Notre Rain

It had been two years since I was on campus at ND when I was there for Jon’s wedding.  My last sporting event on campus was outdoor hockey at Notre Dame Stadium in January 2019.  I thought about going last year during Easter vacation, but I wanted to see the Rangers in Texas and it was a lot easier to combine that with a minor league game in Oklahoma City.  I wasn’t going to any Major League games during Easter vacation this year so I decided to go to Notre Dame for baseball and then combine that with a trip somewhere for a minor league game.  I decided to spend two days on campus just to have some extra time on campus, but also that would allow me to see the baseball team play Michigan State and the softball team play Michigan.  Neither of those games happened.

I had been paying attention to the weather for a week or so and the forecast wasn’t looking great.  There were times when it looked like it would be okay and times when it was looking really bad.  It turned out to be really bad.  Pretty much everything is on the table when it comes to weather at Notre Dame in April.  Anything from 30° to 70° is equally likely and you can add 10° on both sides of that range as possibilities. I got the bad weather.  When I left for my trip, the games were looking very questionable, but still possible.  My route to Notre Dame was New York to Atlanta to South Bend.  When I got to Atlanta, I saw that the baseball game had been canceled.  I was still holding out hope for the softball game the next day.  Anyway, I got dinner at Bru Burger Bar.  My beverage choice did not match the weather.  I had a Sunlight Cream Ale from the Sun King Brewery.  They have a location in Sarasota, Florida, and several breweries in Indiana (including Mishawaka).  The beer was fine, but nothing special.  The burger I had was pretty good.

After dinner, I was pretty tired from waking up early for my flight, but I figured I should get on campus.  I went to the Grotto and walked around campus for a little bit.  It was good to be back on campus.  As it turned out, they probably could have played baseball.  Conditions were not good for baseball, but it was playable.   The high was 57° and the rain had pretty much stopped by dinner time.  I guess they decided to call the game early to save Michigan State a trip down to Indiana.

As bad as the weather was, this is always a good sight.

The next day, the weather was supposed to get worse as the day went on.  When I woke up, I saw on Twitter that the softball game had also been called the night before.  There were no indoor sports happening while I was there.  So I wasn’t going to get to a sporting event on campus.  In all of my traveling, I’ve never completely missed out on an event because of the weather.  I missed a baseball game in Cincinnati because of a very delayed flight (I did get to an Indians game and the Pro Football Hall of Fame on that trip so it wasn’t a complete miss).  I had a game rained out when the Blue Jays were playing in Buffalo, but I purposely planned on going to two games in case that happened.  But I was at Notre Dame for two days and I was going to go to two games and neither one happened.  Oh well.  If I was going to completely miss out, that was what I would want to miss out on.  Just being on campus was more interesting than going to a baseball game or softball game.  So it was disappointing, but whatever.

There would be no sporting events, but I had another day to spend on campus.  I tried to get to the Grotto while it was still dark because it looks great with the candles all lit up in the dark.  I left my hotel before sunrise, but with my long walk from my hotel to the grotto (1.4 miles according to my phone), it was pretty bright by the time I got there.  I spent some time there.  Then I went back to my hotel for breakfast.  Then I went back to campus for the 11:30 Mass at the Basilica.

This picture gives you some idea of how dreary the weather was.

Hopefully Jesus will see us score many touchdowns at Notre Dame Stadium this season.

I took this picture after the 11:30 Mass.

Lots of good times were had in St. Edward’s Hall.

I had forgotten that Muffet McGraw got a statue on campus.  It is well deserved.  Hopefully Micah Shrewsberry and Niele Ivey will have statues someday also.

I had a view of the Linebacker from my hotel room.  I remember going there with Kyle for his first ever beer in 2006.  He didn’t finish it.

