Additionally, Pat brings a working knowledge and familiarity with more than just football under the BSU athletics umbrella. As you’ll notice as we go forward, OTP will be expanding its coverage a bit to all of the Ball State athletics programs. While our primary focus will always be football, thanks in no small part to the knowledge and passion most all of us have for the sport, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room at the OTP table for a plethora of Cardinal athletics and BSU happenings. Yes, El Guapo, I said plethora.

On July 1 we’ll have our annual OTP report and our fiscal agenda for 2014, sort of a “State of the Site” post so consider this first Pat B post a precursor to a summer of change here at OTP.

So give a warm welcome… to Pat B. Take it away…

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After the announcement of the five new helmets for Indiana Football’s 2013 season, Ball State football did some thinking.  And since new helmets MUST produce success on the field, here’s my prediction for Ball State’s response, and to what the new Ball State football helmets will look like for the 2013 season. (click to enlarge)

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One post in and one IU troll. Pat B has a bright future here at OTP.

I’ve been pretty quiet on here about these, though I’ve thrown some Twitter barbs. My overwhelming reaction is a giant “Meh…” to the entire IU helmetgasm they’ve been messing their britches over. Flash with success is swagger. Flash without substance is posing, and it seems to me like the Hoosiers are doing a fair bit of posing and a whole let less winning. To say nothing of the fact that if this was the same marketing department that came up with “Win Today!” as the Kevin Wilson slogan before he won five games in two years I’m more than a little skeptical about their prospects. That has to sting Wilson a bit. Aside from getting his ass handed to him twice by “that little old teachers college up the road”, it took him two years to accomplish what Pete Lembo did in eight weeks in Muncie. Judges?

Can Coach Whitford make people care about Ball State basektball?

5. No more attendance stories!
I am tired of them and it is a losing battle to fight. Nothing says die-hard Ball State fan quite like staring at the bottom of the box score wondering why less than 10,000 fans showed up. We have to stop this habit.

Look, Ball State is in a bad spot when it comes to football attendance. Only a portion of alumni care about football, and only a portion of them still live near Muncie. Making things worse is the lack of connection between Ball State and Muncie. There is none.
Students will come to games but only if the weather is good. Many just come out for the tailgating and are too trashed to make it into the game. If they do make it is only for a half. It’s one thing to see a stadium of empty seats. It’s much worse to see a mass exodus in the second quarter of every home game.

These factors make it hard as hell for Scheumann Stadium to be packed. Constantly bringing it up and calling people out is not going to solve it. In fact it probably has made things worse. I’m pulling out the white flag on this one and hope other passionate fans (all 1,000 of us) do the same.

4. Get a player drafted
Not sure why but NFL scouts have not been too kind to Ball State prospects. It is great seeing players signed after the draft but if Central Michigan can score the No. 1 pick we should be able to land someone in the seventh round. Right?

3. Better black uniforms
I was pumped for the black uniforms but then it was nothing too special when they premiered against Ohio. It was just white numbers on solid black. They didn’t even have any names on the back of them. It looked like a poorly funded high school team. Ball State is not that… wait… crap.

2. Basketball buzz
New coach James Whitford has one big task for him in his first season as Ball State coach. Make Ball State basketball relevant.
This does not mean the Cardinals need to win in his first year and make it to the NCAA tournament. Create a style of play that makes fan want to see will suffice. Talk trash in press conferences, throw a chair, do something! These seasons of the Indianapolis Star placing a 30 word synopsis of a BSU game on page 5 must end. IPFW cannot receive the same media attention as Ball State for another year.

1. Less scandals
College football is reeking with scandal as Oregon and Auburn are the two most recent examples. Basically, the 2011 national championship game looks like a scam. Throw in Notre Dame losing their quarterback, chaos at Rutgers and everything looks dreadful.

This is nothing new but it seems worse than ever. I still love college football more than the NFL but the gap is smaller. Every outcome is suspect years later. Every coach is waiting to jump to the NFL when the NCAA finally catches up to their recruiting violations. Power conferences are stealing teams from each other destroying historic rivalries and weakening college basketball in the process. Yet fans continue to drink beer, eat burgers, and party every Saturday. When ignorance is the best route problems can only intensify.

Not this kind of golf, but I’d imagine they’re pretty good at it too.

As anyone who works in higher education (myself included) will tell you, come the end of the academic year most things begin to shift to the coming fall post-haste. But BSU athletics is not quite ready to let 2012-2013 go gently into that good night, as the Ball State men’s golf team still has some unfinished business in Milton, GA. Like, you know, THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT.

