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surprise, surprise
Dec. 20th, 2005 06:16 pmThis was from an email that I wrote today entitled "Surprise, surprise..." (but this was way off the original topic).
The email:
>From ESPN: ? The news that Arkansas State linebacker Chris Littleton
>will be allowed to play in his team's bowl game despite a recent
>arrest for battering a police officer elicits only one appropriate
>response: Arkansas State is in a bowl game?
My reply:
Yes, they're that bad.
-----------
Now, I can think of a couple of A-State fans that will get on to me for this, but all I can say what I experienced while I was a student at ASU. The Powers That Be decided, for whatever reason, that ASU needed to play in a higher division than they were at the time. They switched divisions and promptly began to suck to the nth degree. I went to one ball game during my undergrad (that I remember): it was homecoming, we were playing some much smaller school from Out West somewhere, and we ALMOST won. It was the one exciting football game I remember seeing there, because the score was tied in the 4th quarter, with a field goal in overtime deciding the game.
The rest of the schools we played then we had no business playing. I don't know if that is still the case, but unless there has been some major improvement, I would suspect that what I observed back in the day is still status quo. In fact, Littleton's inclusion in the game tells me that he's valuable enough to the head coach (read: he's pretty much carrying the team, or is one of a few key players who are) that a mere battery charge is not enough to stop him from playing. [This is also not unprecedented. A basketball player in the late 90's (whose name escapes me at the moment -- my mother taught him in high school too) was also allowed to play, dispite pending drug charges.]
In any case, ASU in a bowl game is a surprising thing to me. ASU Athletics ignoring legal proceedings to keep a player in the game? Not so much.
[x-posted to the blog]
The email:
>From ESPN: ? The news that Arkansas State linebacker Chris Littleton
>will be allowed to play in his team's bowl game despite a recent
>arrest for battering a police officer elicits only one appropriate
>response: Arkansas State is in a bowl game?
My reply:
Yes, they're that bad.
-----------
Now, I can think of a couple of A-State fans that will get on to me for this, but all I can say what I experienced while I was a student at ASU. The Powers That Be decided, for whatever reason, that ASU needed to play in a higher division than they were at the time. They switched divisions and promptly began to suck to the nth degree. I went to one ball game during my undergrad (that I remember): it was homecoming, we were playing some much smaller school from Out West somewhere, and we ALMOST won. It was the one exciting football game I remember seeing there, because the score was tied in the 4th quarter, with a field goal in overtime deciding the game.
The rest of the schools we played then we had no business playing. I don't know if that is still the case, but unless there has been some major improvement, I would suspect that what I observed back in the day is still status quo. In fact, Littleton's inclusion in the game tells me that he's valuable enough to the head coach (read: he's pretty much carrying the team, or is one of a few key players who are) that a mere battery charge is not enough to stop him from playing. [This is also not unprecedented. A basketball player in the late 90's (whose name escapes me at the moment -- my mother taught him in high school too) was also allowed to play, dispite pending drug charges.]
In any case, ASU in a bowl game is a surprising thing to me. ASU Athletics ignoring legal proceedings to keep a player in the game? Not so much.
[x-posted to the blog]