Then I just kind of hung out on campus for a while.  I went to the bookstore.  I didn’t buy anything, but I did notice that the best stuff there was the Champion stuff.  We have this big deal with Under Armor and they don’t make stuff that looks good (except for the stuff they give to Marcus Freeman, but they only recently made some of that stuff available to buy).  Most of our uniforms are not very good.  Football is okay, but not wearing gold pants for two games this past season was really bad.  Hockey isn’t too bad (except for the Big 10 logo on the jerseys since we’re in the Big 10 for hockey).  The basketball uniforms aren’t very good.  Some of the baseball uniforms are terrible.  What’s really bad is the green uniforms for most of the sports.  Under Armor insists on doing green jerseys with blue numbering and lettering outlined in gold.  It looks bad.  They finally improved the green football jerseys this year by changing the numbers to white outlined in gold (the reverse would be better for football), but they messed those up with the green pants.  The best green item available at the bookstore was a sweatshirt with Notre Dame and the ND logo in gold outlined in white (made by Champion).  I already own that one.  But that’s what they should be using for green uniforms.  If you’re using green, don’t use blue.  Just go with green, gold, and white.

These jerseys are terrible.

These jerseys are better, but the pants make us look like Marshall.

These are excellent.

Change the number on the sleeves to the interlocking ND and these would be perfect.

Get rid of the blue if you’re wearing green.

The Celtics don’t wear these anymore.  Notre Dame should just steal them.

It’s not just the green basketball uniforms that are bad.  These uniforms need some blue.

I might add some white to these, but they are pretty good as they are except for the ridiculous Under Armor logo.  It should be smaller and not right in the middle.

Again, get rid of the blue.  But more importantly, get rid of the green pants.

Get rid of the blue pants.  Baseball pants should be white or gray.  We do have baseball uniforms that aren’t terrible.  We should just wear those.

A.J. Pollock was tied with Mookie Betts for most home runs in the regular season on the 2020 World Series Champions.  And in this picture he shows you what a Notre Dame baseball uniform with a green jersey should look like.

I ended up going to the new art museum on campus, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.  It was being built the last time I was there.  When I was a student, there was the Snite Museum of Art.  I don’t know if I ever went there when I was a student.  Apparently the new museum replaced the old one.  It was free and I wasn’t going to the softball game so it was something to do.  There was some good religious art there.  I wasn’t too interested in the other stuff.  There was a chapel in the museum.  It looked like they might have Mass there, but I couldn’t find a schedule.  The last thing I did on campus was go to Chick-fil-A.  I saw it the last time I was there, but I didn’t eat there.  I didn’t have any fast food during Lent (except for a Shamrock Shake for St. Patrick’s Day) so Chick-fil-A at Notre Dame was a good way to celebrate the Easter season.

There were several depictions of the visit of the Magi in the museum.  This one was my favorite.

Fr. William Corby grants general absolution during the Battle of Gettysburg.

This wasn’t part of the museum, but here’s the statue of Fr. Corby granting general absolution.  The same statue can be found in Gettysburg.

This is the chapel in the museum.

They could have played baseball on Tuesday, but Wednesday was bad.  It ended up being pretty much the worst possible weather.  The high was 39° and it was wet all day.  At one point before my trip, the forecast was calling for more than four inches of snow.  I would have been totally fine with that.  I got snow in February 2016 and it was cool to have snow on campus.  It looks beautiful and it brings back memories of being a student that you’re probably not going to get when you go to a football game.  But no, it ended up just being cold, windy, and rainy.

Despite the weather and the games being canceled, it was good to be back on campus.  I’d love to get back in the fall for a football game, but we’ll see about that.  We’re playing Army at Yankee Stadium and Navy in the Meadowlands.  I’ll most likely go to the Army game.  I like the history of Notre Dame playing Army at Yankee Stadium.  I most likely will not go to the Navy game.  I’ve been to two games at that stadium.  It’s the most boring stadium imaginable and it’s difficult to get to so I’m totally fine with just watching football on TV at home that day.  Maybe I’ll see our basketball team play St. John’s at Madison Square Garden.  Oh wait, we’re not in the Big East anymore.  As always, my dream is to rejoin the Big East.  Anyway, it’s always good to be back on campus and hopefully it won’t take me two years to get back again.

