I am not exaggerating. I have lived in Boston for five years, and only twenty percent of those I run into have actually heard of Binghamton University, the State University of New York branch I graduated from. That is, until the university hired men’s basketball coach Kevin Broadus, and his prize recruits started finding themselves in the back of police cars.

The first two times the Binghamton athletic program fell astray this past year, I didn’t wince, chalked it up to coincidence, pointed out to those who brought it up that other Division I schools had much worse discipline and academic problems. The New York Times profiled my alma mater, claiming that it had compromised academic achievement, was actively recruiting students from “diploma mills” and was taking chances on players other schools had given up on. I defended the school against the Times report in a blog post, claiming that the Times had cast the magnifying glass unfairly, and that the rapid growth of the Athletic program had brought a spirit and identity to campus that had not existed prior.

Then Wednesday night, several media outlets reported that Binghamton guard Tiki Mayben had been accused of being in possession of and distributing cocaine. His hometown police in Troy, NY arrested him of such after a three month investigation. Mayben pled not guilty on Thursday.

“I did all I could,” the New York Times reported Broadus as saying about the situation.

My initial reaction was that I had done all I could, that I could no longer turn a blind eye to the troubling situations at my alma mater. I could no longer carry the perspective that if larger, more successful Division I schools have similar problems, then Binghamton must be doing something right. I just could not, morally, support this basketball team anymore. The ribbing and commentary of those whose teams were either keeping their players well-disciplined, or just covering everything up much better, was going to get old quick.

As much as athletics can be a motivating and unifying factor on campuses that have previously lacked an identity, there is a threshold. A school just can not sell their soul to the devil just to have a good athletic program. Sometimes there is a good reason why a student has been dismissed previously from an institution. A school probably should not give a student-athlete his or her sixty-fifth chance, proclaiming that this good deed is being done because they truly deserve it, not because of the real reason – because he or she is a great basketball player that will make the rest of your mid-major conference look like 10 year olds.

After reflecting on the situation, however, I become a tad more tolerant. These disobedient basketball players are three student-athletes of maybe 300 in the entire school – in any sample of young adults, a small percentage is going to run into trouble, be they athletes or not. I also understand, more so than some due to my full-time work, the political factors that have led to this point. Broadus, the maligned coach at the center of recruiting all of these disruptive student athletes, came from Georgetown University with high recommendations. When making large athletic program decisions at mid-majors, the academic status of other schools are considered just as much as the athletic status, and Georgetown is a school Binghamton looks up to in both fields. Georgetown is where Binghamton wants to be, and is always striving to be – of course they saw no significant problems with bringing Broadus on board just about three years ago. If Georgetown – a school ranked 57 spots ahead of them in the US News and World Report College Rankings, as well as a school known for basketball prowess – had no problems with Broadus, than he couldn’t be that bad. Right?

Late Thursday evening, however, it seemed that Binghamton – with enough poor publicity to last the next sixty-three years – had actually had enough. It publicized that it had suspended Maybin from the basketball team, and mentioned the judicial sanctions he might face via the school’s judicial affairs office in said release. And it sounded like my alma mater was now going to look at Broadus’s decision-making much more critically. “We appreciate that Coach Broadus has given second chances to athletes,” Binghamton President Lois DeFleur stated Thursday, “but our program cannot take these risks.”

When my father used to drive me to Binghamton at the beginning of a semester, he would approach the gray, depressed city and wonder why the city or the school – both of which he was quite fond of – wouldn’t just take some risks to get their name out there and reenergize both the campus and city communities. A few years later, Binghamton took his advice – and, well, it did get their name out there.

"Even SUNY Programs Need 2 Dance" (Photo: Pressconnects.com)

Now the rest of the country knows my little school. Binghamton University won the America East Men’s Basketball Championship yesterday, securing their first NCAA Tournament bid. Over 5,000 fans packed into the Events Center to watch the game, and the ESPN2 announcers couldn’t heap more praise onto my trusty little alma mater that could.

“I’ve covered a lot of games,” said one of the announcers. “But this has to be one of the most electric atmospheres I have ever seen for a game.”

