Potential

This thing is supposed to be about patience, and I’ve found at least one person out there who definitively has less patience than I do. His name is Yuniesky Betancourt. He’s the hapless shortstop for the hopeless Royals, and he sucks. I’m convinced Kansas City is the only franchise that would play him right now. Ironically, I lost my patience for this guy a long time ago. I don’t know him or anything, and he may be a nice guy, but he sure as hell isn’t a major league baseball player.




Yuni accepting a standing ovation for a base on balls.
__________________________________________________


Yuni is a Cuban defector, and he came up with the Seattle Mariners. While in Seattle, he demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was ill qualified to play baseball on virtually any level, so last year the Kansas City Royals traded a young but somewhat troubled pitching prospect named Daniel Cortez for the privilege to pay the remainder of Betancourt’s major league contract. Cortez is now a major league pitcher for the Mariners, Betancourt is still not a major league player for the Royals.

Some poor SOB in Seattle chronicled Yuni’s time in Seattle with this wonderful blog. It’s a fascinating glimpse of what a player like Betancourt can do to the morale of a fan, of a team, and of a community. I’m thinking of picking this thing up where it was dropped, although I’m pretty sure I’d be unable to do the previous work anything short of an injustice.

When the season started, I went to opening day with a couple of friends and my brother. Spring is supposed to be a time of hope for a baseball fan, but I was just consumed with dread this year. The roster was horseshit on a good day. By my count, they had about 2 ½ major leaguers on the team at the start of the year, and they remain there today. They are miserable to follow, and they suck the life out of anyone who pays any attention whatsoever to what they actually do on the field. They can neither score runs nor prevent the other team from scoring. Their fielding is legendarily poor. But…they are my team…pathetic.

So we were in the truck heading to the game, and we decided to guess how many games the Royals would win from their 162 game schedule. Travis picked 68 victories. I chose 39. If they were to accomplish that feat, it would go down as the worst major league season by any team since 1900. I was confident they could perform the task, so we wagered $20 to whomever was closer between our numbers. The break-even point was what—53 ½ wins, and the Royals surpassed that mark late last month.

Travis called me the other night, and we inevitably started talking about our pathetic shortstop. I think he threw the ball in to the second row on a rather routine play, and he somehow avoided the error. The official scorer in Kansas City is most certainly a Yuni apologist. Even with scoring gaffes like the one Thursday night, Yuni is to my knowledge the only active major leaguer with more errors in the field than bases on balls drawn at the plate.

This is almost impossible to do for any period of time, for reasons too numerous to mention here. To put it mildly, anyone who is that shitty for any period of time is generally quickly out of a job. Unless they are KC Royals. Then, they are celebrated for their “potential.”

Potential is a pile of shit that has yet to be accomplished by an individual. That’s it. I don’t want to hear about my potential, your potential, and most certainly, Yuniesky Betancourt’s potential. It’s just a watchword for fucking apologists of mediocrity.

But…I realize that Yuni has the potential to make me some money. So I bet my brother the $20 I currently owe him that Yuni will not draw a 3 ball-0 strike count the rest of the year. I removed the possibility of an intentional walk from our bet, and I am quite confident that Yuni will come through for me. There is, I suppose, the outside possibility that Yuni could fall asleep at the plate, or forget who he is or what he’s doing there at any given point, but he’s only got a couple of weeks to go.

Since we made this bet, Yuni has exactly as many errors as two-ball counts. This, to me, is astounding. All Betancourt has to do for the rest of the year is stand like a statue at the plate—the ultimate act of omission, but he is ill-equipped for this endeavor. Any ball near the plate (and even many that are not) will be swung at by Yuni. He has three grand slams this year, which I attribute to the fact that these are situations where the pitcher is forced to throw Betancourt balls which he would not normally be forced to throw. In a normal situation, there is absolutely no need to throw Yuni a strike.