Gamblor and His Neon Claws

Baseball is back.  Tonight the Dodgers are on Apple TV+.  It’s not even April and I’m already mad about Major League Baseball making baseball difficult to watch.  But this post is going to be mostly about another issue that sports need to deal with.  I’m not optimistic that they’re going to deal with it.

The biggest story in baseball is the Shohei Ohtani interpreter gambling situation.  This reminds me of the Manti Te’o situation 11 years ago.  Immediately there were people who wanted to jump to the worst possible conclusion.  I am totally fine saying that if Shohei Ohtani bet on baseball, then he should get the Pete Rose treatment.  I seriously doubt he was betting on baseball.  There hasn’t even been any word about his interpreter betting on baseball.  Obviously I’m rooting for everything to get sorted out as quickly as possible and for Ohtani to be cleared of any wrongdoing.  I suspect it will take a while to get everything sorted out.  And like I said, if there’s evidence that he was gambling on baseball, that should be the end of his baseball career.  As long as he wasn’t gambling on baseball, I doubt he’s going to be in any real baseball trouble even if he’s not totally innocent in this situation.  There might be some legal issues, but I would guess that if he broke any laws, he could probably testify against people and he would be fine.

It is not surprising that the biggest story in baseball involves gambling.  Recently, we’ve had NFL players suspended for gambling, a Temple basketball gambling scandal, and a Jontay Porter gambling scandal in the NBA.  There might be other stories that I missed.  Sports have embraced gambling and that is a huge mistake.  If Pete Rose is banned from baseball (and he should be), then sports should not be embracing gambling.  They used to not have teams in Las Vegas.  If the A’s do move to Las Vegas and the NBA expands with a team in Las Vegas, all four professional sports will have a team in Las Vegas.  I know gambling laws have changed in many places, but no other city with professional sports teams was built on gambling.  Gambling ads are everywhere.  You can’t watch professional sports without seeing them.  I listen to a lot of podcasts and gambling ads are everywhere.  There are some podcasts that I won’t listen to in the car because I want to make sure I can skip the ads as quickly as possible (not just gambling ads, but I definitely do want to skip those).  How can anybody be surprised that we have these gambling scandals when sports have embraced gambling the way they have?

I’m not totally against gambling.  If people want to gamble responsibly and make friendly wagers, that’s fine.  If people want to be involved in some pools for the Super Bowl or the NCAA Tournament, have fun.  If two random Dodger fans have a podcast and they want to have gambling ads, then go right ahead.  I’m not against those things, but I am against casinos and FanDuel and Draft Kings and stuff like that.  Those things are all built on people not gambling responsibly.  If a podcast has any official connection to a team or league, they shouldn’t have gambling ads.  There shouldn’t be gambling ads in stadiums and arenas and on TV broadcasts of sporting events.

How likely is any of this to get fixed?  It probably won’t get fixed.  It will probably just get worse.  I am all for making money, but people shouldn’t make money by making things worse.  College sports are being destroyed by bad decisions being made because of money.  The murder of the Pac 12 by the Big 10 and the expanded college football playoff are the best examples of this.  The SEC commissioner wants to destroy the NCAA Tournament, the only thing that is universally loved in college sports.  It obviously shouldn’t happen, but I’m expecting it to happen at some point because that’s the direction college sports have been moving in.  So they absolutely get the influence of gambling out of sports, but I don’t expect that they will.

Speaking of making sports worse for more money, I have a solution to another problem created because they made something worse for more money.  The baseball playoffs have too many teams.  We’ve had the two best teams in the NL not make it to the NLCS in back to back years.  I already covered this in October, but I came up with another idea.  Baseball should use the NBA’s play in tournament format.  The 3 and 4 seeds play each other in one game.  The winner plays the 2 seed.  The loser plays the winner of the 5 vs. 6 game.  And the winner of that game plays the 1 seed.  I can’t imagine them doing that because they won’t want to use the same format as the NBA and it would also reduce the number of games in that round (3 games per league instead of 4-6).  But it would make the regular season more important.  Finishing third or fourth is definitely better than finishing fifth or sixth (two games to win one instead of needing to win both games).  And it would reduce the amount of time that the 1 and 2 seeds have to not play baseball while they wait for their opponent.

