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DOLPHINS FREE AGENCY FAILURES INSPIRE “THIS IS THE SPORTS” WRITER TO ATTEMPT SUICIDE; WRITER ALSO FAILS

Posted on by thisistherony

Following a Dolphins free agency debacle that could only be described as “analogous to skipping through Sanford in a black hoodie,”  This is the Sports contributor and Miami Dolphins supporter Rony Josaphat tried to end his life on Saturday.  However he, like Miami GM Jeff Ireland, completely failed in achieving his one simple goal.  Of course in this case, the goal wasn’t simply making an underachieving team better, but making his own life worse, by ending it.

Diary entries, corroborated by statements from hospital staff, show that Mr. Josaphat first tried to end his life by “trading away a vital organ,” much like the Fins traded away big-play receiver Brandon Marshall.  After doctors refused to take his heart, pancreas, spleen, or lungs, Mr. Josaphat finally convinced the medical staff to let him part with one of his kidneys.  The medical staff, however, neglected to tell Josaphat that although the kidney is indeed a vital organ, a full life can be lived with only one of the two all humans are born with.  Thus, while Josaphat was discharged fully expecting to drop dead in minutes, he was halfway into his third Whopper Jr.(TM) at the Burger King next door before realizing that he wasn’t as dead as he’d like to be and had, in fact, enriched his life with the notion that he has saved another.  ”This,” he was overheard to have said, “must be what Jeff Ireland feels like after his stupidity resulted in a giveaway that did the opposite of what he wanted.”

 

Yay empathy!

Later, according to police reports, Mr. Josaphat decided to end his life by spear-fishing in shark-infested waters off the coast of Australia.  Josaphat, according to friends, cannot swim, and would rightly meet his end if confronted with an unfavorable situation underwater.  Surely enough, he took the plunge and, after about a half-hour of being out of sight of dive master John Purvis, Josaphat was buoyed back to the boat in the middle of a pod of bottlenose dolphins, with his arms full of tasty fish.

“He was clearly frustrated,” Purvis said; “he told me that the dolphins kept him from drowning, kept the sharks away and steered all the fattest fish toward him.  He said that this must be how Jeff Ireland felt when he dove into the race to woo Peyton Manning and failed spectacularly as well.”  But instead of failing to get a big fish because superior competition ate him alive, Josaphat’s diary elucidates, “I failed to get the superior competition to eat me alive, and instead ended up with all those big fish.”

Finally, Josaphat decided to study up on poisonous foliage native to his current surroundings in Southern California.  According to rangers at Topanga Canyon Park, he scoured the mountain paths for hours, looking for dangerous berries.  As the sun set and visibility diminished, he decided to grab a fistful of whatever he came upon, and ate it.  Much to his chagrin, the berries he ate were toxic, but not life-threatening. After a couple days of convulsions and explosive diarrhea, Josaphat would recover.  ”This,” he allegedly whispered to a park ranger, “must be how Jeff Ireland felt like when he tried to get Matt Flynn after losing Peyton Manning, but ended up with David Garrard. Like, ‘nice try, but you’re still a failure and a loser and you suck at life.’”

 

 

–Rony Josaphat, who was forced to write this article with a dull crayon as neither sharp objects nor electricity is allowed at his current location. 

STUDY: WOMEN’S QUIDDITCH PLAYERS “MOST SEXUALLY ACTIVE ATHLETES” ON CAMPUS

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(*NOTE: As the writer is not a Harry Potter fan, attempted puns may be erroneous or nonsensical.)

“Broomstick.”

“Total broomstick.”

“Omigod, I can’t even imagine.”

“Weeeeeell ladies… some of us don’t have to. Wand.”

“GET OUT!!!! That’s a shame.”

“I don’t care– I’d let that thing transmogrify me anytime.  After all, it’s not the size of the wand, it’s the motion of the potion.”

“Yeah, but careful, Marce! Present company excepted, you don’t know where that wand has been!”