Earlier this year, I was at a game at Kauffman Stadium, and Yuni worked a 2-0 count with the bases loaded. I tried to bet $20 to anyone around me that Yuni would indeed swing at the next pitch, regardless of its location. No one took the bet, and Yuni predictably launched the ball into the bullpen for one of his grand slams. I’ll be mad as hell if Yuni costs me $40 this fall. I think I’ll even write him a letter deriding his plate discipline if he fails me now.

Blackie

This is a little backward, but it’s been a damned long day with very little accomplished. I suppose I learned quite a bit about the electrical system in this house, in addition to a nice refresher course on the general nature of electricity.

It stormed last night. I wanted to get some work done around the place, and I was vacuuming. At the same time I was vacuuming, I was operating the washing machine, the 13 inch television was on, the computer is always running on some level, but was at rest, and the lights were on in the living room and bathroom. That was, on some level, enough to shut down the circuit. Or so I thought.

When the vacuum was stopped, I couldn’t help but notice the number of things that didn’t work around the place. It was extensive enough that I made a hell of a list of things that weren’t working. Basically, the entire house was shut down, except for the kitchen and sun room, both additions to the home. The outbuilding also worked.

So I snooped around a bit in the basement. I got the flashlight, and headed down to see if I could fix the problem. Everything appeared to be in order, and none of the breakers physically appeared to have failed. I tripped each breaker individually, and there was no change upstairs. I inspected a sub-box that had a pull-plug and a set of fuses, in addition to the antiquated boxes…Federal Pacific, maybe? Anyway, it’s too damned old, and last night was a perfect example why.

I strongly suspect that the wiring here predates the walls, which have unbleached paper rock and textured plaster coating. It’s a rock home that predates the civil war. There are perhaps a handful of buildings in the state of Kansas of this age, and I suspect almost all of them are in Leavenworth. More on that later…

I see no evidence that the wires that go to that box aren’t relatively new, (by new, I’m talking 40 years old here) but I’d be surprised if upon further inspection there aren’t a series of unboxed connections that would fail a naked eye test. I’ll have to start pulling some individual plugs very soon, although I’m pretty sure I know what I’m likely to find…that’s a fight for another day.

We got an inch of rain last night in Baldwin City. I accomplished my new year’s resolution for this year when I was looking for light bulbs. Don’t ask me why I’ve sorted the light bulbs with the rain gauges, but I found this rain gauge in that empty bulb box I’d be returning to very soon for a different specialty bulb…The new year’s resolution for 2010 was to install a rain gauge, and the feat was stunned a quarter of a year ahead of schedule.

The door to the basement was open longer than I’d originally planned. I was messing around down there for close to twenty minutes inspecting the situation with flashlights and by flipping breakers. I declared myself somewhat defeated, and notified my dad of the situation. My grandfolks lived here half a century, and the place is now in dad’s name, while granddad is in extended care. So I’m kind of trying to keep the place from burning down here…

Dad answered from his card game. We discussed the situation briefly, and he declared that I was looking for a short.

“A short?” I asked. “Can’t those cause fires?”

“Well, they could. But you’ll probably be all right.”

“Right. Has this happened out here recently?”

“Not that I can recall, but it happened to my box. It shut down half the box,” he explained.
I told him I’d keep him posted, and that was that.

Most of the night, I watched television wide awake. Questions floated in my mind such as: “What are the burning points for limestone and mortar?” “What exactly was the wiring situation which burned down my maternal grandparents’ home?” The television show numbing my mind, and piquing questions about my current residence, was about compulsive hoarding. For some reason, it does wonders for my self-esteem. I don’t know exactly what I want out of life, but there is some comfort in knowing I don’t want that type of lifestyle. Even though there are a couple of rooms in this place that could fit right in on that show…

I awoke early after only a couple hours sleep today. Nala the cat had gotten herself stuck in the cellar for the first time. As far as I can remember, she’s never been stuck down there for a night. That basement door has been the DMZ for Nala and whatever creatures might be in the basement. I’ve previously seen opossum dart into the exterior wells, but these are in such disrepair there is really nothing to stop the invaders.

