Wonderlic scores are out! For those not in the know, the Wonderlic Test is a sort of intelligence test (almost like the standardized tests they give to grade-school children) that they give to prospective NFL draftees. As with most exams, the higher you score, the better. 50 is a perfect score. 30-40 is about average for a QB. I took a variant of it last year for giggles (I wanted to prove that despite being unable to catch a football*, I am still smarter than Mario Manningham, who reportedly scored a six. I was 30-something.)
High score for the year? Georgia's Matthew Stafford, who's probably regretting that he didn't intentionally bomb the thing as Detroit likely just wants him even more now. The fools of the year? Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree and Florida's Percy Harvin.
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I promised myself when I started this blog, that I would not write about any other sport other than football, but as it is March after all, I figured I'd do something different and write about a little basketball, because I have been watching a lot of it. Office productivity has again plummeted dramatically as people stream games and obsess neurotically about their brackets (I'm currently third in my pool). I have noticed that due to the greater speed and spontaneity of basketball than football, there are truly different kinds of matchups:
The Nail-Biter: Any game where the lead changes more than ten consecutive times, becoming especially tense in the second half. Finally, one team will pull away and eventually go on to win, but not without leaving you breathing a bit quicker than normally.
The Barn-Burner: A Barn-Burner must involve more than twenty lead changes, with the lead being no greater than five points at any given time. Barn-Burners typically end on last-second fouls and flops, ridiculous shots, sloppy executions, half-court buzzer-beaters, multiple overtimes, and lots of slobberingly angry coaches and officials. These are the games that put the "ball" into "ballistic."
The Sniper Kill: Describes when a low-seeded team (under 10) comes seemingly out of nowhere to knock off a higher-seeded favorite (over five, usually). Examples? #13 Cleveland State dropping #4 Wake Forest (which likely caused many people to burn their brackets in the spot), or how Purdue is the only 5th seed to survive the onslaught of #12s this tournament. (Leading to the expression "so and so got twelved in the first round.") (I think the football equivalent of this is Bill Simmons' Drive-by-Shooting.)
The Court-Mopping: When one team absolutely embarrasses an egregiously undermatched opponent and effortlessly scores over 90 on them whilst the opponent struggles to make 25% of their shots.
The "Wake Up Already!": Describes when a team that should be Mopping the Court isn't making their free-throws, has got people in danger of fouling out before the half, turns the ball over, and is effectively asleep for 3/4 of the game. Often, said team wakes up and goes "Er, we're losing!" and gets it together just in time to eek out a win. If the sleeping team wakes up and then proceeds to go on a Court-Mopping rampage, it's called the Villanova Syndrome.**
The Fundamental Mismatch: The fundamental mismatch is when your team has generally playing well, comes up against an opponent that you should defeat easily, but somehow, every time, this opponent seems to have spies on the inside and really is a pain to dispatch. Sometimes it's psychological, such as a rivalry, and sometimes, nobody can explain it.
The Acid Reflux Express: This is when your team has an early lead (usually by double digits) and then somehow gets jinxed at the half and nothing subsequently goes right for them, resulting in fans having to suffer through the remaining 20 minutes in eye-crossing, stomach-churning agony. It often ends with the game being lost on a stupid call. These are the games where people almost get chucked out of pubs and take weeks to get over, especially if they come late in tournament play.
Anyway, hope everyone's enjoying the 'madness! News to come when I get around to it!
Remember kids: Old quarterbacks never die, they simply pass away.
*I really cannot catch a football. I don't just mean I'm not in the hunt for the Biletnikoff, I mean I get beaned in the face half the time.
**It took me forever to figure out that Villanova was a Catholic school in Pennsylvania and not, as I previously thought, a poor cousin of the Bossa Nova.
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