The girls dissolve into a fit of laughter and high-fives, only stopping to sip their drinks and refocus on the next tasty dish that crosses their line of sight. On it goes, at least until the dance floor starts to fill up– once senior captain Blair Treedle and her squad get up to make their way into the sea of people and shake it to some Ursher, who knows where they’ll be leaving from to get to tomorrow’s team meeting?  Despite this, all the girls will agree that it’s still a “light night” for the Rutgers University Women’s Quidditch Team. The self-dubbed “Scarlet Wenches” are known campus-wide for practicing hard, playing harder, and hooking up with a frequency beyond the comprehension of a normal Muggle.

“Look. We don’t run, ’cause we [are] fly,” Scarlet Wench sophomore forward (or something) Tamara Black tells me. “And when you fly like us, you tend to land on whatever spot down there looks good!” The other girls nod in assent as the music pumps around them. “So when lame-ass bitches see us roll in, they [unintelligible; possible disappearing-spell incantation] theyselves out the way and let us get ours!”

And they’re not unique. A new poll by Quinnipiac University reveals that, all across the country, women’s Quidditch players are getting de-scarved more than any other team on campus. More than men’s lacrosse. More than women’s soccer. Even more than football.

The men and other women at the bar aren’t surprised. “Some of the sororities are pretty bad, but the Wenches are out of control,” says a male junior who doesn’t wish to be named. “I heard that, in the captains’ house off-campus, they have a huge board with the name of every officer in every frat, and all the student leaders. Like, 60% of the names are crossed off. And it’s not like they’re just laying down for us; these women will break you in half. They deliberately try [to] draw blood.”

RUN!!!

The stories repeat from school to school. Some think that it’s been the administration keeping Duke Lacrosse in check in recent years, but most on campus suspect that Lady Devils Quidditch has a lot to do with keeping the boys satiated– or dominated, depending on who you ask. The University of Miami’s Magicanes and the Lady Gators from Florida have reputations from Key West to Daytona. Taunting chants fly back and forth in matches between the Boston University Lady Terriers (“We screwed the b****-*s!” Clap, clap, clapclapclap) and the Boston College Lady Eagles (“We used BC!” [i.e. "birth control"] Clap, clap, clapclapclap). “Stop the Ducks” chants (“STD! STD! STD!”) are as popular at Oregon State as a wide variety of Beaver-related humor is at Oregon.

Despite all of this, there is a sisterhood amongst female Quidditch players nationwide. “Yeah we’ll beat ‘em down like half-breeds on the field during a tournament, but a lot of times we turn around and tell ‘em where the hot spots are for after,” Junior defenseman Marcie Shale says. “After all, there’s nothing like getting that golden snitch, right ladies???” At this, the girls raise their glasses and let out a hearty cheer.

–Rony Josaphat, honorary Scarlet Wench

APPLE COMMERCIAL FEATURES HOCKEY, RUINS IT

Posted on by thisistherony

Maybe you saw it at your best friend’s house.  And it gave you vertigo. You tried counting to four, but that didn’t work.  You can’t escape it– you’ve been touched, and you must prepare.

Hockey fans across North America are lamenting the inclusion of their sport in the latest commercial from tech corporation/culture club Apple, Inc.  Long the purview of an obscure, insular group of enthusiasts, hockey’s showcase on the Super Bowl (R) of American trendsetting is sure to bring new eyeballs to the game.  Unwanted eyeballs, according to Regina, Saskatchewan resident and hockey blogger Michael Andreczyk.  This is the Sports met Andreczyk at McCharlie’s, a local eatery famous for it’s “Curse of Ham ’n’ Eggs” breakfast platter.

"We gots lox 'n' bagels too, boss! Oooooooeee!"

“I was like ‘No. Oh no,’ ” Andreczyk said in his hilarious, mooselike Canadian accent.  ”Folks prancing around the ice in their skinny jeans and their scarves, and the glasses…. oh no.”  It took great effort for This is the Sports not to spit out his Black Death-Metal Cherry Sportsade at the last “oh no.” But listen past the throat-nasality evocative of a learning-disabled children’s party clown, and his concern evokes sympathy.

