But this is the first time she’s seen a doubleplusgood reverse Orwellian lay-up.
John Calvin (It’s a pseudonym because… I don’t know. Why would a person use a pseudonym to write about sports?) warns us that if we vacate the University of Louisville’s basketball championship just because of those ineligible receivers (if I may mix sports) everyone’s been talking about, we are ushering in Kim Jong-un.
[B]eware. History, like whiskey, is best served straight up, and there is something very Joseph Stalin and Kim Jong-un about rewriting an event that happened and giving it an alternate ending. Many are amused when Kim Jong-un Photoshops out Uncle So and So from all previous official images shortly after he had fallen out of favor with the Dear Leader and then executed. But don’t laugh too loud… Whether we are talking basketball, football, or a more serious subject matter the same principle of history should apply: the truth should be our barometer, even and perhaps especially if the truth is ugly.
The meaning of history is a powerful tool and George Orwell summed it up perfectly with, “He who controls the past controls the future.”
Lose the smirk. This is serious stuff. Perhaps you’ve not read Isaiah Berlin’s Basketball and Its Betrayal: Enemies of the Arena, which subjects foes of university basketball programs to a withering critique, and concludes with a famous warning: He who controls the free throw area controls the future.
October 28th, 2015 at 10:41AM
If this guy knows as much of college sports as he does whiskey, then he’s a dope. Catholic whiskey >>>>>>>>> protestant whiskey, you need to add all sorts of things to make the latter palatable….
October 28th, 2015 at 11:36AM
But rescinding wins and titles actually is kind of a dumb punishment. The Stalin/Kim Jung-un argument is hopelessly idiotic, but rescinding wins is the kind of thing that SEEMS like a harsh punishment that isn’t really a punishment at all. Fire more, rescind less.
Though I do love the class-action potential: If I paid for season tickets to games the results of which were rescinded, where is my money back? Because the money was very real even if the games (post facto) were not.
dcat
October 28th, 2015 at 1:50PM
What a fevered imagination John Calvin has.
October 30th, 2015 at 8:13PM
Zwingli was probably egging him on as he wrote it.
What I’d like to see is a take on college sports from the Anabaptists from the Muenster commune. Drunken banquets, polygamy, community of goods, beheadings, all that good stuff. John of Leiden had the out-sized ego — and snappy wardrobe — to be an NCAA basketball coach.