The photos from the Press and Sun-Bulletin support the announcer’s statement. You had President DeFleur in the stands in one of the special give-away shirts, then cutting down the net at the end of the game. You had the students with signs aplenty, then storming the court after the win. Students had pictures of Tony Kornheiser in his Binghamton jersey from Friday’s Pardon the Interruption. Watching it on ESPN2, the crowd came across as so loud and buoyant that you couldn’t help but want to join them.

This game meant a lot to this school, and you couldn’t really deny them this, a conference tournament win, a place in the NCAA tournament, on their home court – a court built specifically for such a day, no less. Unlike many other America East schools, who have football or hockey, all Binghamton has is their basketball.  A few years ago, basketball was obviously made a priority by Athletics and the rest of the school, and Saturday was the result.

I get shivers at a lot of fan bases – mostly whenever Boston University wins the Beanpot – but watching yesterday’s game on ESPN2 made me shake. I believed that someday Binghamton would be a contender for a NCAA berth, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. This school has been waiting for this for years, and now, Bearcats have something to aspire to and believe in. They could very well get crushed by Duke on Thursday, but this year was just the beginning.  This is a program to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future.

Fun fact: If Binghamton somehow made it to the Sweet Sixteen, they’d play at the TDBanknorth Garden here in Boston. Just saying…

As the car prepared to turn into the gym parking lot, artsy girlfriend said to us all, filled with self-importance, “I wish people wouldn’t go to the basketball games. Binghamton doesn’t need sports.”

I took the bait. “Oh, of course we do. It puts the university on the map to the general public.”

“I didn’t hear of Binghamton through sports, ” huffed artsy girlfriend.

“Well, neither did I, but we also live in New York State. What about those in other parts of the country? They don’t know Bingo from Adam.”

“Well,” she pointed to me. “I don’t want those people, people that only find out about colleges because of their basketball teams, to come to my university. They don’t contribute anything.”

Not about to tackle how, how…just plain weird that statement was, I decided to tackle the argument from another point of view. “Think about the students that get to attend Binghamton that wouldn’t be able to otherwise due to athletic scholarships. Just like we give out merit scholarships and scholarships for the arts, here’s a chance for even more students to attend school who might not have the money to.”

“Well, they shouldn’t get money for playing sports. Arts are fine, but sports just aren’t.”

Luckily for me, we had just pulled up to the gym. “Look, it’s my stop!” I thankfully announced. “See you all back in the room.”

The sports versus arts versus intellectual pursuit debate has dogged me my entire life. When you grow up the daughter of a part-time musician and science fiction writer and attend a performing and creative arts high school, but have a lifelong dream to be a sportswriter, your stances on that debate become mighty convoluted. Sure, I think the arts are undervalued in our current American society. Sure, I have studied the horror stories at big Division I football programs with students having bogus SAT scores and taking classes that don’t amount to any degree at all. Sure, I understand professors who are angry when a hockey or basketball team receives more media excitement than their important research.

But I always look at it the way my father always explained things to my sister and I. My sister was a gifted athlete and a gifted artist, but not necessarily a gifted intellectual. Academics bored her, not because she was bad at them, but because creating and moving and kicking and acting inspired her more than math and reading and the periodic table did. And, according to my father, that was okay. “There are some of us in this world who will be blessed with athletic talent,” he would nod towards Megan, then put his hand to his chest. “Just like those of us blessed with artistic talent.  And there are those of us blessed with smarts,” he would nod towards me. “And the world needs a little bit of everyone, and everyone needs exposure to people with all of these traits. So to say that our schools shouldn’t have opportunities for all of these pursuits would be wrong.”

And with that explanation always echoing in my head, I chose to attend a university fighting with its identity. What was Binghamton going to be? When I transferred there in 2002, it has just gone Division I, it had just started to build a new arena for basketball and new technology and engineering buildings, and it was starting to get the credit it was due for being an amazing research university in the social sciences. The school was so young compared to other institutions – it was founded in 1946 – and lacked distinctive spirit and points of pride.

