A Call To Arms

By Bub 

In the early minutes of the morning, outside of a sports-bar on the southwest side, a man was beaten to death with a baseball bat and his friend run over by the assailants in a Chevrolet Equinox after an argument over a triviality that would normally not lead to death force combat in urbanized areas of the Western World. A female sexual predator was arrested when a wary neighborhood reported her for failing to comply with the reporting requirements of the sex-offender registry. She assaulted a 16-year old girl once and others are afraid she will do it again. A man whose plan was originally to collect soda cans from a dumpster in order to cash them in and purchase crack-cocaine stabbed to death a security guard that aimed to disrupt the first part of his plan. Fat, rich, white men from Sugar Land and River Oaks voted in the state senate to drastically cut funding for public schools, and nursing homes. A man braces himself to be murdered by The State for his role in the rape and murder of a Sudanese refugee. Tension is severe and radiating through the city, secretly poisoning the blood of its residents and fevered basketball fanatics alike. It is championship night in Houston.

The Butler Bulldogs hope to become the second #8 seed in NCAA Division I Men's Basketball history to win a championship by defeating the #3 seed Connecticut Huskies. In 1985 Ed Pinckney led his #8 Villanova Wildcats over Patrick Ewing and his formidable Georgetown Hoyas. Will it be Matt Howard or Shelvin Mack that will win the dubious distinction of becoming the next Ed Pinckney? Will Kemba Walker become the next Patrick Ewing; attaining superstardom, achieving heights only a rarefied group among the already incredibly graced group of professional athletes will ever achieve, only to fail to ever win a championship in college or the pros? Would I rather be watching basketball from the 1980s? The answers are both, no, and yes.

Though the game has yet to start it has already inspired dozens of privileged children in rural areas of the Midwest to forego their guaranteed status success in social hierarchies of undergraduate state schools in order to test their mettle against other inheritors of small insurance franchises and local real estate concerns on the electrically heated sidewalks of the Butler Campus. Regardless of the outcome of the game, no one will be inspired to attend the University of Connecticut.

How has this basketball game touched your life? Has it inspired you to fly to Africa and take up arms alongside the rebels in eastern Libya? Perhaps it has instilled the fear into you of a society where the vacuum left by the lack of preoccupation with fictitious honour struggles is filled by live mortar rounds and other exploding devices. Or maybe it inspired you to buy a t-shirt or a baseball style cap. Even if it has yet to move you in any direction in a half hour do not miss your chance to sublimate socially unacceptable emotions onto a spectacle of athleticism and organization that you will scarcely find outside of a war zone. Basketball is your game. At least for tonight.