Never Enough

I want someone to explain to me how last week's, "If they go 12 and 6 they're in," has morphed into, "They have to beat USC for a third time, on top of Saturday's win, in order to make it." Is it so terrible to lose to UCLA in overtime? To split with UCLA, Washington, Arizona, and Stanford? To beat the Bruins at home? Sure, the Wildcats got pounded in Chapel Hill, but we now realize that that fate could even have befallen the Blue Devils. It would be just our luck to be the first Pac-10 team in well over a decade to go 12 and 6 in conference play and not make the tournament. I have a bad feeling about this. I mean, I always have a bad feeling, but this time I have a really bad feeling. It's hard enough trying to beat the same team three times in one season. To do it back to back, though, is even harder. Anyway, if I seem really, really pissed on Friday, you'll know why. Don't even get me started on how the perpetually overrated SEC is going to get six teams in. Grrrrrr!

And While I'm Riled Up. . .

Whether the stories are true or not -- and I guess it's looking more and more like they are at least partially true, since even my friend Steven is having doubts -- the outcry over Barry Bonds's alleged "cheating" and his failure to own up to it is another example of how ridiculous our mediascape has become. Last time I checked, the Bush Administration was responsible for cheating and lying of a whole other order of magnitude. It's one thing to taint the record book, if that's what Barry did. It's another entirely to deliberately deceive the people you are supposed to be serving in order to send thousands of Americans and many, many more Iraqis to needless deaths that are only proving to destabilize further an already unstable region. It will be a great day indeed when the military has to hold a bake sale to buy WMDs and sanctimonious columnists stop looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I've never been less proud to be an American. And I haven't been too proud for a long time.