Because of this, you had students on campus who were gung ho about the school spirit sports would bring, and those who saw the sports as ruining the good thing that had been going – this high caliber incubator of creation and research – albeit under-the-radar to most of the East Coast, let alone the country. Debates such as the one between me and artsy girlfriend happened all over campus, and eventually manifested itself into a New York Times “expose” last weekend on Binghamton.

Titled “At Binghamton, Division I Move Brings Recognition and Regret,” the Times interviewed professors angry with student-athletes missing classes for competition, and zeroed in on the criminal digressions of two members of the basketball team this season. What the article lacked to mention was that unlike some other institutions, the school quickly and swiftly continues to take action against student-athletes who miss class, miss assignments or act out of line.  But the damage was done – there were some truths to the article, and the article did concrete damage to a university who has received very little bad press over its 63 years of existence.

Finally, the intellectual argument had its ammunition to win the never-ending debate. The New York Times, the newspaper for true intellectuals, had given that side its giant rocket to finally muffle those who saw the need for athletics on the campus. Athletics was ruining the university, not giving it an identity or spirit.

And then, mere days later, a standing-room only Events Center witnessed the troubled and emotional-roller-coaster riding men’s basketball team win their first America East regular season championship in their six year history in the conference. (They share the regular season title with the University of Vermont Catamounts.) This secured the school its first men’s basketball NIT bid ever.
(Binghamton fans storm the court Thursday evening to celebrate a Bearcat regular season championship.)

Those 5,500 or so members of the University community jumping onto the court after the final buzzer had their say, just days after the Times decided to blast the school and it’s decision to go Division I. These attendees see the need for athletics at the institution.  – to unite.  On Thursday night, for one of the first times ever, Binghamton University was united. After years of searching for its idenity and spirit, over 5,000 students found it – at a basketball game. The debate will continue,  in the halls, in classrooms, in offices and in cars coming back from a Denny’s brunch on the Parkway, but for one night, sports showed that they had a place on the campus.

They have a freshmen defenseman named Tim Buttery. Yep, as in the dairy product. They also have a senior forward named Tim Crowder (rhymes with chowder), a freshmen forward with the last name Warda (like how Bostonians say “water”), and their senior assistant captain’s last name is Gentile (which hockey is not.)

You may think I am a horrible person with no heart by pointing these names out. I argue otherwise. As someone whose last name is affectionately known as “The German Monstrosity,” who still sometimes has to spell it to herself after almost 27 years, I can be critical of others’ last names because we’re all buddies in the “Bad Last Name Club.” At least these guys’ names are spellable. At least they don’t have random silent vowels thrown in their last name just to make things difficult. When I got engaged last week, one of the first things people asked me (after “When are you getting married?”) was, “Are you changing your name?” I didn’t skip a beat when answering: “What, are you kidding me? You think when given the option I’d keep The German Monstrosity?” You’ve got to be serious. It’s more gone than Brett Bennett. I might not be getting married until after this economic depression is finished, but heck, let’s start the last name change now. My French-Canadian-ness gets confused often for Italian-ness, and now I’ll have an easily spellable Italian last name to go with it, instead of a way too long German word that literally translates to “rabbit killer.”

But I digress.

Yesterday (Saturday) I watched four nearly complete sporting events. I started at 1pm, with Binghamton taking on Boston University in men’s soccer. Boston won 2-0, despite the hard-core Bing students showing up, complete with European like cheers. They should’ve brought Mo Music. I wish Mo Music and the Bearcat Sports Complex had been there while I was a student. Not only did I not have the Bearcat Sports Complex, I only had the Events Center for one basketball game (recapped here). Sports obsessed me would have loved the full compliment.

The Battle of the BUs finished at 2:55pm, giving me five minutes to run over to Walter Brown Arena to watch the Boston University women take on fifth ranked Mercyhurst College Lakers. I’m a new convert to the women’s game, and I have quickly realized that women’s teams seem to fall in either one of two camps: either they totally embrace the no-checking, or they totally go out of their way to check just to be difficult. I think there may be a correlation between the two and how many Canadians the team has. BU, with very few Canadians, is totally about not-checking, while Mercyhurst, which has many Canadians, was checking, tripping, and fighting all over the place. Those penalties turned costly for the Lakers in the third, letting BU tie it up 2-2. BU scored the go-ahead goal at 17:22 in the third, which gave the Terriers the surprise win.