I immediately began my search for an electrician, and I threw myself at the situation in the meantime. My main concern was the sump pump. It didn’t appear to be running, and I had to make sure the basement had not yet become truly flooded. One of my first projects was to set up a light. There was a dual head 2000 watt halogen light, and I ran a cord and situated it in the middle of the room. I directed the majority of the lighting on the box, after a cursory inspection of the pit found it to be functional.

My light wasn’t working too well. I’d burned out one bulb, and another had completely fizzled itself down to a low death right in front of me. The night before, the main outdoor light that illuminates the yard nearest the kitchen had expired. I thought that was a bad thing, as the light won’t be the easiest thing in the world to replace. It’s about twenty feet in the air. Wires and tree limbs all around.

And now…this. I’m looking at the electrical box after getting a secondary light refocused, and a pretty decent sized blacksnake crawled into the basement from a crack to the sun room’s crawl space. It just slithered a little down the wall, and went straight for the box. It should be noted that the electrical box has not had a cover since I’ve been here. That snake had now wrapped itself nearly completely around the box and it’s accompanying feeder wires. I was doing the things I would normally do out in a field, or in the barn if I encounter a blacksnake. Yelling and shit—that doesn’t work out in the open, and I’m expecting it to work in his home. Needless to say, we had something of a standoff:

“What the fuck?!? Hey! I’m right here, you fucker!” This didn’t impact Blackie at all.

“I’m going to get a hoe—I mean it. I hope for your sake I don’t find you down here when I get back.” I’m not a sworn enemy of blacksnakes. We typically leave each other alone, and when we do see each other, if the snake has its way out, the snake is allowed to come and go as they please. This situation wasn’t going to work, however, unless that snake got the hell out of the basement. I already knew this would be somewhat unlikely, but possible. The cool and damp cellar was probably preferable to saturated earth.

Adjacent to the power boxes is the previous exterior entry to the cellar. It would dump out underneath the current sunroom, if it were still open. As it is, it’s a boxed in mess of rubble. I’m now seriously considering digging through that mess….because Blackie was headed for his favorite pile of cellar rubble. I’m confident that until today, any rodents that would happen into a stand down with Blackie were likely losers.

There used to be two hoes here. One was ideal for an operation like this. It had a thin blade, and had a hell of a good snake-killing angle to it. I’d like to be able to explain it better, but it had always been a great snake-killing-hoe for me. I couldn’t find it, and I had to make due with a new fiberglass garden hoe. I’d never been on a snake-killer with that hoe, but this would be the test.

Blackie was still working his way down the wall and into the rubble pile when I found him. I had to get some work done for the power concerns, and I’m a hell of a bad jittery electrician. When I was drinking, I first noticed the shaking from the aftereffects when messing with electrical issues. When I needed to be at my best, it always seemed I was at my worst. Oh well, it didn’t appear to kill me…

“Why didn’t you get out of here?” I asked Blackie. “I’m sorry about this.” Blackie took a rotten gash to the back, right about the middle of the body. His head had gone into the rubble by the time the first blow occurred.

That hoe wasn’t worth a damn for killing a four foot blacksnake. I had no way of knowing it going in, but the offing was brutal. I ended up clubbing the poor bastard on the head with the hook of the hoe to finish the job. “Damn. I’m sorry,” I’d repeated to the beast as I realized the true inadequacies of my tool. As I knew the suffering was unacceptable, I resorted to the direct clubbing. It took a while to get the head out and pinned down, which was unfortunate.

I didn’t want it to go down like that, but I have a much greater appreciation for Nala’s eagerness to leave the basement this morning.

Fun With SMS, Part II

This morning, someone I didn’t know sent me a text. I was kind of busy.


Random Person: Is this Nicole? 7:32 a.m.

