Someone said something nice about me!

Just when I thought everyone in the world hated me, Kevin at Barry Melrose Rocks called me esteemed. Esteemed! In any case, that whole post he has up there is a good example of what happens when I get time off and start shooting off e-mails, and someone has the audacity to take them seriously.
Kevin also called us an "awfully nice bunch of people" which is an assessment the state of Oregon may disagree with. He also surmised that we have cheeky and fun Minnesota accents. Well, I can safely say Steve doesn't (he's from Chicago) but hey, Beth and I might! I've never been filmed, and find myself neither cheeky or fun, so I really have no idea. Other than those quibbles, I think that post is pretty much the best thing on the internet that you don't have to pay to see.

Since I mentioned my pissing off people I have no business pissing off, I feel like I should mention something, and clarify my point regarding the whole NJIT post from a couple of days ago. In it, I stated that the NJIT decision to leap to Division 1. feel the need to clarify my point that I think the decision wasn't in the best interest for NJIT specifically, even though it tends to work out in the end for most schools., mostly because they have such a rigorous academic standards. In a liberal arts school, for whatever reason, it's easier to tuck in a joke major for the athletes. At Purdue it was Organizational Leadership Studies. Sure, if you took that in school and tried your best and worked hard at it, you would be well equipped for the real word or graduate work, however if you sloughed off, you could still get good enough grades to play football *cough*Kelly Butler*cough*. NJIT can't have that. It's going to be tough to build a strong athletic tradition if they can't recruit just any athlete as most of their competition can. There's a reason CalTech isn't playing D-1.

Ok, so that's two posts in a row on schools not named Purdue that I've got a bit of resistance on. I'm going to sit a couple college related plays out, I think.

(Pictured is Kelly Butler on the right and someone I don't know, so I will name Jethro and demand play Aqualung at my next birthday(April 5th! Don't forget!))

How could smart people be so dumb?

Let me tell you something about the New Jersey Institute of Technology. NJIT, would be the abbreviation. They are referred to as "New Jersey's Science and Technology University" which means students and faculty should be awfully smart. Right? It seems that way, looking at the fields of study and some of the historical achievements on their website.
It's been my experience that smart people tend to think they have it all figured out. For example, they probably thought they had the game of basketball all figured out by now. It seems pretty simple, and a lot of the game, especially in college, thrives on strategy. Surely, they could make a jump to Division 1 without a problem, right?
Wrong.
Not only are the Highlanders losing, they are losing to bad teams and losing by an awful lot. They scored 28 against Manhattan, and were outscored by 26 and 28 by Rider and Maine in two consecutive games. It's been a rough season for NJIT which joined D-1 last year. They won their first two games (against Manhattan and Rider, ironically) but proceeded to go 3-24 over the rest of the season, winning twice against Longwood, a school in which I am too classy to make an inappropriate giggle at. At least Longwood is 2-8 this year, and has played better opponents than NJIT (not that they should be happy about losing 100-49 to Indiana).
So, where did NJIT go wrong? By assuming smart people should be good at basketball. The best basketball players are going to go to schools where they can't be bothered with studying, or foolishness like that. NJIT has a history of challenging it's students to achieve, which would leave no time to dedicated basketball players to practice. Thus, the Highlanders will continue to be humiliated on the court.
Moving to Division 1 was at best, a terrible idea.