I then made it over to Agganis Arena for the 2nd and 3rd periods of the UMass Amherst – North Dakota Icebreaker game. Remember all that stuff about UMass I said yesterday? Scratch that. They woke up, or got motivated, or something – they won 3-1 over then-fifth-ranked UND (I doubt they’ll be ranked fifth in Monday afternoon’s polls.) They actually looked like the team fans of other Hockey East schools are worried about – although UND did still outskate them in terms of speed. But this is hockey, not speedskating, and UMass’s Cory Quirk and the rest of the offense really put in a ton of effort.

Lerg Love. (From the Michigan State Spartans website)

Game #4 of my day was the Icebreaker Championship between Michigan State (Ye of Little Lerg) and Boston University. Two questions I had going in: Would BU still have speed when not having to keep up with the North Dakota Road Runners? Would the offense actually be able to score on Little Lerg? Well, they still had the speed – they would skate circles around last year’s squad – and they made it past Lerg twice. That was enough to win, 2-1. Their defense was good, and combined with an actual goalie – Rollheiser in this game, although I think I like Millan better – they are able to win games when their offense faces crazy goalies like Lerg. I fear Lerg will never make it into the NHL due to size, which is a shame, because he is like a brick wall most of the time. It’s all reactionary and reflexes because he has no mass or height to fill the goal with. I don’t know how Michigan State can be ranked only #11 in a pre-season poll with him in goal. He’s nuts. Even his warm-ups are nuts when he skates out for a period – he does these spastic drills with him facing imaginary forwards, and then does a series of kung-fu like side lunges, reaching his glove to his skate. It was like when my cat attacks imaginary bugs on the wall – Lerg was full-out stopping imaginary shots. The kid is nuts. I’m officially a fan. We will call this “Lerg Love.”

The other very telling tidbit from the BU-Michigan State game was the fracas that ensued in the beginning of the third period after Michigan State players spent a good two minutes dogging Joe Pereira before he finally tried to get even. A few fights broke out, including one with Pereira, and the one between freshmen Kevin Gilroy and a Michigan State player. The officials got that one under control, when flying over comes captain and Kevin Gilroy’s older brother, Matt Gilroy, to start something with a few Michigan State players in defense of not only his little brother, but his team. This was after Matt Gilroy took a hard puck off the ankle in the second and was obviously hurting. He had excuses not to get involved – he was playing hurt and on the opposite end of the ice – but did anyway. If that didn’t set a tone for this season, I don’t know what could. Good captains, good goalies, and good speed – yep, this should be a good year.

Other random notes -

- I feel the same about Colin Wilson’s presence on the Terriers as I do Trent Edwards on the Bills – he’s not perfect, but I feel better with him just being out there. He might try too many fancy passes and shots, or hold on to the ball too long sometimes, but heck, we’re better just by his presence. Osmosis?

- FWSNBN had six penalty minutes, including two for elbowing. Mind you, Michigan State threw elbows all through the second and third periods, none of which were called. Whatevs, refs. Whatevs. At least I didn’t make a fool out of myself like I did last spring at UMass, when FWSNBN received what I thought was an unjust penalty.

- I am totally obsessed with one of the songs they play during the pre-game warmups at the arena this season. I had no idea what the song’s name was (which, for the two-time Name That Tune champion of Binghamton University’s Dickinson Community, is a rare occurrence), and none of my hockey friends did either. So last night, I jotted down some of the lyrics on the Notepad application on my Blackberry, and Googled them when I got back to my computer this evening. It’s Let It Rock by Kevin Rudolph and Little Wayne, which is like the fifth most popular song on iTunes today. Ummm….where have I been that I didn’t know this? I play the snippets of almost every song on the iTunes top 100 every other day. Have I been skipping this one? Needless to say, I paid my $.99, downloaded it, and have listened to it six times in the past two hours.

