A Boy and His Basketball: How a Man In a Bear Costume Can Ruin Your Life Forever

I like sports, and I don’t care who knows. I like football and basketball, and the one with the sticks is pretty good, too ... Curling, that’s it! Though you would never know it based on my March Madness bracket (I’ll give you two hints as to whom I had winning the championship: a) they already lost and b) they ensured that I cannot make fun of that girl who picked the Boston University Terriers to go to the Final Four because she likes dogs, by losing to a team whose mascot is a dog), I devote much of my free time to reading about, watching and occasionally participating in sports.

Whenever I listen to music, there will always be some hipster jerk who is inevitably all like, “Yeah, I have that on vinyl; it’s all right,” (Really? You have Sonseed on vinyl?) or “Yeah, that’s OK, but they’re so much better live”—though, in my experience, this comment has yet to be made of The Black Eyed Peas. I have been to at least one game of every major professional American sport (MLB, NBA, NFL and the other one) in person, and though it may indeed be better live, something strange and horrible always seems to happen when I am in attendance.

As a younger man, I was a huge fan of the Minnesota Timberwolves (a rarity today, unless you particularly enjoy white people who can rebound better than the characters on “Glee”), particularly their star forward, Kevin Garnett. I arrived in Memphis to watch them play an away game in full-on Garnett garb: his number 21 jersey, a Wolves hat and a large sign which read, “KG4MVP.” This was a mistake.

The mascot for the Memphis Grizzlies, a grizzly bear fittingly and creatively named “Grizz,” quickly took notice and came over to my section. He picked me out for the wolf in wolf’s clothing that I was, and had me stand up to a smattering of boos and hisses from the home crowd. Whatever: my team was dominating, and Garnett was putting the punctuation mark on a great, MVP-winning season. Bring it on.

And it was brought—in the form of silly string. In front of 19,000 fans, my replica jersey was sprayed with green, liquid strands from an aerosol can, simultaneously destroying the ozone layer, my self esteem and my wardrobe—how silly. A flamboyant Chewbacca permanently transformed my Kevin Garnett into a Jackson Pollock.

(Fun Fact: Grizz now has a Twitter, which makes things so much worse for some reason. No, I do not follow him, and not a day goes by when I don’t want to send him this truce, condensed neatly into 140 characters: “Hey @Grizz, just wanted to remind you that you ruined my Wolves jersey when I was 10 years old. Also, my life. #thanks #blackbearsarebetter”).

In my one and only experience with the NFL, a game held in the unforgivably cold Cleveland Browns Stadium, a referee made a controversial call at the end of the match that left the home crowd a little bit upset. And by “upset,” I mean “literally wanting to stuff said referee in a box alongside 30 starving schnauzers, rocket that box into a supernova and have the remnants of the explosion pureed and served alongside toast and sauerkraut in a sleazy New Jersey diner.”

Cue thousands of cups of beer and other curiously golden liquids being thrown onto the field and stands (depending on the collective blood-alcohol level of the section), as the Zebras galloped out of the venue and away from their not-so-adoring fans. I, however, was stuck in the ruckus far longer than desired and received a very unwanted shower to ensure that I was even colder and smellier than before.

So, what’s the lesson here? Well, most obviously, you should always do as the Romans do and should never serve alcohol in the second half of a sporting event. And, most importantly, you should be scared of grizzly bears for more than just their banana-sized claws and barbed fangs—not only will they rip your skin off, but they will also rip out your soul and put it on display for all their 750 followers to see. #trustme.

Practice makes perfect

Dinner in the Café is so much fun. There's food, friends, tables... uh, pizza, ice cream, chairs - okay, so maybe there's not a whole lot of entertainment to be found; I mean it is just a cafeteria. One thing that has never ceased to interest me, however, is the slew of student athletes who pour through the doors on crutches, in wheel chairs, and with 40 oz. bags of ice wrapped around their head with gauze bandages. "What's wrong with your face!?" I ask them in horror. "Practice," they respond.

Practice? What sport are you practicing for? I was totally unaware we had a bear wrestling team or a shin-kicking squad (and if we do someone needs to get me a schedule for those games ASAP). I picture them filing into the health services building one by one: "And how, exactly, did you dislocate your eyeball?" "Well, I was practicing my breaststroke, and..." "And your spinal column broken in two? How did that happen?" "Coach had us do wind sprints." "Sever your brain stem?" "Stretching." Man, practice must be tough.

When I was an ignorant child, I had dreams that one day I would play football in college and then in the NFL and also be an NBA all-star on the side (I am white and 5'9", just to let you know how that turned out). I wanted to go to a school with a storied gridiron tradition and an over-the-top stadium filled to the brim with drunk, overweight men that know who Lee Corso is. Even still, I often find myself wishing that Asbury had a football team to cheer on in big games, and to have somebody to root for that's not the stinkin' Cats. However, I imagine that if we did have one all of its players would have died back in Spring training. I am so glad I quickly abandoned that hope.

At this younger time in my life, I played on the line for my middle school football team. Weighing about as much as a small tractor (but only half as fast), I pretty easily defended the quarterback from the onslaught of pre-pubescent, Superman-undies-wearing defenders; but, boy, did I get banged up. I would come into school the next day bruised worse than my ego on report-card day (no wonder those social workers kept showing up at my house). Though, somehow, in my nine years of playing football I never once broke a bone, was concussed, or needed to fasten a ridiculously large bag of ice to my crotch.

Has anything in the history of Asbury athletics been more detrimental to signing prospective students than the terror of seeing the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their future teammates scattered about the campus? From the looks of it, signing an athletic scholarship is tantamount to enlisting in the Marines. "The few. The proud. The martyrs." I won't even play intramural sports for fear of being killed; I would be the first person to ever be decapitated in a game of ultimate Frisbee.

Allen Iverson - one of the greatest small players in the history of basketball - in a moment of brilliance once said of the triviality of practice, "We're talking about practice, man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice." So, there you go - not only is practice wholly unnecessary to become a superstar athlete, it will also get you KILLED. And you know what they say: "You can't be the sixth man if you're six feet under."