S: No. I’m not Nicole. But if YOU are an electrician i will hire you sight unseen to fix a short currently crippling my home. 7:37 a.m.

RP: You a dude or chick? 7:47 a.m.

S: If that affects your billing scheme in any way, we will be unable to talk business. I am busy here rewiring my sump pump. 7:54 a.m.

RP: Lol! Wat’s tha address? 8:09 a.m.

S: Baldwin city. A snake just crawled through the wall, so call me if this project sounds like something you’re up for. That particular snake is now gone. 8:35 a.m.

RP: I live in Ottawa 8:37 a.m.

S: Are you an electrician? That seems relatively important to me. 8:39 a.m.

RP: Negative. 8:41 a.m.

Lortab

I’m very impatient lately. Worse than normal. That’s bad. It’s kind of a whirlwind of things which require a great deal of patience, and they’re all hitting at once. It’s been set up that way for a while, but a lot of it is just attributable to procrastination. There are any number of things I’ve wanted to accomplish for quite some time, and in fits and spurts, they are accomplished. Chipping away, I’m told.

There is a bit of longing for things to get better quickly, and it just doesn’t happen that way. Improvement takes effort and time, and lately, I’ve just been biding time. There’s no way to fairly assess it except for in this evaluation. A lot of things should have been and could have been done in the recent past that would add to an overall satisfaction, and only a few of my goals have been met. I just feel like I’m in kind of a dangerous place right now—that’s all.

The oral surgery is one thing. It’s been allowed to dominate my life for a while now. I’ve known it was coming, and I’ve taken the steps I’ve felt necessary to attempt to combat it, and so far, so good. Except I haven’t been worth a damn, and I know it. It’s a hell of a hurdle to try and get over (or maybe through, in my case) There just wasn’t enough care taken for a very long time, and I’m paying the price for my previous negligence now. In the mouth and in the pocketbook.

Things could always be worse. I often think of the poor sonofabitch who actually has it the worst. And through poor decision-making, he or she can make the situation worse. It just takes bad decisions. Am I making poor decisions lately? It’s been on my mind. I feel I’ve had a weird personality shift lately, and I can’t explain it or even come close to figuring it out. Mostly, I’m not trying to. I’m just kind of aware of these differences, and I’m keeping a note of them. Things to look out for. I’m all over the place here, but that’s just how it is right now—and this is without drinking.

The last set of oral surgeries, coupled with some other things that were going on in my life precipitated my last brutal bender. I don’t want that series of events repeated. So far, no drinks. I sure think about it every day, but usually that feeling drifts off into the night. But lately, all I’ve had is night. I’m sleeping all damned day, I’m barely eating anything except the little cans of Chef Boyardee, and I’ve lost 20 pounds so far. Just can’t eat very well without a lot of discomfort. This round of surgery, I’ve been taking the pain medication for the ability to eat on the side which was operated on over a month ago. The surgery from last week seems to be doing much better than that first botched operation. And it must have been botched.

I know the upper left quadrant wasn’t in good shape going in. It’s one of the places my jaw was broken in 1991, and the molars most closely related to that break have been removed, in addition to the wisdom teeth throughout the mouth in the late 90s, or maybe 2000 or so. I’d have to look that one up. But damn, the damage that surgery did to that area in the short run was something else. I just don’t ever want to go through anything similar to that again. It was about a three and a half hour operation, and it never did get numbed up right in the first place…or the situation was in such dire straights that the numbing couldn’t do much for it. I don’t know exactly what the case was up there, but it sure sucked, and it’s still more sensitive than the recently corrected area.

Anyway, I’ve just got to put a renewed effort into this patience thing right now. I know a lot of other people are being patient with me right now, though I feel I don’t really exist at the moment. I think the fog will clear tomorrow, but this is one hell of a shitty way to be at the moment. I just want to be able to think right again soon…

Cat Psychologist, Session One

I’m in need of a cat psychologist. I think I’m going to forgo the monies that could be spent on this endeavor, and I’ll represent the cat psychologist myself. I’m independent, wild, indifferent, and stupid, so I know I’ve got that much in common with the felines.