Ball State is making hay amongst some big boys in collegiate golf as they are actually ahead of five teams ranked in the top 20. Now, I’m a  football first kind of fan and the amount of knowledge I have about collegiate golf could probably fit in one of my DryJoys, but beating five top 20 teams after one day of competition seems pretty darn good.

To the release we go…

MILTON, Ga. — The Ball State men’s golf team found itself atop the leaderboard early Tuesday, dropped some shots down the stretch but still finished day one of the NCAA Championships ahead of five teams ranked in the top 20 in the country.

The Cardinals, playing in the morning wave with half the teams in the field, were in first place at 5-under par near the turn at the Capital City Club’s Crabapple Course.

After the conclusion of the challenging back nine, they had posted a 10-over par total of 290 for their best ever NCAA Championships round in their first appearance at the finals since 1986.

Ball State was in 28th place when it came off the course but moved up to 24th as the top 15 seeds, playing in the afternoon wave, made their way around the par-70, 7,319-yard layout.

By the day’s end, the Cardinals were ahead of No. 6-ranked New Mexico, No. 10 TCU, No. 11 Florida, No. 12 Southern California and No. 19 Auburn.

“We hung in there,” Ball State coach Mike Fleck said. “We couldn’t have asked for a better start, and then the golf course kind of changed as our round went on. We gave some shots away on the back nine, but we’re still going to be in the mix going into the next two days.”

Tony Lazzara shot Ball State to the top early Tuesday with birdies on three of his first five holes. A pair of consecutive birdies to start his back nine had Lazzara to 4-under and among the top 5 individually. He finished his day at even-par 70, matching the best ever round by a Cardinal at the NCAA finals, and sits in a tie for 34th place.

Alex Stinson, who recorded 15 pars on the day, and Tyler Merkel each posted rounds of 2-over par 72 and find themselves in a tie for 66th. Joe Gasser turned in a round of 76 as Ball State’s fourth counting score, while McCormick Clouser had a solid round going until the tough final three-hole stretch left him with a 77.

“When we were playing in the morning, it was calm, the conditions were softer, and the holes were a little bit easier,” Fleck said. “On the back nine, the holes were a little bit tougher, the wind picked up, and everything started to firm up a little bit. The golf course was definitely getting harder as the day went on.”

Arizona State freshman Jon Rahm turned in the round of the day Tuesday with what is believed to be a competitive course-record 61. He led the Sun Devils to a round of 10-under par, which was the top score on day one. Arizona State is followed on the team leaderboard by Georgia Tech (-6), Alabama (-5), Illinois (-4) and California (-3).

Ball State will play in the afternoon wave for Wednesday’s second round with tee times starting at 2 p.m. The Cardinals will again play with Texas Tech and Coastal Carolina.

There are two rounds of stroke play remaining before the field will be cut to eight teams for match play. Ball State will enter the second round 11 shots out of eighth place.

Unlike most par 5s for me, 11 shots out of eighth place doesn’t seem unreachable at all. Chirp chirp BSU golfers.

In other BSU news, the baseball Cards put on one hell of a show in the MAC tournament and played BG for the championship on Sunday losing 7-0. Having not followed college baseball all that closely since Bryan Bullington was in Muncie, it was nice to see the Cards put on a show to close the year and come so close to reaching the NCAA tourney. Along the way they knocked off #1 seed Kent State, the same Kent State that was the media darling at the College World Series last year. Someone more knowledgeable about MAC baseball may have to explain to me how a team can lose one game in a double elimination tourney and not have the right to play again until they got their 2nd or handed BG theirs, but alas, that was the case Sunday for the Cards. Only in the MAC. Nice work, fellas.

As we close the book on 2012-2013 in the coming days, I hope everyone remembers what a phenomenal year for BSU athletics it has been. Whether it was the football team’s unexpected success and bowl trip, the women’s basketball team’s NIT invitation and Brady Sallee’s successful opening salvo, the hiring of James Whitford to hopefully right the ship in men’s basketball, Rich Maloney and crew’s wildly unexpected baseball season, men’s golf in the national championship tourney, men’s volleyball with a top 10 ranking, women’s gymnast Brittney Emmons competed at the NCAA regional, the softball Cards were the MAC tourney’s top seed, a $20 million athletic capital campaign was launched, and BSU’s Sportslink continued to rack up national awards. For all intents and purposes, it was a wildly successful first year in the Bill Scholl era as Athletics Director and if the hires he’s made deliver the future is bright.

