season, it anticipated being a “contender”. On Saturday that school lost to Bryant. Yeah that’s right, Bryant - the team that lost to the team that never wins. I guess Long Island has the same definition of “contender” as Ralph Nader.

We, however, will flat out tell our players that it will take a miracle for us to compete. But the thing is, people love rooting for miracles. I kind of remember a big one involving a hockey team in 1980. People eat that crap up. I see dollar signs and I hear chanting. U-S-A! U-S-A! The Non-Hypocrites - America’s team.

So, come on, let’s do this. I’ll provide the blogging and you’ll, well, you’ll have to do everything else.

Take it easy,
Dave

Thanks again to Johnny Cusanno for his editing assitance.

Next set of Rankings and Irrelevant Comments will be up on Thursday. If you'd like to submit your comments about the most overrated or underrated team of the week, just email me by Wednesday night at davebarend@yahoo.com.