But do I think like the felines? Well, back in the day when I was getting fucked up all the time, I used to piss and shit wherever the hell I felt like occasionally and it wasn’t terribly malicious. I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing…and so maybe it goes with Nala.

CASE STUDY: Nala

Female Tabby, 4 years old. 11 lbs. Neutered, shots up to date. Wears a Hartz flea collar. Still has claws.


Nala has been in kittyjail since yesterday morning. I had to put her in the shower room with her food, some water, and her litter box. She’s been using the master bedroom as a pissbox, and my bed as a shitbox. One of us finds this unacceptable, and since I’m the one with thumbs, she’s been placed in her holding cell until something changes.

She was/is a fine predator. There haven’t been any lasting episodes with birds or rodents that she hasn’t resolved. It’s just gotten to the point where the cat is worse than the problems the cat was preventing. I’m at a loss, because it came all at once. I mean, I knew she was ticked off at me before she began this mess, but I’ve always thought she was a little ticked at me.

She’s been good company to me. I say “to me” because there have been episodes with my brother. Nala and Chopper, my brother’s dog, do not get along. They never have. I’ve known the dog since she was a pup, and Nala since she was a nearly grown kitten, so I’ve got long histories with all parties involved. Nala’s been known to hiss and spit at my brother, maybe because she can smell Chop-dog on him. All I can smell right now is catpiss…

I found the latest offending area yesterday morning. So, for the third time in a week, I’m peeling off the bedspread and covers and cleaning the mattress… (I’ve already thrown out the original spread for the bed this summer, in an unrelated “catsick” episode.) Well, I grabbed Nala by the scruff of her neck and put her face right in the catpiss. It must have been going on there for three days or more, because of the surrounding layers of repeat offenses. I’ve heard, and I understand that doing this to the cat is unlikely to have any lasting impact on the cat, except inasmuch as she will resent me quite a bit more. I couldn’t help it. I was pissed. And it was the only thing I could think to do. I think she’d just completed her work there, and she was still in the room. Wrong place, wrong time. So I asked her fairly calmly, “What is this? Why do you think this is necessary? You haven’t used your box in three days? Why? This cannot continue.” And we walked to the shower room, where I’d already set up her box, food and water. I knew she’d been pissing and shitting everywhere, but this was the first time I’d been close to catching her in the act.

So I go about my business for the day, and I completely ignored Nala. I didn’t go in there once to see how she was faring. We just needed a break. This morning, I went to the kittyjail. She’d shit in the shower stall. I figured she would, because she’d taken to crapping there in the past week. The thing with the shit evolved, it seems. The piss just followed in a decision that the box was to be used by Nala for nothing. Anyway, the result was predicable and repeated behavior, so I swept up the poo, and asked Nala why the hell things were going down in this way. She exited the room for a bit, but she was hooked. It was also breakfast time, and her water dish was also in kittyjail. She didn’t even get a proper exercise. It was feeding and cleaning time, and Nala probably didn’t spend more than a couple of minutes out of her stall. I didn’t have to coerce her to return. She’s always hungry.

Again, I had a one-sided conversation with the cat. “Do you see what I’m doing here, Nala? This is your shit that you’ve left four feet from your box. Why?!? I just don’t get it. You don’t have too many options here, so you’re going to have to figure this one out.”

I tried to express myself with actions more than words, since we’ve been on a pretty bad basis lately. It’s maddening because I know she knows that’s where to shit and piss. She did it in the same way for almost four years. She couldn’t have gotten stupid overnight. She was already dumb. (Though I admit, almost bright for a cat. At this moment she has certainly outsmarting me.)