OTP will kick off our summer content in short order and begin to ramp up for fall sports. Most notably, the football Cardinals are less than 100 days from opening Year 3 of the Lembo Regime and I may or may not be beginning to whisper about things that I haven’t whispered about since 2008. I’m not saying, I’m just saying. We’ll have some other goodies like our usual summer tomfoolery like our opponent previews (maybe the return of Threat Level Argyle) and our preseason picks and predictions. We’ll also roll out a new format for the OTPcast that I am ridiculously excited (and more than a little apprehensive) about. Freeform Friday will continue and hopefully we’ll be bringing on some new writers around these parts. Stay tuned, Cards fans. Chirp F’ing Chirp.

Babies will ruin your life. But at least we appreciate diversity around here.

We all have those friends. Those friends who feel the need to make sure all of us are aware of their life and how they are living it. Those who feel like social media like Twitter and Facebook were created for the sole purpose of sharing their comings and goings. I can’t speak for Twitter but I did see The Social Network. Facebook was created so Mark Zuckerberg could crush some Harvard ass. It was not invented for you to fill up my news feed with posts of your toes in ocean water (we don’t care), what you had for breakfast (we REALLY don’t care), or use Twitter hashtags (die).

Things that I significantly don’t care about: your pets, your workout, your stress, how your ex-wife screwed someone, how you screwed someone, how you screwed your ex-wife, how your ex-wife screwed your pet, etc etc ad nauseum.

One photo of your vacation? Awesome. I’m happy to see what my friends are up to. Glad you got away from the rat race! Forty-seven photos of the same damn thing from different angles? Yeah…. no. Last time I checked a vacation was a good opportunity to disconnect the digital umbilical cord and you know, vacate (is that the word for the verb “to vacation”? I’m going to assume so), unless you are single and giving me photographic proof that Amy Schumer got blasted at your pig roast and ended up naked in your hot tub. That you are free and encouraged to photograph as many times as you can. Set the shutter speed to “lightning fast”. I’m not a photographer, but that’s a setting, right? Otherwise, countless photos of you, you and your wife, you and your wife and your inlaws, etc aren’t doing the internet right. And your kids? Oh, your kids. Let’s chat about those, shall we?

I will own that I do not have children yet. I will also own that I am sort of on the fence about having children at all. I am congratulatory to my friends that do when they are born. But at some point, the statute of limitations about the honor of having unprotected sex runs out. Why should we celebrate the permanent remnants of your happy fun time? Last I checked the friend of mine who got the clap after banging out a slampiece didn’t get a “like” under the picture of his ultrasound. Children are cute, I get it. A few pictures here and there to celebrate milestones? Fantastic. I’m happy to share in the watershed moments of my friends and family. Junior graduated from college? That’s terrific. I’ll send him a gift card to Starbucks. Junior said unintelligible words masquerading as speech captured by his slapnuts father on video? Yeah, gonna have to pass.

Children by nature are awful creatures. They tear up everything they come in contact with, bleed you dry financially, and require hot Swedish nannys to tend to their needs and issues, thus making married life more than a little difficult. Perhaps the overshare of children-focused things isn’t a celebration at all. It’s the world’s largest group-therapy session. “My life is awful and my friends with children can commiserate with me. And those assholes who don’t have children should share in my pain. Share in it when you’re out doing cool things and not Facebooking. SHARE IT! SHARE IT ALL THE WAY TO HELL!” That has to be the refrain of those who overshare 900 photos of Junior looking for an Easter egg in the backyard of a house that is triple mortgaged as I drink Kalik on a Caribbean beach.

And that overshare is the problem. Have some self-control. Do you open up a bag of Fudge Stripes (the world’s best cookie) and tear through that sumbitch in 8 seconds flat like a dragon with a hemorrhoid? Of course not. You savor them. Have one, maybe two, a glass of milk, and you have three and three-quarter trays left to enjoy. Same goes for whatever you choose to post on social media. One picture? A witty status? Something infinitely frustrating? Rock and roll. That’s what it’s for. Just try to remember though that a picture’s worth a thousand words. A bunch of them are still worth 1000 words, most of them profanity directed at your gene pool. A witty status isn’t witty when you’ve posted some iteration of it (good or bad) for the last 342 days. Something is frustrating? Fix it or shut up about it.