- Is there anything better than new program smell? I’ve loved it since I was a little girl, when I used to get the oversized figure skating show programs at shows at the Rochester War Memorial. I got a wiff of it again yesterday when I picked up a copy of the new BU hockey program for this season. That smell and the smell of an ice rink are the best smells ever. (And this is coming from a former florist.)

When I was a Brownie Girl Scout, my troop partook in the Strasenberg Planetarium Sleepover. The name of this program pretty much explains it – roughly 50 Girl Scouts take over the planetarium for an overnight and stay up late watching every show in the planetarium’s rotation. You then get two hours of sleep in the planetarium lobby, where they then wake you up at an ungodly hour by blasting “Here Comes the Sun” and handing you a Wegmans donut and orange juice before forcing you out so they can open for a more profitable event. As you can tell, it was the highlight of the year, especially when your troop eschews camping, like mine did. (We didn’t like getting dirty. Or ticks. Or dampness.)

On a late March Friday evening, I took part in the Great Garden Sleepover Party, or as everyone else knows it as, the Hockey East Semifinals. I was there from 5:15pm – five minutes into the first semifinal game between the University of New Hampshire and Boston College – until the bitter end of the Boston University versus Vermont game – with a final whistle at 1:05am. Such an evening epitomized college hockey for me – spirited, crazy, and a true sports fans dream.

Seeing that I am finally getting around to finishing this post a month and a half after The Giant Garden Sleepover Party happened, I won’t go into too much detail. Whatever could have been said about the outcome has been said, and in hindsight, all of us Hockey East fans should be happy that Boston College showed the Notre Dame’s and Michigan’s of the world that we can play ourselves some college hockey here on the East Coast – should being the operative word. Whether we all are is another topic all together.

But there is one thing I can add to the discussion. One thing that one can never, ever, get tired of talking about.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the annual Hockey East Mascot Game!!!!

For those not familiar with Hockey East, all of the mascots of Hockey East teams gather and play a scrimmage during the intermission of one of the two semifinal games held at the TD Banknorth Garden the Friday evening of Championship Weekend. I’m impressed that the mascots stuck around for the game, as it was held during the second game of the night, which began after 10pm. Some years, this game is more interesting than the actual semi-final games. This year was not one of those years, but I took photos nonetheless. (Sorry that they’re not better – they’re taken from the cheap seats.)

Most of the Hockey East mascots show up at the Garden for the Semifinal games, regardless of if their teams have made it that far in the playoffs. Case in point – above, we see the Merrimack College Warrior discussing strategy with my personal favorite, the Providence College Friar, aka the Skating Monk. I think they are discussing being Catholic. Or maybe their teams never making it to the Garden. Or maybe, how they can show up all the other mascots. I take the last one.

And they’re off! Vermont’s Catamount and Boston University’s Rhett the Terrier let the three mascots of teams not at the Garden take a breakaway. Joining the Skating Monk and Warrior is the UMass Lowell RiverHawk. Who knew a RiverHawk was cardinal red and blue? I thought they were kind of a drabby gray, like a pigeon. That’s it – they should be the UMass Lowell Pigeons! They’re annoying and you can’t get rid of them easily – just like how the Terriers feel when they play them in the Hockey East quarterfinals!

Let me digress here for a second to discuss the existance of the Catamount. Now, I probably am wrong, but I believe that a catamount and a bearcat are the same thing. That being said, shouldn’t it be that a bearcat looks more like a bear, and a catamount more like a cat? Now, examine the Vermont Catamount in comparison to the Binghamton Bearcat (gosh, I wish they would field a men’s hockey team and join Hockey East. Please?!? Screw the law school plan and build an ice rink!!!)

Which one looks more like a bear, and who looks more like a cat? When you see Rally the Catamount in person, he definitely looks more like a bear. You can’t fully appreciate the bear ears in the photo. Baxter the Bearcat looks more like a…umm…mix between a cat and a bear? But at the end of the day, what is the difference? They both are supposed to be underrated vicious cats, that won’t maim you like a lion or tiger, but will give you more than a superficial scratch. Back to our regularly scheduled blog.