Our first couple of sessions have been downright unproductive. I do have the bed cleaned up again—the spreads at least. I’m undecided on whether to replace the bedding or to cover the bed with plastic. I’m afraid Nala has met her match here with the kittyjail. I think she’ll crack under the pressure, if she can figure out why she’s in the predicament she’s currently in. I didn’t think I’d have to give Nala cat treats as a grown cat for using the litter box properly, but if she ever uses it again, that’s exactly what’s likely to happen. I’d keep her away from any and all of the bedding in the house, but it’s nearly logistically impossible. And I’m afraid this thing will spread to the carpet. If that happens, we’re in for a major episode.

So it goes, for now. This is less than riveting reading, to be sure. I’ve committed to writing something for a half-hour or hour a day lately, so we have some drivel. Maybe someday I can clean up the drivel in both my writing and in my life.

Catpiss

I suppose this was inevitable. A fitting conclusion to the “Cat Excrement” trilogy. Nala’s having a hell of a time lately. Or I am. Anyway, this thing she’s doing has evolved to cover just about everything. The cat just does whatever she wants whenever she wants to. I don’t know what to do.

I know she’s just a cat, but she’s also company. And she’s been pretty damned good company for about four years now. She showed up at my place, and she’d obviously been around people on some level. She was extremely good at conning my girlfriend into letting her in the house, and she pulled that off within the hour. I had a pretty bad mouse issue at the time, and Nala was good at what she did from the start.

I think my girlfriend named the cat after some popular cartoon character or something. I’m pretty sure it was from “The Lion King.” I’ve looked up the name origin, and it’s supposed to mean gift, or possibly the Swahili meaning “dubious.” Both meanings seem to have some basis in fact these days…

I’ve had other pets through the years, and I guess most of those relationships have ended badly as well. I had to give up a dog that I’d had for a couple of years (Eliza has a great home, and I’m able to visit her at my pleasure), and my girlfriend’s blue heeler passed on in the same year. That dog’s passing hastened the end of my relationship with the girl…We had fundamental differences of opinion on so many topics…

But the cat, it seemed at the time, was a good call. Nala’s been the best of my cats through the years. Dr. Pangloss was great while he was still around, but that cat met a mysterious end involving a late night phone call, a basketball game, and a bottle of Jim Beam. I’ll never be able to determine the whole story of what happened that night in April of ’03…

I don’t know where I’m going with any of this except that the cat’s litter box was changed two days ago, and it hasn’t been used. I haven’t figured out yet where she’s pissing and shitting, but I’ve certainly ruled out the one place all that junk is supposed to be. I suspect there’s been some activity on a downstairs bed. Probably an upstairs one two. I don’t smell the catshit yet, but I’m sure it’s out there. It will be a little gift to me somewhere down the road.

I should count myself lucky, I suppose, that it’s summer, and the windows are all open on the place. I guess it’s airing itself out enough right now to now to avoid a present problem, but this will all come home to roost soon enough.

The cat offered a lot of resistance to my idea of keeping her in the shower room for the weekend. I wanted to get this thing all under control back on Friday. I’d had an oral surgery that day, and my brother was bringing over his dog for the weekend. Nala doesn’t play well with others, so I thought that might be a good time to just keep her in that room with a completely cleaned out litter box, and see what happened. What ended up happening was that she saw my brother’s truck with Chop-dog in the passenger seat. (The dog’s name is Chopper) The cat went nuts. She ran like I haven’t seen her move in a long time when she knew she was being contained in that room. It just wasn’t going to work out, and I didn’t feel like hunting her down at that point. My mouth hurt.

So the dog stays with me for the weekend on the sunporch, and the cat kind of has her way with the place. That’s fine and all, but she still isn’t using the damned litter box. At all. For the moment, I’ll chalk it up to her being pissed off at the presence of Chop-dog and the inconveniences this has caused her.