Oversharing speaks volumes to the moral compass of America. If one-quarter pound beef patty is good, then a double quarter-pounder must be amazing. I am just counting down the days until they put eight quarter pounders on a lard infused bun, covered in bacon, and extra mayo. This sort of gluttony is what made Abercrombie only want to market to stick figures, it’s what made Southwest charge you more when your asscheek bleeds over into the space of the person next to you reading over their Skymall and looking at shitty gifts that no one really buys, and it’s why you suck. In the irony of all ironies, in trying to lord over your friends your accomplishments of climbing on an airplaine, signing a hotel check in form, or having unprotected sex, you actually make me quite happy that my life is what it is. I don’t have time to hashtag a photo of my offspring shoving oatmeal into their sister’s ear because I’m living life. You should perhaps try it some time, and then let me know how it goes. On Facebook. With hashtags. Asshole.

This isn’t good at all. BSU clocked in at $21,129,858 in a revenue stream, good for 107th of the schools USAToday obtained. Some big name programs in front of the Cards include the mighty FCS Montana State Fighting Bobcats (100th) and the FCS California-Davis Ags (90th). There’s a handful of D1 basketball programs with FCS football teams on the list ahead of BSU, but those are the two I noticed first before I just wanted to sit in a corner with my Bonzi Wells jersey and cry. Those tears almost became reality when I saw that Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, and Alabama combined for over HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in revenue. That’s a significant amount of money folks and eye-pop worthy until you consider what it took to make that money.

Those five programs also spent over HALF A BILLION DOLLARS as well. Welcome to the new arms race, folks. The kind where you can’t be considered an elite program unless you have platinum robots designed to clean up the urine splashed around the locker room toilets which also happen to be platinum. And dipped in diamonds. Ball State, they of non-diamond-encrusted dookie receptacles, came in at 111th on the expenses side with a respectable $20.2M outlay in athletic expenditures. Let’s see… simple math… carry the one…. square root of the tangent… find the hypotenuse…. PROFIT, BABY! Not quite.

The interesting thing about this article to me is not the expenses and revenues, though both are equally fascinating in the college athletics sword fight that seems to be going on (which Ralph Friedgen always loses thanks to simple physical science). The interesting thing is the amount of institutional subsidy that takes place. In BSU’s case, $14.5M is an institutional subsidy, which accounts for 68.5% of the revenue. Granted, not a lot of money in both dollars and cents and percentage, especially when compared with $32.5M institutional subsidy from UNLV or the nearly $28M in institutional subsidy from Rutgers. EMU appears to be the leader in terms of FBS programs with institutional subsidy percentage at 83.6%. MACtion indeed.

For the masochists among us, Indiana and Purdue both made over $70M in revenue, Purdue had no institutional subsidy, and IU had a small one (just over 3%). Notre Dame wasn’t listed because presumably they are a private school and exempt from reporting, but I’m sure it was a gajillion dollars and they spent less than that. NBC money for days.

The BSU historical revenue stream (click to embiggen):

“What does all this tell us, Alan!?!” you wonder aloud to yourself. First and foremost, that us versus them that the non-BCS schools harp on? That’s real, yo. And significant. Washington State at 59th seems to be the lowest-spending power 6 member, and that was nearly double what BSU spent. On the bright side, ticket sales were way up! Yay! Plus, school funds were the lowest used since 2008. Double Yay!

You can check out all of the figures for all of the schools here.

Capturing the Derby and retelling an experience in long form journalism is nearly impossible to do. Look around this site for proof that most try and fail. Hunter S. Thompson, however, managed to do that and created an entirely new genre of journalism in the process. Thompson may not have set out to cement himself as a counter cultural icon and christen the genre of “Gonzo Journalism” in his retelling of his 1970 Derby experience but that is precisely what happened. Thompson would go on to craft the epic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and other assorted works, all with the unique and self-created Gonzo style where the storyteller himself is the central tenet of the experience. And while the unrest and crowd debauchery may have shifted, some central themes of this particular encapsulation are still prominent some 43 years later.

Thompson’s The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved is after the jump, but be warned. Some coarse language follows.

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

Written under duress by Hunter S. Thompson
Sketched with eyebrow pencil and lipstick by Ralph Steadman

The following essay was originally published in Scanlan’s Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970.

I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands…big grins and a whoop here and there: “By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good…and I mean it!”

In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other–”but just call me Jimbo”–and he was here to get it on. “I’m ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?” I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw…what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He grinned and winked at the bartender. “Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey…”

I shrugged. “Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice.” Jimbo nodded his approval.

“Look.” He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. “I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I’ve learned–this is no town to be giving people the impression you’re some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they’ll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have.”

I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. “Say,” he said, “you look like you might be in the horse business…am I right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”

“Oh yeah?” He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. “Is that what you got there–cameras? Who you work for?”

“Playboy,” I said.

He laughed. “Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of—nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you’ll be workin’ pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That’s a race just for fillies.” He was laughing wildly. “Hell yes! And they’ll all be nekkid too!”