It’s the spring (well, I had my first Summer Ale yesterday for Opening Day, so maybe it’s summer already) so I’ll finish by updating my sports villain power rankings (my most recent rankings are at the end of this post):

25.  Logan Webb

I feel like I should have a Giant since baseball season just started.  Gabe Kapler isn’t their manager anymore, so Logan Webb gets the spot that would have gone to him.  Maybe somebody else will emerge this season.

24.  Luka Doncic

23.  Ime Udoka

22.  Stephen Curry

21.  James Harden

Doncic complains too much.  It’s also not fun to watch him dribble the ball all game.  Udoka and Curry both have the potential to get off of this list if either one of them eliminates the Lakers in the play in tournament.  Harden was Doncic before Doncic.  He’s not fun to watch.  It was funny how people talked themselves into the Clippers when they played well for a while.  They’re not going anywhere in the playoffs.

20.  Caleb Williams

19.  Lincoln Riley

Caleb Williams is still the most dislikable quarterback in football, but he’s not at USC anymore and it’s not football season.  In my sports villain power rankings last spring, I said, “I hope Jordan Botelho sacks him a few times and Benjamin Morrison intercepts him a few times in October.”  Well, Botelho didn’t sack him, but other Notre Dame defenders sacked him six times.  And Morrison only intercepted him once, but Xavier Watts intercepted him twice.  That was fun.  Lincoln Riley will always be unlikable.

18.  Brian Kelly

It’s another college football coach who will always be unlikable.

17.  Damian Lillard

16.  Kevin Durant

15.  Anthony Davis

14.  Jimmy Butler

13.  Draymond Green

It’s a whole bunch of unlikable basketball players.

12.  Manny Machado

11.  Fernando Tatis

And now we have some unlikable San Diego Padres (Tatis is also a cheater).

10.  Kyrie Irving

He hasn’t done anything terrible in a while.  It’s probably coming at some point.

6.  (tie) Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman

The most dislikable active baseball players will always be the hitters from the 2017 Astros.  Yuli Gurriel isn’t on a team right now so he’s been taken off this list (he’ll be right back on if he ends up on a team).

4.  (tie) Tony Petitti and Greg Sankey

The Big 10 and SEC are destroying college sports so their commissioners need to be on this list.

3.  Rob Manfred

Rob Manfred is retiring in 2029.  Why not five years ago?

2.  LeBron James

Until the Lakers are eliminated, he needs to be very high on this list.

1. Jim Harbaugh

He cheated to win a National Championship.  His championship is as valid as the 2017 Houston Astros World Series Championship.  Whether or not it gets vacated, nobody should ever forget that he needed to cheat to win a National Championship.

And I’ll induct a new member into my Sports Villain Hall of Fame.  My original class last year was Barry Bonds, Tom Brady, Reggie Bush, Phil Jackson, and Rafael Palmeiro.  Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll are no longer coaching.  They are Hall of Fame locks, but there has to be a waiting period (I know there was no waiting period for Tom Brady, but I’m making up my rules and they could conceivably end up coaching again).  There are a lot of good options.  But if I’m only adding one, it has to be the Barry Bonds of pitching.  Roger Clemens is our newest member of my Sports Villain Hall of Fame.

Anyway, it’s good to have baseball back.  I hope someday sports will renounce the gambling monster that has enslaved them.  It’s time to snatch sports from Gamblor’s neon claws!