She started screaming at me about two months ago. I think she was telling me at that time that she had fleas. So I’ve taken care of that problem, but it looks like Nala just isn’t going to let that thing die. Or maybe I haven’t gotten all the fleas…I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore, except that I’m doing a shitton of laundry.

The screaming has subsided, but now it seems there’s just a lot of indifference. She doesn’t much care about much of anything, and the only things she seems to care about are contrary to me maintaining a standard of living that doesn’t involve catpiss in every room of the house.

She wasn’t even mean to the dog this weekend (a stark contrast to her true nature), and I fear she may be ill. I’m not in a position to pay a bunch of money for her to kick the cat-hiv. That’s a pretty big fear of a diagnosis, but she’s lost a lot of weight…Back to the vet soon…

I’m pretty sure no one reads this, but any ideas or suggestions are welcome. The clock’s ticking on this cat, and it’s too bad, because she’s damned good company.

Flightless Decoy

Tough times to be a Jayhawk, 2010. My school’s football team sucks ass. North Dakota State 6, Kansas 3. At home. For the opener. They don’t like to block, apparently. I didn’t go to the game, but it appears in addition to being talentless and devoid of direction, they are late-hit stupid. (“Late hit stupid” is a notch below “Arkansas dumb.”) They like to fumble, but their true preference is to avoid catching the ball in the first place. Kicking isn’t this team’s “thing.” Having kicks blocked is a skill for which they’ve developed an advanced acumen. And if we should happen to force a turnover of any type, we’ll be sure to advance it out of our own end zone to the one yard line. By choice.

There appears to be a quarterback controversy now in Lawrence, Kansas, and it couldn’t be more inconsequential. There isn’t going to be any feel-good ending to this chapter, because the O-line simply can’t do anything about the situation at the line of scrimmage. They are beaten soundly up front by a middle of the road Missouri Valley team, and very likely have no hope at all against the next eleven opponents. (North Dakota State has won seven more national championships in football than KU has—but NDSU hasn’t won one since 1990. This is not Appalachian State beating Michigan here. App State was coming off a national championship themselves, I believe.)

I’ll be easy on the student-atheletes here. I don’t believe it’s their fault they suck. Why they are completely lacking in the “give a damn” category is something we’ll have to figure out as time elapses. I’ve noticed it was a problem with the wildly talented basketball team of last winter, and it sure as hell exists on the gridiron this fall. I’ve seen a number of them play, and I know that some of them have the ability to ball a little. What they won’t be doing anytime soon is winning any football games. This is only the second time in school history that KU has lost to a D-IAA, or DMV, or whatever new acronym the NCAA has for “second division football”. I suppose I should find out what that acronym is real quick—Phil Steele says FCS—Football Championship Subdivision. So there you have it. KU lost to Louisiana Tech some time before they switched up to the Sun Belt and D-IA, whatever the hell KU is supposed to be…

There comes a time for a football (or any sports) program, where the need for advancement is limited by the talents and abilities of those in the practice pool. Terrible players who practice against other terrible players regularly become anything but shitty players. It’s a regression to the mean, in any case. Players who are tested on the other side of the ball with challenges on a daily basis are much more likely to improve than those who are butting heads with equal mediocrity.

Of all the losses in the history of the University of Kansas football program, this one is the worst. There is nothing positive that can come from this outcome, besides very cheap tickets for the locals for the remainder of the year. If head coach Turner Gill is able to muster a win out of this team, I will be quite surprised at this point. Last year’s team ripped off seven consecutive losses to close the year, and they were scoring touchdowns while losing…This is the first time in five years the Hawks failed to score a TD, and I’m pretty confident that there isn’t one NFL player on the field.

So how do we react to coach Gill’s first victory as a Jayhawk, should that eventuate? If it comes this year, I’d sign the man to an extension for being able to beat anyone. I think. Or maybe I’d fire him on the spot for the disaster that was needlessly brought about this evening…but I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that problem for a while.

It’s too bad. I was looking forward to football season all summer, and it’s already over…