I Should've Known

I can only guess that in the basketball game last night, the Illinois coach called a time-out with 1:00 left in the 4th quarter so he could distribute yesterday's Goulash entry. He said to the team, "Listen up, boys. We're in a tight game, and if we can hold them off here in the last minute, we'll be national champions. Maybe the sound of that makes you nervous, but it shouldn't, because we absolutely must lose. I know, it'd be a big deal if we won, but there's no way in hell I'm letting Cody Powell win his office NCAA pool. He'd become an absolute monster, struttin' down the halls and rolling around in his winnings on the floor of the break room. I can't let that happen. So from now on, miss all your shots. I'm sorry I have to order you guys to lose, but you know Cody would just waste that money anyway on some dumb-ass X Box game called Bath Time with Yoda."

I've now made my peace with the University of Illinois' men's basketball team. Their country-western dancing club is another matter entirely, but I'll stop there due to pending litigation. Besides, there's another basketball team far more capable of enraging me, the Dallas Mavericks.

The Mavs will soon be entering the play-offs, so all of you can look forward to an abundance of entries about me wanting to light bags of poop on fire in Shawn Bradley's front lawn. Well, you'll see plenty of those until the Mavs become the first team in the history of the NBA to get knocked out of the play-offs in a single game. After the first loss, Mark Cuban will become so enraged that he secedes his team from the league and takes them on tour around Texas, forcing them to play against the staff of every Dairy Queen in the Southwest. In fact, I'm so certain of this outcome, I would be willing to put money on it. I won't, though; I bet the Illinois coach has Mark Cuban's number.