The 30-second spot, airing on NBC and the NBC Sports Network (formerly VERSUS; lost) during NHL games, goes like this:  Under an upbeat Fleet Foxes cover of Nine Inch Nails‘s “Closer”, two lines of dressed-as-you’d-imagine young people slip-slide in toward an iPhone 4GS with a picture of a hockey puck on its screen.  The smiling, laughing group passes the iBiscuit back and forth until one of the presumed wingers nudges a too-cool-for-school shot towards a goaltender wearing a hockey mask tricked out to look like a bright yellow smiley face.  The puck on the screen bursts into flame, the goalie whiffs the save, turns around, and the phone– wait for it– has burned a hole through the back of the net.  Adorably coiffed heads peer through the hole,  voice-over says something about being even faster than before, Apple logo, fin.

Larry the Needless Economic Consumption Troll lives in your subconscious. iDevices make him happy.

“That’s not what the game is aboot about,” Andreczyk continued.  Where’s the hard hittin’?  Where’s the goalie with the rubber spine, eh?  None of those kids in that commercial were missin’ any teeth!  Hell, they didn’t even have skates on!”  His eyes held a pleading look before he peered down despondently into his Sportsade Chernobylemon-lime.

After lunch, we walked over to the sports shop, where This is the Sports spotted a young, light-skinded [but not quite redbone] African-Amer–, well, “black”, I guess, in Canada– man, with Tina Fey glasses and the kind of afro black people don’t wear anymore, checking out some hockey sweaters.  We overheard him ask the sales associate if they had any sweaters of teams that were big in the ’80s but don’t exist anymore.  Once This is the Sports gave Andreczyk unspoken approval to speak negatively of another black person in This is the Sports‘s presence, Andreczyk lamented openly (still beginning with the obligatory “it’s not ’cause he’s–”shoulder-shrug–”y’know, but”). “I’m just really worried about what’s gonna happen to the game I love– the game my country loves– if these guys take it over.”

Anarchy. Pure anarchy.

This is the Sports couldn’t help but nod in understanding.  It’s a tough spot Andreczyk and his fellow hockey fans have found themselves in.  Sure you wanna share your love, but you’d like to do it on your own terms, in your own time.  Then this commercial comes out, and all of a sudden the biggest company in the United States (and the subculture that follows it) is poised to make you its girl.  Whether you like it or not.

–Rony Josaphat.  Ooooooooee.

BIG TEN TO CHANGE NAME TO “BIG TEN√-1”

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PARK RIDGE, ILL– Describing their situation as “complex,” Big Ten Commissioner James Delaney has decided to finally adjust the conference’s name after two decades of their moniker belying the actual number of member universities.  The commissioner announced the move in a 5:38 am ET conference call to major news organizations, to which he was forty-five minutes late.

This announcement came a year after Delaney marked the inclusion of the organization’s 12th football program, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with a split into two divisions, named “Legends” and “Leaders.” Delaney said that, considering the realignment taking place in college football, he couldn’t say for sure whether the number of teams in the Big Ten√-1 would grow or shrink in the near future, and that this was the best way for his forward-thinking conference to adapt.

Big Ten√-1 Commissioner Delaney.

Reaction at member institutions was mixed.  Students at Purdue and Northwestern hailed the move, while a student at Ohio State, when asked about the name change, grinned vacantly before running to a trash can to throw up. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, perhaps confused at the early hour, initially responded harshly to the move on Twitter, tweeting, “if this overgrown union thinks that they can radicalize in my state, they must be imagining things.”  The governor later issued a retraction.

At the close of the conference call, Delaney, seemingly suppressing giggles, reiterated that the conference’s new official name for publication was in fact “Big Ten√-1,” and should be printed as such.  He gave no word on whether the conference would accept “Big 10i.”

TIM TEBOW DEFEATS PITTSBURGH MAYOR/DARK WIZARD LUKE RAVENSTAHL

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Tim Tebow, at rest.

And with a heave of his mighty spear and a cry that shook the bones of death himself, the golden child vanquished his foe, and put an end to the malevolent one’s quest of  world domination.

But this isn’t a homeric retelling of Broncos’ quarterback Tim Tebow’s 80+ yard overtime throw to Damaryius Thomas.   This actually happened.  With an actual spear.

As previously reported on This Is the Sports, a strangeness has beset the NFL, particularly the AFC teams, beginning last August with mysterious attacks on AFC South starting quarterbacks.  No one knew what to make of these occurances until late Tuesday night, when a great hue a cry rose over the Ohio Valley.  The team flight from Denver to Boston for this weekend’s divisional playoff game against the New England Patriots was laid over due to “strange lights in the sky.”  But Tebow alone amongst the passengers understood– this was the call.

