Tradition of traditions-gone; myth of myths-next

UPON FURTHER REVIEW, this column works better on Thursday.

Not really, but Lord knows we wouldn't want people to question The Chronicle, so we'll pretend it's running today for a reason.

Let's just leave it as much of a mystery as who the hell buys Yanni albums, and if we've got to blame somebody, let's just blame it on, say, Shane Battier.

He never gets blamed for anything.

Or maybe we should just invoke fate, since if there ever were a time to mark a special occasion, it's this week. If you walked into Wallace Wade Saturday, you might have noticed something, other than the Duke offense, was MIA.

Eisenhower had D-Day, Reggie Jackson had the '78 Series, the Backstreet Boys had it "that way" and I had last Saturday. After four seasons or so behind the Duke bench, The Tradition of Traditions went the way of, well, Duke's football tradition.

Holloman 1, Sign 0.

And last time I checked, Beth Bauer was still pro and Bob Knight was still teaching discipline on the local unemployment line. Hat trick.

We do go to practice and we sit through a lot of press conferences, so as far as I can tell, the difference between those people on the field and those of us in the pressbox is the general attraction of one man's hand to another man's butt.

Now I'm sure there's a lot of osmotic learning that goes on through on-field butt-patting, but maybe, just maybe, don't you think I can figure out what an I-formation is without a guy's hand on my ass? Or maybe next time I'm staring up at a scoreboard that says 38-0 and I'm woefully unaware as to exactly what it means, I'll just have the guy from the Durham Herald-Sun pat me on the butt so I can figure out that somebody's having about as good a night as Mark Furhman at a Black Panthers meeting.

Hell, if we're going to abide by the little rule, 'if you haven't done it, you can't criticize it,' all of us in Trinity College of arts and crafts will spend the rest of our academic careers doing nothing-even moreso. Want to write a paper on Shakespeare? But you haven't written a drama produced in Elizabethan England? Really sorry. Doctor make a boo-boo and accidentally amputate your leg? You're not a doctor, don't criticize.

Or how about this, I invite anybody who stands by that argument to dinner for a little special I like to call two-week-old chicken surprise. Now you can't criticize it, since you've never cooked two-week-old chicken surprise and since you're not a G.I. specialist, you can't really claim to have food poisoning, and you're no mortician, so death may or may not really ensue.

Just a frickin thought.

Now, I played sports in high school and I would've loved to have continued at Duke. But even if God had given me the mind of George Seifert, the work ethic of Jerry Rice and the natural athletic ability of Marshall Faulk, he still screwed up and gave me the body of David Stern. Thanks.

Yeah, I learned a lot on the field, but it wasn't everything, and at a University where we're confident we can understand things as complex as the human brain and sorority girls, is it too impossibly hard to imagine that some of us might be able to learn that being outscored isn't a sign of a winning team?

Sheesh.

Let me just phrase it in terms everybody's going to understand-Melissa Joan Stark or Eric Dickerson? (Incidentally, No. 1 sign you're in the wrong profession, Dickerson beat you out for his MNF gig.)

Of course, the only thing more annoying than that argument is the handful of people who have said I don't give Bob Knight (or Knight as I hear he prefers) enough respect.

Now I'm sure Knight had a tough time as coach, but hey, he always got an early vacation courtesy of first round pastings, so he should've been at least a little relaxed. And you know what? Everybody has pressure on the job, it's called life, we all deal. Some of us just don't have the luxury of screwing up multiple times and retaining our jobs.

His players, I'm told, respect him. My psych-major roommate tells me it's sort of like battered wife syndrome. I prefer to think of it as a chronic inability to duck. Your brain does funny things after it plays piñata to Bobby Knight.

It's not about respect, it's not about success and it's not about how you may or may not be developing boys into men or whatever the damn saying is; you abuse people like Knight did, that's it, game over. There's no three strikes and you're out, it's one pop and buh-bye, do not pass go, do not collect $200, come on down, that's your final answer... frickin parcheesi, you're fired, go away.

And it doesn't matter if it's a player, student or Slappy the school gerbil, you're gone.

C'mon Knight, leave hits to people who know what they're about, like Todd Helton and, say, Vanilla Ice.

And there are those who think my lack of respect shows up in me writing like a "nine-year-old." La di frickin da grey poupon, what do you wanna go do next, play the grand piano? Know what else? I don't "wash" my dishes, I "throw" them away, because they're all "plastic." I don't have "silverware," I use "sporks" that I "stole" from "Kentucky Fried Chicken." And I don't have "bottles" of ketchup, I have a series of "packets" from "Hardees" in my "refrigerator." And maybe other people "know" what the "bristley thing" next to the "toilet" in the bathroom is "used" for.

I ain't painting the frickin Mona Lisa, here guys, Dogs Playing Poker is just fine.

Besides, if you've got a problem with what I write, blame Shane Battier.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW is a weekly column written by a sports columnist. It appears every Wednesday, except when it appears Thursday, which will never ever happen again. We hope.