The End of a Long Winter

As we all know, winter ends when I attend the Big East Tournament.  It’s one of my favorite sporting events of the year.  I went almost every year in whatever the decade before the 20s is called.  And then I didn’t go in 2020.  In fact, I haven’t had a blog post in March since 2020 when I lamented the demise of that college basketball season.  I was supposed to go to three nights of the Big East Tournament that year (Thursday-Saturday).  I had already decided not to go, but it ended up getting canceled on Thursday afternoon before any of the sessions I was supposed to go to.  I’ve been wanting to get back to the Big East Tournament ever since then.  I hadn’t really thought about it much this year until a few weeks ago.  I typically went multiple nights to the Big East Tournament, but when I checked the prices, they were pretty high.  Thursday night was reasonable though so I decided I would go if I could get somebody to go with me.  My first text was to Vin who has attended many Big East Tournaments with me and he was in so I was getting back to the Big East Tournament and the winter that never ended was going to end. I’ve gone to many Big East Tournament games with Vin over the years. Of course, the last Big East Tournament I went to was in 2019. I went Thursday and Saturday that year and Vin joined me for the championship game when we saw Villanova beat Seton Hall.

My last indoor sporting event that I needed a ticket for was an NBA G-League game with the Maine Red Claws (now Maine Celtics) taking on the Long Island Nets in January 2020.  Since then, the only indoor sporting events I’ve been to had been girls basketball games that I was coaching (we had our best season ever this year with a 9-4 finish and a loss in the semifinals) and a couple of volleyball games and boys basketball games at my school.  It felt really good to be going up those escalators in Madison Square Garden again.  We were seeing Creighton against Providence and Marquette against Villanova.  I have pretty simple rules about who to root for in the Big East.  I always root for Villanova because of their heroism in preventing North Carolina and Michigan from winning National Championships in 2016 and 2018.  I root for Catholic schools against non-Catholic schools.  I root for old Big East Teams except for UConn against new Big East teams generally.  Now I have to root against St. John’s against any other Catholic school because of Rick Pitino (I’ve always wanted St. John’s to be good because that would definitely make the Big East Tournament more exciting, but I can’t root for Rick Pitino). And I root for Butler over UConn.  I might make exceptions to those rules to root for results that would help get the Big East more teams in the NCAA Tournament (unless the team that might be helped was UConn).  But in this case, my rules all lined up to root for Providence and Villanova.  Creighton and Marquette were going to make the tournament.  Providence and Villanova were bubble teams.

The first game was exciting.  Providence led for most of the game.  They had a double-digit lead in the second half.  And then they let it slip away.  It felt like they were going to lose, but they executed late and won 78-73 despite being even in rebounding and three pointers and Creighton making nine more free throws.  Devin Carter had 22 points and 11 rebounds.  Vin had to leave to get his ferry back to New Jersey after the first game.  I stayed for the first half of the second game.  Villanova led by one at halftime.  I wanted to stay for the whole game since it was close, but I was already looking at getting home after midnight and I had to go to work the next day.  In my younger days, I probably would have stayed.  I missed an exciting finish.  Marquette made a shot at the buzzer to seemingly win the game, but it was overturned (it didn’t look like it should have been overturned).  Marquette ended up winning anyway in overtime 71-65.  The game ended just shortly before I got home around 12:15.  So that was a disappointing result.

My current phone definitely takes higher quality pictures than the one I had the last time I went to the Big East Tournament in 2019.

Actually almost everything after Wednesday in the tournament was a disappointing result.  On Thursday afternoon, Connecticut won and St. John’s beat Seton Hall.  It seemed like the winner of St. John’s-Seton Hall had a good chance of making the NCAA tournament and the loser probably wouldn’t make it.  If Seton Hall had no chance of making the tournament, I could bring myself to root for St. John’s since they are a Catholic school that was a bubble team, but I’m not going to root for Rick Pitino to keep another Catholic school out of the tournament.  Then on Friday, I was rooting for St. John’s because they were playing Connecticut and another win would solidify their position in the tournament.  And I was rooting for Providence against Marquette because Marquette was definitely making the tournament and Providence was a bubble team.  Well, Connecticut and Marquette won.  And of course, I was rooting for Marquette over Connecticut in the championship game, but Connecticut won.  So in the last seven games of the tournament, the only one that went the way I wanted was Providence-Creighton.