I believe the traffic jam at the net was being caused by Rhett the Terrier, who had the puck to the right bottom corner of the photo. Notice how depressed the Maine Black Bear looks. Is he even paying attention? I know it was hard for Maine this year, but they have to keep their chin up. They might contend again next year, and if not then, the year after that. Come on, it’s Maine - there is enough Quebecois there to stack any hockey team at any level.

We have Rhett taunting the crowd and/or Wiley E. Cat, the University of New Hampshire Wildcat. “Bring it!” Rhett is ordering. Rhett seems to forget that’s Wiley’s it has already been brought, and crushed in a 3 overtime loss to Boston College. Luckily for Wiley, most of the action occurred at the other end of the ice – he could be depressed without having to pay attention to playing goalie.

Next year, I swear I am going to get near the ice to take better photos. Anytime you have a Monk playing hockey with a Spartan Warrior and a Wildcat, Catamount and Pigeon – I mean RiverHawk – there is a good time to be had.

Wait — isn’t a Wildcat the same thing as a Catamount and a Bearcat? It is! Oh, America East schools and your lack of mascot originality.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to my away messages, profiles or who haven’t spoken with me in the past…oh, year, I am currently in love with Boston University. Sure, I applied to five graduate schools, but since I decided I was going to go to grad school, Boston University has been one of my top choices. They were the first school to accept me (the letter was waiting for me two days after my birthday in my school mailbox). They might not have the best program in Higher Education, but they have tons of opportunities for internships and assistantships (especially in new facilities management–they‘re in the process of building the “Student Village,” a huge building project for athletics, residential life and student affairs, which working with would look soooo good on a resume), and they are just such a cool school in general. I walked around there in August and just couldn’t believe how much I liked it–I didn’t want to come back to Binghamton for another year. I was tempted to finish up my credits at Binghamton in the fall and start at Boston University in January, but I was talked out of it by a lot of people, seeing that I wanted to try for Harvard and Boston College as well. But the more I think about it, the more I want to go to Boston University. But I have to wait and see what happens.

So I attended today’s game and couldn’t decide who to cheer for–my current school, who I’m becoming increasingly disenchanted with knowing that there’s so much else beyond Binghamton, or what very well may be my new school. Well, seeing that I had student tickets and didn’t feel like being beat up (which could happen, as evidenced by what occurred at last week’s Nazareth/Fisher basketball game), I put my Boston University shirt away and wore the green Binghamton hoodie and went along with the “Let‘s Go Bearcats” chants.

The Terriers (Boston University) are currently #1 in the America East conference, and this game showed why. Marsha, Jamie and I were watching the warm-ups when Marsha remarked, “They just don’t miss,“ gesturing to the Terriers’ free throwing. They don’t–they only missed once that I recall during the game. While the first half was close, with Nick Billings being the whole Binghamton team as usual (it’s not that he can play, or that the others can’t, it’s just that he’s seven feet tall), the Terriers dominated in the second half, working with leads between 10-20 points most of the time. The final score was 69-53, but if our two seniors hadn’t been inspired to get in there and make the best of their last minutes on the Events Center floor, it probably would have been more like 75-50. The Bearcats turned over the ball constantly, and their shooting was way off most of the game. They couldn’t make a free throws at all in the second half, and easy points weren’t made because they were over-shooting the net. They announced that the official attendance at the game today was 4,823 at the end of the game. However, the end of the game lacked so much hope that people began to leave in droves after the 8 minute mark. I turned to Marsha. “Official attendance, 4,823. Official attendance after the 5 minute mark: 1,000.”

It had been noted all week that the Bearcat men had never defeated the Terriers since joining the America East three years ago, and I think the pressure of trying to overcome that in the new building on senior day was a bit too much for them. There are so many expectations for this team to do well so early on in their Division 1 career, seeing that we just built them this new venue, and we moved into a conference that caused us to eliminate one of our traditional sports (wrestling). They’re growing well, but to expect them to have beat the number one team in the conference right now wasn’t really feasible.