Unbeknownst to his Bronco teammates, Tebow slipped out of the airport and met up with Commander Oeikann, exalted Seraph of the Century Order by the Grace of Elohim.  Oeikann was an angel. The only witness to their conversation was Billy, a poor 7-year-old  from a broken home who longs for adventure. “The angel said, ‘Come young warrior Tebow, for you know what you must do.  We will fly to Pittsopolis, and it is there where you must lead the armies of heaven in battle against the dark wizard….. Ravenstahl.’”

"CREEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!"

“They said that they’d bring me along to bear witness,” Billy recounted in our interview, as his eyes predictably filled with wonder.

In a flash, Billy says, the trio was in downtown Pittsburgh, under dark skies intermittently streaked with red lightning and shaken by peals of thunder.  ”There was deep, evil laugh,” Billy says, and slowly, hordes of smoke-breathing demons with hearts as black as coal began to swarm around us.  ’Foolish boy,’ it said, ‘your meddling has lead you to your end!’”  This was the voice of Ravenstahl, the evil wizard and current mayor of Pittsburgh.  Tebow, now dressed in the cloth and armor of a poor shepherd boy, spoke.  ”Ravenstahl! I am but a humble boy, born in the Philippines to parents who love the Lord and despair of violence and evil.  But if I must…. I will vanquish thee.”  ”Do your worst, Boy,”  Billy said Ravenstahl sneered, “…you will but soil my cloak.”   To which Tebow replied, “Oh yeah?  …’Preciate that.”  He then raised his left hand.  ”In the name of God the Father, El-Shaddai, Alpha and Omega, who said to Moses, ‘I AM THAT I AM’,” Tebow is reported to have said, “I humbly cry– armies of heaven, come forth!”

(Unintelligible)

What followed, Billy said, was a sound like no other.  Indescribable, filling the child with the warmest feeling imaginable, “like instantly getting 100 likes when you post something on facebook.”  Down from the sky the Seraphim descended, marching behind Tebow.  The battle raged, splintering time, until, as described above, Tebow threw his shining spear and brought Ravenstahl to his knees.  Within seconds, U.S. Steel issued a press release announcing the creation of 100,000 American jobs.

Neither Tebow nor the Broncos had any comment.  But there is no deception in the eyes of a child.  No matter what the score of the Broncos’ next game against New England, Tebow’s got another fan for life.  ”The coolest part,” Billy said, “was that the spear didn’t even kill Ravenstahl.  It just knocked him down.  But Tebow walked up to him and was like, ‘I beseech thee–repent, and kneel before the one true God.’”

And he did.

–Rony Josaphat, humble troubadour and bard of the adventures of Tim Tebow.

FIGURE SKATING, GYMNASTICS CONFOUND PERVS, NON-PERVS

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Boorish? No, he contends.

“I met the curator of the Met once, and we ended up chatting for quite a bit,” Dan Phillips says.

Un-artistic? Absolutely not, says the significant other.

“He’s not going to admit it, but choreography was one of the ways he paid his way though college,” his fiancee, Kyra Mosenberg, volunteers. “He loves artistry, especially the artistry of the body in motion.”

Homophobic?

“My older brother Ben is gay, and he’s one of my best friends,” Dan counters.

But when I mention figure skating, a look of disdain, if not outright revulsion, darkens Dan’s face. “Don’t like it. Can’t even watch it, really. There’s something about it that just puts me off.” Later, when we’re alone, Kyra sheds some light on the real reason behind his disdain. “I was before we met,” she begins. “He was watching a figure skater go through her routine. He was really getting into it– not in, like, a creepy way, but with his knowledge of dancing he really saw how graceful, how beautiful she was. Then the routine ended, and the announcers mention that the girl was 16 years old. Sixteen! He told me how horrified he was, and begged me not to leave him for being interested in an underage girl.”

I dare you. I double-dog dare you.

Continue reading →

NATION’S GEOGRAPHY WILL SHIFT TO ACCOMMODATE COLLEGE FOOTBALL REALIGNMENT

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“Since when is Boise, Idaho anywhere near the East?” Sometime next August, cynics might find the answer to their question hovering above them.