As it would turn out, Saturday and Sunday were disastrous for the Big East.  They had three teams that were definitely in and four bubble teams.  Of the four bubble teams, it seemed like Villanova was out and St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Providence had a chance.  With all the upsets in other conference tournaments and bids getting stolen, none of the Big East bubble teams made it.  Hopefully next year a Catholic school that isn’t St. John’s will win the Big East tournament and they’ll get more teams to the NCAA tournament.

It was great to be back at the Big East Tournament with Vin.  Although I didn’t see Connecticut in person, this was my first tournament since Connecticut rejoined the conference.  Obviously, Connecticut has strengthened the conference.  Eleven teams seems like a weird number.  I know it works well for scheduling since they all play each other twice.  But 12 or 16 teams would make for a better conference tournament.  Twelve would give you a full day on Wednesday.  Sixteen would give you a full day on Tuesday and Wednesday with some pretty good games on Wednesday.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big East does expand at some point.  When the ACC inevitably falls apart because the Big 10, SEC, and ESPN are committed to destroying college football, I hope Notre Dame stays independent in football and goes back to the Big East for everything else.  That’s pretty much been my dream ever since we left.  So we would be the 12th team.  If we’re getting to 16, I would then add Syracuse (I despise them, but much like Connecticut, they belong in the Big East), Boston College (or Holy Cross because it would be funny to take them and not Boston College), Dayton, and some other Atlantic 10 team (VCU, Richmond, Loyola Chicago, Duquesne, or somebody).

Speaking of the Big Ten and SEC trying to destroy college football, it seems like they also might want to destroy college basketball.  Greg Sankey has been talking about ruining the NCAA tournament.  This is the one thing that everybody agrees is awesome about college sports.  And the SEC commissioner wants to destroy it.  If you’re going to do anything with the tournament, I would expand it slightly.  I’ve heard the suggestion to go to 72 teams and have eight play in games with all at large teams.  The argument is that it would make the play in games more interesting and any conference champion should get the experience of playing in the round of 64.  If they did that, I would be totally fine with it.  I am sympathetic to the idea that the worst team should get to be a sacrificial lamb for a 1 seed instead of losing a play in game.  But if it was up to me, I would make it 72 teams with four play in games for at large teams and all four 16 spots determined by play in games.  What I like about that idea is that it would improve the quality of 16 seeds a little bit because two teams that would have been 15 seeds under the current format would get bumped down to play in games.  But I’d be fine with doing all at large teams in the play in games also.  Either way, I think 72 is the right number and I would have a second play in site so that you could get two games going at once instead of having everything in Dayton.

So we’re into the NCAA tournament now.  There are seven Catholic schools in the tournament.  As I’m writing this, things are not looking good for Dayton (update: Dayton came back from down 17 in the second half so that’s awesome).  It seems like Marquette, Creighton, St. Mary’s, and Gonzaga are the Catholic schools with a chance to make a run.  But Duquesne already won their first game in the tournament in 55 years or something like that so that’s cool.  Hopefully Micah Shrewsberry will have Notre Dame back in the NCAA tournament consistently soon.  I’m optimistic as everybody said our team was going to be horrendous this year, but we had a pretty solid finish despite not having much talent.  Until then, I’ll be rooting for the other Catholic schools.

