Nico Perrino
Men’s Basketball
Jeremiah Rivers has been cursing Nico Perrino and the basketball Gods ever since Perrino's January 24th blog post.
So, all you out there in the blogosphere may have noticed (or not—whatever…) my lack of commentary on IU basketball lately. My last article on the team was on the 24th of last month, and since then I have been punishing myself for the things I said.
I feel like I jinxed the team: Since I wrote that article, in which I noted the tremendous effort the team was demonstrating every time they stepped on the court (I think the word I used was “heart”—shame on me), they have lost 8 straight games (maybe even 9 if they lose again tonight), and have demonstrated a complete lack of effort in every game without exception.
The team sucks and I suck. The team sucks, well, because they just suck… and I suck because I supported them at one point, and even (the case can be made) argued that they could compete in the Big Ten.
I couldn’t have been further from the truth. After many hours of forcing myself to watch Olympic ice skating (or dancing—I don’t even know what to call it… Is it even really a sport? Seems more like a performance art to me) as a form of penance for my sins I have now moved onto the final step in my self-prescribed recovery plan: Write a blog about how much I suck.
Yes, I suck.
Since that article was published last month a few things have happened to me that I can only imagine have come about because of what I wrote.
For one: I got a parking ticket. I know, I know, everyone gets parking tickets in college, but this was my first one and it came about because of… you guessed it… a men’s basketball game. Yup, I wrote that blog and I got a parking ticket because of it—a very logical conclusion. I have parked my car outside of Assembly Hall everyday for practice the past two years –even on days of men’s basketball games—and have been ticket free, but low and behold I write that article and a couple weeks later I get a parking ticket because I parked in the lot outside of Assembly Hall on the day of a men’s basketball game. FML.
I got redshirted for the outdoor season. Now this one is going to be a little harder to blame on the basketball team, but I’m going to do my best. So back on December 19th, 2009 I busted my foot pretty bad. It was the last day of practice before I went home for winter break, and I had one workout to go before the season started. Of course I ended up hurting myself and the injury ended up putting me out of commission for the indoor season, so the coach gave me the redshirt tag. No big deal, I figured I’d get healthy and be ready to go for outdoors. Not so fast. So, my foot still sucks and isn’t 100%, but I’ve been trying to run through the pain anyway because I didn’t want to give up on the outdoor season. Well, my coach has noticed that I have been limping and told me; yup… that he’s redshirting me for the outdoor season as well. God dammit. That’s the last thing I wanted to hear; competing is what I do! …Anyway I got to thinking during my bout of self-loathing and misery, and I realized that my coach gave me the news on the 24th! The one-month anniversary of my ill-fated blog post! Damn you Basketball Gods, ye forsake me in times of personal crisis because of one petty blog? I knew I should have sacrificed a lamb and consulted the Oracle at Delphi before hand. Shame be to me!
In addition I have sucked at math lately. Well, I admit, this isn’t anything new, but I bombed a quiz on matrix multiplication yesterday and I’d like to think that it’s not because I’m full-retard when it comes to anything dealing with numbers, but instead something else’s fault. So… Let’s find something to blame it on. Okay… the IU men’s basketball team…? Yes! That works. It’s the only logical conclusion I can seem to come to right now…
And this is where I knew the Basketball Gods were trying to punish me for what I wrote: The slot where I put discs into my computer broke. No longer can I put DVD’s CD’s or any other D’s (stop that!) into my computer, and if I want it fixed it’s going to cost me a lot of money… I think. Now, my only idea as to why this happened to me goes back to that damned blog post last month. What else could it have been? It can only be that the Basketball God’s wanted to destroy the electronic device (aka my computer) that allowed me to disseminated such garbage. Oh, loathe be to me, what is there that I can do to end my suffering?
I don’t know if there is anything I can do in reality to undo my mistake and end my plight, but I sure hope the Basketball Gods will take pity on me after this blog is published.
Please give me one more chance to not fuck up. Everyone deserves a second chance, right?
Amen.