Engineers across the country are putting together an ambitious plan to move the cities and states of the contiguous United States, in order to rationalize the disconnect between their conference memberships and their physical geography.

Lead engineer (left), with anthropomorphic grasshopper.

When the grumblings first started, around the time the University of Colorado at Boulder  joined the Pacific-12, an e-mail began floating around the school.  Attached was an unsigned and most-likely tongue-in-cheek proposal to move the city of Boulder, CO to a stretch of wilderness on the Oregon-California border “in order to become a true pacific institution.”  It found its way to the facebook page of a study group from Professor Mark Childress’s ENG 5681 class, “Superstructures and Hazards.”  As an ongoing semester project, the class was tasked with reverse engineering the top-secret NORAD bunker in the mountains of their state.  As the kids looked it over, they realized that moving the city would be more than possible with the methods used to build NORAD– methods, by the way, employed more than a half-century ago.

As shown, SMU and greater Dallas (bottom circle) will swing around the South on its way to the Big East, if the university accepts the conference's bid.

The e-mail spread past the bounds of the university to other engineering websites, where engineers would add plans to relocate more cities to conference appropriate locales. Salt Lake City, like Boulder, will be helicoptered towards the western coast. The organized collapse of old coal mining tunnels would bring Louisville closer to the east. What began as an Internet meme among engineering students morphed accumulated detail, organization, and volunteers, until it became a viable project. From there, all the project needed was the go-ahead from an eager Obama Administration, which not only would welcome the jobs created but also the interest generated in the much touted STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields of study.

During the transport, non-essential personnel in the affected cities and towns are asked to stay indoors; speed limits will be lowered to 15 mph citywide while cities are in motion, and citizens will be urged to avoid using restroom facilities unless flying over the state of New Jersey.

SPORTS WORLD SLIDING INTO HORRIFYING ALTERNATE REALITY*

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*Real world to follow.

Forced to watch 6 straight hours of Big Ten basketball.

A team of philosophers, historians, and sports psychologists have found that the world of sport is, in fact, caught in a terrifying hellscape of distorted reality.

In a new report published in the journal Nature, the group finds that sometime in the past 10 – 12 years, the sports world slipped through a rip in space-time, landing in an alternate universe of cruel ironies.  A plane where, as she hypothesized last month in a Boston Globe op-ed, “a football program touted for shaping young men in all likelihood has a serial child rapist in their ranks.”

The group’s chair, Dr. Alexandra Black, began her research after the Boston Red Sox won their first world title.  ”I knew something was very wrong,” she recalls now.  She sought to gather a team to investigate patterns and anomalies.  Her first partner is now the current research group’s vice-chair, Dr. Francis Upp.

“It was slow going for Frank and I those first four years or so,” says Dr. Black, who is white.  We only had scattered, anecdotal evidence– a massive, unexplained solar event in January ’04, Barry Bonds’ denial of steroid use.”  Black sighs.  I got discouraged,” she admits.  In 2008, however, Black’s colleague, astrophysics professor Wilhelm Frumt, returned from a sabbatical in Austria and agreed to join her team.  That, of course, was the year Brett Favre was pushed out as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers.  ”I had always known that Upp was down; once Frumt was back, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing some really disturbing things,” Black says.

"'Tiger Woods crashes car?' Pshhh, nbd."

Indeed, Black’s conclusions seem obvious now, considering the hyper-dramatized NBA lockout and Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos being kidnapped (then sprung amidst gunfire) in Venezuela.  And, of course, there’s Penn State.  Plots all disorientingly cinematic, but with no director to yell ‘cut!’  But, Black says, there are implications for non-sports fans as well; sports, she reminds us, have always been a bellwether for the rest of humanity.  ”Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in the 1950s, and the Civil Rights movement followed.  Why should we assume that the rest of the world won’t follow sports again– this time into the teeth of the abyss?”