And I’ll just finish with one other thought.  The CBS college basketball music is very very good.  But the best basketball theme music ever (maybe the best of any sport ever) is Roundball Rock.  Of course, I grew up with it on the NBA on NBC in the 90s.  It’s taken a little while, but I’ve gotten used to it being used as Fox’s college basketball theme.  I wish Fox would use it just for one day with its lyrics (since it is a lyrics-first song):

There’s a lot not to like about Saturday Night Live, but sometimes they nail it (this season they had a George Washington skit that was absolutely fantastic).  Anyway, even though the tournament isn’t on Fox, this is pretty much what’s been going on in my head ever since the conference tournaments started:

A Very Jim Christmas

I don’t think I’ve ever done a true Christmas blog post so I’m doing one now.  I’ve made some Christmas top five lists and a bottom five list.  I tried to make this short, but it turned out to be longer than I was planning. Anyway, let’s get to it.

I’ll start with half-hour TV shows/specials:

5.  South Park Season 4- There are good South Park Christmas episodes.  The season 4 episode has the kids making the animated film and Mr. Hankey’s family so I would rank that one ahead of the Christmas in Canada episode and the Woodland Critter Christmas episode.

4.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas- It’s a Christmas classic.  The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge always get remembered for what they’re like at the beginning of the story.  People should remember how they changed.

3.  The Office Season 2- If we’re looking at Christmas episodes of the Office, I think it has to be between season 2 and season 3, I would go with the season 2 episode, but season 3 is also excellent).  It’s a shame there was no season 4 Christmas episode (because of the writers strike) because it would have been awesome (the first half of season 4 is fantastic).  If I was ranking the Office Christmas episodes, it would go 2, 3, 6, 7, 5, 9, 8.  Season 8 and 9 are obviously the worst because there’s no Michael.  Season 8 is the worst because there’s no Michael, but there is Robert California.  Season 9 is Dwight Christmas, which is pretty good for a season 9 episode.

2.  Seinfeld Festivus- Seinfeld episodes are harder for me to differentiate from episodes of the Office because you get a lot more stand-alone stories rather than the long story arcs that the Office is built on.  I know there are other Seinfeld Christmas episodes that are good.  Mickey and Kramer working at a department store as an elf and a communist Santa is good.  But Festivus is an all time classic.  It has endured as much as anything from Seinfeld two and a half decades later.

1. Charlie Brown Christmas.  It gets the number 1 spot because it’s good and it actually deals with the true meaning of Christmas.  When Linus recites Luke’s Gospel and he gets to the part where the angel says, “Fear not,” he drops his blanket.  You might not have noticed this detail before, but if you know the character Linus, the significance of this is clear.

I’ll get to some bad stuff before going back to good stuff. There are a lot of good Christmas songs, but I’m going to do the five worst:

5.  Band Aid- Do They Know It’s Christmas?  This is definitely not a good song, but I can tolerate it because it’s unintentionally funny.  The line “Well tonight thank God it’s them in stead of you” is very strange.  What does that mean?  I should thank God that there are poor people in Africa?  What?

4.  Baby It’s Cold Outside- It doesn’t matter which version it is.  This is not a good song.

3.  Wham Last Christmas- As Fr. Mike Schmitz has pointed out, the only thing that makes this a Christmas song is that the first two words of the song are Last Christmas.

2.  John Lennon Happy Xmas- We’ve gotten to the songs that I absolutely refuse to listen to.  I don’t need to hear protest music for Christmas.

1. Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmas Time- I can’t stand this song. It’s horrendous.

Let’s get back to stuff that is good.  Here are my top five Saturday Night Live Christmas skits:

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

I’ll finish up with my top five Christmas movies:

5.  Scrooged- It’s Bill Murray in the most 1980s Christmas movie imaginable.  If Scrooged didn’t exist and you asked AI to write a script for a 1980s Christmas comedy, it would write Scrooged.

4.  Elf- Elf reminds me of Wedding Crashers.  It starts off so good, but the end leaves something to be desired.  Once they leave the island in Wedding Crashers, the rest of the movie stinks.  Elf is fantastic for most of the movie, but it’s not great after the fight with Myles Finch.  Santa has a feud with the Central Park Rangers?  Why?  They could have come up with something better for the end.

3.  The Muppet Christmas Carol- It’s Michael Caine and Muppets.  And it’s everything you want Michael Caine and Muppets to be.

