Year of the Upset

My girl friend asks me which one I like better.  Six pack!  I hope the answer won’t upset her.  Six pack!  -Black Flag

Public Service Announcement:  OK, here we go!  The South Florida Bulls.  The South Florida Bulls started this week undefeated.  Ranked number two in the nation.  More dangerous than Heroes’ Haitian.  Out of this world like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  The toast of town.  See me walking around; I’m the boy about town that you heard of.  See me walking the streets; I’m on top of the world that you heard of. 

Unfortunately, no one told Sugar Ray Rice and the Scarlet Knights that.  Just like no one told Andre Woodson and the Kentucky Wildcats.  Just like no one told Tavita Pritchard and the Stanford Cardinal.  Just like no one told Yvenson Bernard and the Oregon State Beavers.  Just like no one told Armanti Edwards and the Appalachian State Mountaineers.  And so it goes.  And so it goes.  And so it goes.  But where it’s going, no one knows.  I do.  The biggest sports upsets of all time. 

1.  Chaminade is Hawaiian for Giant Killer:  Virginia was 8-0.  Virginia was ranked number one in the country.  Ralph Sampson and the Cavaliers had already dispatched of Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas.  The Cavaliers had already dispatched of  Akeem Olajuwon and Phi Slamma Jamma.  Along comes Chaminade.  NAIA Chaminade.  Enrollment of 800 Chaminade.  Along comes the Chaminade Silverswords.  Along comes Tony Randolph.  Randolph bumped and thumped Sampson.  Randolph mauled Sampson.  Ultimately, Randolph beat Sampson. 

2.  Miracle on Ice:  Rather than bore you with the details, I’m gonna tell you a little story.  1980.  I’m a sophomore in high school.  A high school near Boston.  Where hockey is king.  This game was big.  It was huge.  Boston had four guys on that team.  Jim Craig.  Mike Eruzione.  Dave Silk.  Jack O’Callahan.  The city was entranced.  ABC decided to broadcast the late-afternoon game on tape delay in prime time.  Neon Deon style.  My friends and I blacked out all information.  Went into lockdown.  Bunkered down in my buddy’s basement.  Killing time.  Playing stratomatic all afternoon.  Finally!  Gametime!  USA fell behind early.  Then Buzz Schnieder tied it up.  We’re going crazy.  Go crazy folks.  Go crazy!  We did.  Then came the Markhov goal to put USA behind again.  Then came my buddy’s older brother down the stairs:  “Waddya watching this for?  You know we won.”  Dead silence.  It was the biggest douche bag move in the history of douche baggery.  I still hate that cat to this very day.

3.  Reds sweep A’s:  The A’s were stacked.  Dolly Parton stacked.  Two twenty game winners in Dave Stewart and Bob Welch.  The Eck coming out of the pen.  The Bash Brothers.  Rickey.  Willie McGee.  Hendu.  Harold Baines.  Walt Weis.  Defending World Champions.  104 regular season wins.  The first franchise to appear in three consecutive World Series since the 1976-1978 Yankees.  Unstoppable.  More fun than the Lindy Hoppable.  Not so fast.  Popped up into short right in foul ground, Benzinger wants it…Cincinnati!  The champions of baseball…for 1990!!!  With an improbable sweep over Oakland. 

4.  George Mason:  The 2006 George Mason University basketball team dunking and dribbling all the way to the Final Four.  Not just one upset.  A series of upsets.  A gaggle of upsets.  A plethora of upsets.  Well, you told me I have a plethora.  And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is.  I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora.  The Patriots knew what a plethora is.  All George Mason had to do was knock off the past two National Champions.  All they had to do was knock off 2004 champion UConn.  All they had to do was knock off 2005 champion North Carolina.  All they had to do was knock off another 2005  Final Four team in Michigan State.  All they had to do was knock off four of the top seven seeds in the Washington, D.C., Regional to become the bracket-busting, knife thrusting, in God we trusting, gold dusting Cinderella team of all time in the NCAA Tournament.

5.  New Jersey Reds 100  Harlem Globetrotters 99:   The Boston Shamrocks couldn’t do it.  The Baltimore Rockets couldn’t do it.  The Atlantic City Sea Gulls couldn’t do it.  The New York Nationals couldn’t do it.  Martin, Tennessee.  The answers to all which are in front of me.  The ultimate truth started to get blurry.  For some strange reason it had to be.  It was all a dream about Tennessee.  The Harlem Globetrotters were on a 2,495-game winning streak.  Yowza!   The Globetrotters were doing what the Globetrotters did best.  Clowning.  They lost track of the game and the score.  They found themselves down twelve points with two minutes left to go.  Forced to play normal basketball, they rallied back, but couldn’t recover.  Meadowlark, Meadowlark, who’s got the basketball Lemon took the shot that would have given the game back to Globetrotters.  To no avail.  Children cried as the Reds doused themselves in Orange soda in celebration. 

Public Acknowledgements:  The Jam, Nick Lowe, Jack Buck, Three Amigos and Arrested Development

Public Spectacle: 

Peace out homies.  Six two and Even!

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