On another note, the Events Center is a bit…small? I was disappointed somewhat, and I don’t know why. I imagined an arena…which to me congers up mental images of the Blue Cross Arena up in Rochester. This was on a much smaller scale–the BCA holds 12,000 for concerts and the Events Center, when completed, will seat 8,000. Right now a sell out for basketball in the Events Center is 4,823. The Center is pretty sterile right now, more than likely due to the fact that they’re not really done with it. I fear that it’ll become out of date quickly, but I could also see how it could be easily renovated if that did happen. I don’t know. Did I expect more? Yes. Do we need more as a mid-major D1 school with more student apathy than the Yankees have money? No. On a semi-side note, one of my biggest fears as I leave Binghamton is that the backlash from students and faculty about the alleged “overspending on athletics” is going to deter any more growth in that area–we need more athletic opportunities because unlike what most Binghamton students think, athletes do possess brains. Also, with the local community being as stubborn as it is, I think athletics is going to be the school’s only way to make its point that we are now the economic center of the Broome County area, and therefore, should be accommodated as such.

As the crowds left the Events Center this afternoon, I felt like this was the beginning of the end. It was Senior Day for the two graduating players, but it was Senior Day for me as well–watching my last Binghamton basketball game, having what could be my new school defeat my current school. The next time I’ll be in the Events Center will more than likely be 77 days from now for Commencement. Binghamton may have been where I spent the last two years, but I’m ready to move on.

**********

Random Notes:

–The Barenaked Ladies concert at the Broome County Arena last week was awesome. If you have never seen them live, you need to, regardless of your taste in music. You’ll understand why I have been to nine concerts and on my way to my tenth on Wednesday. They exude enjoyment–they perform because they like each other and they like to perform. You’d have a feeling they’d still do this if they made no money from it. I also realized how incredibly lucky I am to have my favourite band be as accessible as they are–many of my friends have never gotten to see their favourite bands live because they rarely tour, or play only big markets if they do. I can pretty much count on if there is a Barenaked Ladies tour, there will be at least one stop in Upstate New York, usually Rochester. Luckily for me, the band’s other most regular tour stop is Boston. They’ve played there…hmm, I think three times in the past year? Four? I love it.

–I am angry at the 49ers. They cut Garrison Hearst, the only player on the team I really liked anymore. Now, maybe I’m off, but I don’t think Eddie DeBartalo and Carmen Policy would of let him go. Maybe they would–he has suffered devastating injuries that could come back to haunt him at any time. But as a team, if you’ve stood by a guy during rehabilitation periods twice, saving him a spot on your roster because not only is that the nice thing to do, but because you know the guy will come back and be one of your best players, why do you cut him? I mean, I know, salary cap stuff, they’re trying to negotiate with Garcia, whatever, but…there’s a level of courtesy that wasn’t extended. From what end, I don’t know. I think Hearst should be willing to work with the Niners to stay, and vise versa. And I think under different management, the Niners would of found a way to keep Hearst. And Derrick Deese, for that matter. I just don’t understand what the Niners are doing anymore, and I don’t know if I care to. I think they can redeem themselves in my eyes if they waive Garcia tomorrow. The Niners have never accepted behavior such as Garcia’s recent DWI arrest, and they shouldn’t start now. Montana and Young never did such stuff, and if you’re going to hold the guy to those two’s standards on the field, you should off as well.

–Scrunchie Girl, aka Chellsie Memmel, keeps proving my gymnastic prediction skills right. In case you’ve never heard the story, my sister and I attended the 1999 U.S. Classic in Rochester, and were way impressed with this girl. She was 10 at the time, and competing child elite. Her scrunchie was as big as her head, and thus the nickname, but she was fearless and right on the whole night. I turned to Megan and said, “That girl is going to be huge someday. She’s going to be a World Champion or something.” Well, what did the girl win last fall? The World Championships. Yesterday she competed at the American Cup, which I got to watch on tv while doing work, and the girl has amazing security on the beam. Just amazing. She finished third, and she seems to be in a good position to make the Olympic Team. And I SO called it five years ago.

Quote of the Week: Mike Heimerdinger, Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator, on why he hasn’t been a candidate for a head coaching job: “They’re looking for big names, not long names.” -Sports Illustrated.

That guy’s last name is three letters longer than my own. I do not envy him. Not one bit.