2.  It’s a Wonderful Life- I remember watching it for the first time when I was a junior in high school because my US history teacher did It’s a Wonderful Life trivia on the last day before Christmas vacation.  I think that was the only time I watched it until a couple of years ago.  It really is a wonderful movie.

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- Unliked Scrooged, this is a timeless Christmas classic.  It came out only a year after Scrooged, but it feels like it could be from any year.  It’s the Festivus of the Vacation movies in that it has endured much more so than the other ones.  I’m not going to say it’s a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s the most fun Christmas movie.

The Celtics beat the Lakers today. It was appropriate for NBA good to prevail over NBA evil on Christmas Day. But congratulations to the Lakers on winning a tournament that means absolutely nothing. Happy Birthday Jesus!  Merry Christmas!

Tournament of Meaninglessness

Congratulations to the NBA on brainwashing people into caring about the in season tournament, or as I like to call it, the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  It was entirely predictable that the media would eat up this tournament and make a big deal about it.  But the truth remains that it means nothing.  I refuse to be brainwashed by the NBA.  I’ve been against this tournament from the start.  It was inspired by European soccer and American sports definitely don’t need to be more like European soccer.  There were other people who seemed to be against it also, but now everybody seems to care for some reason.  People compared it to the play-in tournament, but there’s a huge difference.  There is a purpose to the play-in tournament.  You can advance to the playoffs by winning in the play-in tournament.  But winning this tournament means absolutely nothing.

It makes me angry that the NBA has tried to make this tournament into a big deal when it means absolutely nothing.

Let us not forget that the only reason this tournament matters is that the games count as regular season games.  I’ve wanted the Celtics to win their games because they count in the standings.  But once the Celtics lost a Tournament of Meaninglessness game, they were going to need to advance on the tiebreaker.  So in their last game of group play, they ran up the score to advance.  I would have been 100% fine if they won without running up the score and didn’t advance.  What would have happened if they didn’t advance?  Instead of playing two games that count in the regular season standings, they would have played two games that count in the regular season standings.  Now their reward for advancing is playing a road game for a chance to advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.  So if they win tonight, they lose a regular season home game.  But tonight counts in the standings and the semifinal game counts in the standings.  So I hope they win their next two games.

If the Celtics win those next two games, they play in the Tournament of Meaninglessness championship game.  And that game would mean absolutely nothing.  It’s the only game of the tournament that doesn’t count in the standings.  They’re playing for rich basketball players to be slightly richer.  Why would any fan care?  If the Celtics make it, I will watch the game and the only thing I will be rooting for is for the Celtics to get through the game without any injuries.  If it was up to me, I would sit Tatum, Brown, Porzingas, Holiday, White, Horford, and Pritchard.  Let the players who haven’t gotten a good contract in their careers try to make some extra money and don’t take any chances of their best players getting hurt.  The only way I would care about whether or not the Celtics would win or lose would be if they were playing the Lakers.  And that would be entirely because I want the Lakers to lose every game they play and not because I care about the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  I would still sit all of the Celtics’ best players.  Kevin Durant is one of my least favorite athletes, but I would be totally fine with losing the last game to the Suns as long as no Celtics got hurt.  If the Celtics do win this tournament, I would be mad if they hang a banner for it.  They should just have a certificate in an office somewhere.

If the NBA wanted me to care about this tournament, it should have meant something.  I will preface this by saying that this is a stupid idea, but they could have made advancing in the tournament the first tiebreaker for the playoffs.  So the eight teams that advanced would have a tiebreaker over the other 22 teams.  The four teams that make it to the semifinals would have a tiebreaker over the other 26 teams and so on.  That would have been a stupid way to break ties, but it would have given me a reason to care about this tournament.  But as it is, the tournament is the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  So go Celtics.  Win the next two games that count in the regular season standings and then just don’t get hurt in the last game.

The best thing about this tournament ending is that nobody will care about it anymore and I won’t have to hear about it anymore.