FLORIDA PANTHERS P.A. ANNOUNCER FIRED AFTER PLAYING “ICE, ICE, BABY”

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"Daaaaaamn!" --Other DJs

"Daaaaaamn!" --Other DJs

Stopped, collaborative fans were left listening to nothing after a minor incident during the first intermission of last weekend’s game at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida, when the NHL’s Florida Panthers’ public address announcer violated decades of hockey tradition by attempting to play the 1990 hit “Ice, Ice, Baby” by Vanilla Ice.  The announcer, Jose Murillo, refused to leave the press box until arrested and led out by Broward Sheriff’s Department officers.  He was charged with a felony.

It happened halfway through the first intermission, according to first-person accounts.  While the organist was out of the booth, witnesses say, Murillo endeavored to play the record over the nightly “Fan Dance Cam” promotion.  Hearing the extra bass note that clearly differentiates the Ice track from its sample source, Panthers Radio Network color commentator Tim Ravelli scrambled next door to the audio station and jammed on the stop button before forcibly restraining Murillo.  Though the music was cut before the end of the song’s first line, fans were still stunned.  Steve Pace, a New York transplant now living in Ft. Lauderdale, couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  “I thought they were gonna play ‘Under Pressure,’ y’know, ‘cause the Rangers guy used to do that as a joke sometimes,” Mr. Pace says.  But when I heard the scuffling I knew something was really wrong.”  Security staff rushed in to detain Mr. Murillo.  They were followed shortly by arena manager Willy Martinez, who was heard muttering “really?  REALLY?” as he hustled inside.

Murillo looked bewildered as he was released from the BSO station in Sunrise.  “How was I supposed to know?” He maintained.  “The rapper is from Miami, and the word ‘ice’ is right there in the title.  Why wouldn’t you play it at a hockey match?”  National reporters were left scratching their heads; hockey commentators across both the U.S. and Canada were disgusted.  Late last night, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman promised a full review of hockey’s viability in the South Florida market, at the strong urging of business leaders in Seattle and Quebec City.

–Rony Josaphat, aka V.I.P.

IPAD APP TO TELL USERS WHEN TO CARE ABOUT BASEBALL

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Baseball! America! Hot dogs and apple pie totally aren't European in origin, yeah!

Find yourself frustrated by having to pay attention to three-and-a-half-hour bouts of staring, nodding, and spitting, every day from the middle Spring to the middle of Fall?  There’s an app for that.

For a growing number of young people and working professionals, watching one full game of baseball, let alone a whole 162-game season, is a Kafka-esque task designed to drive an unsuspecting sports fan to madness.  Ironically, it’s a Kafka, Chris Kafka, who hopes to put an end to it.  Kafka, a 26-year-old web developer from Virginia but now living in New York City, was frustrated that his older colleagues and unemployed peers would frequently cycle back to America’s past Pastime as a topic of conversation.  ”They would talk incessantly about games and pennant outlooks and whoever the f*** is the hot young pitcher of this five minutes.  Like I can stay up ’til two a.m. every night keeping up with that s***!  So I decided to write an app that will alert you when anything worth anything happens in the world of baseball.”

Take this season; amazing how the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees managed to slip into the postseason around the collapsing Red Sox in a thrilling Wednesday night (Wednesday? Really?) of baseball, right?   Kafka’s app would alert you Thursday morning of the pertinent scores and facts.  It would also let you know that the Sox apparently suck now, and everyone hates them– invaluable information to anyone who was last compelled to care about baseball when everyone was remarking how awesome Boston was after winning their second World Series in 4 years.  A week and change later, the app would inform you that both the Yankees and the plucky Rays had washed out of the playoffs, and it was safe to ignore baseball again until the World Series begins.

Maybe even longer.

Kafka points out that most of the thousands of games played in a major league season are laughably meaningless, but when something notable does happen, he is expected by colleagues and friends to know everything about it.  ”Someone mentioned the [Kansas City] Royals once, and I thought they were making a Pulp Fiction reference,” he recounts, more annoyed than embarrassed.  Kafka played his mistake off, but vowed it would never happen again.  “Having this app is like bringing a porn-star-sized dildo to the dick-measuring contest” that is modern baseball fandom, he says.  The young web-developer hopes the iPhone and iPad apps will be approved in time for Opening Day next season; a version for the Android platform is in the works.

–Rony Josaphat, who, by the way, genuinely loves soccer.