I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. “There’s going to be trouble,” I said. “My assignment is to take pictures of the riot.”

“What riot?”

I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. “At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers.” I stared at him again. “Don’t you read the newspapers?”

The grin on his face had collapsed. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Well…maybe I shouldn’t be telling you…” I shrugged. “But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They’ve warned us–all the press and photographers–to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting…”

“No!” he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. “Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!” He kept shaking his head. “No! Jesus! That’s almost too bad to believe!” Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. “Why? Why here? Don’t they respect anything?”

I shrugged again. “It’s not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country–to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They’ll be dressed like everybody else. You know–coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts…well, that’s why the cops are so worried.”

He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: “Oh…Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?”

“Not here,” I said, picking up my bag. “Thanks for the drink…and good luck.”

He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: “Nixon Sends GI’s into Cambodia to Hit Reds”… “B-52′s Raid, then 20,000 GI’s Advance 20 Miles”…”4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest.” At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her “stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom.” The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of “student unrest.” There was no mention of any trouble brewing at a university in Ohio called Kent State.

I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn’t have any. “You can’t rent one anywhere,” he assured me. “Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks.” I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?”

I shrugged. “Where’s the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people.”

He sighed. “My friend, you’re in trouble. This town is flat full.Always is, for the Derby.”

I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: “Look, I’m from Playboy. How would you like a job?”

He backed off quickly. “What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?”

“Never mind,” I said. “You just blew it.” I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it–SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing–and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says “Photog. Playboy Mag.” I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. “Never mention Playboy until you’re sure they’ve seen this thing first,” he said. “Then, when you see them notice it, that’s the time to strike. They’ll go belly up every time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”

Well…maybe so. I’d used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger’s brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Hell yes, I’m from Texas,” deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable “tradition.” Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn’t missed a Derby since 1954. “The little lady won’t come anymore,” he said. “She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say ‘loose’ I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin’ out of style! Horses, whiskey, women…shit, there’s women in this town that’ll do
anything for money.”

Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, “If I had any money I’d invest it in the stock market.” And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.

**********

The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no press credentials and–according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal–no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I’d rented from a used-car salesman named Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.

Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan’s was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. “Hell, you can’t be serious,” he said. “The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there’s no more room…and what the hell is Scanlan’s Monthly anyway?”

I uttered a painful groan. “Didn’t the London office call you? They’re flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He’s Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set.”

He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.

“That sounds a little weird,” I said. “It’s unacceptable. We must have access to everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don’t think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we’ll get inside. Maybe we’ll have to bribe a guard–or even Mace somebody.” (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor’s box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good…)

By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he’d changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning–demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.

The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar looking; when I mentioned Steadman’s name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, “You bet he did.” Then she favored me with a big smile. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?”

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to be working with him, but I don’t even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I’ll have to find him in the mob at the track.”

She chuckled. “You won’t have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him? What does he look like?”

“Well…” she said, still grinning, “he’s the funniest looking thing I’ve seen in a long time. He has this…ah…this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it’s all over his head.” She nodded. “You’ll know him when you see him; don’t worry about that.”

Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan’s press packet. Well…what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn’t think we’re abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, “Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!”

**********

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.

But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman’s description and he seemed puzzled. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “Just keep in mind for the next few days that we’re in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You’re lucky that mental defective at the motel didn’t jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.” I laughed, but he looked worried.

“Just pretend you’re visiting a huge outdoor loony bin,” I said. “If the inmates get out of control we’ll soak them down with Mace.” I showed him the can of “Chemical Billy,” resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management’s Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. “I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works.”

By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections “F&G”…and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in “G,” along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we’d be legal in a box in “G” where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby’s special vibrations.

The bars and dining rooms are also in “F&G,” and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that’s what they’re in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.

Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the “walkaround” press passes to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back,that didn’t leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.

**********

Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I’d been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. “That whole thing,” I said, “will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It’s a fantastic scene– thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We’ll have to spend some time out there, but it’s hard to move around, too many bodies.”

“Is it safe out there?” Will we ever come back?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll just have to be careful not to step on anybody’s stomach and start a fight.” I shrugged. “Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they’ll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races.The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It’s hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up.”

He looked so nervous that I laughed. “I’m just kidding,” I said. “Don’t worry. At the first hint of trouble I’ll start pumping this ‘Chemical Billy’ into the crowd.”

He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn’t seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry–a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient–to the parents–than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. (“Goddam, did you hear about Smitty’s daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!”)

So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.

On our way back to the motel after Friday’s races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we’d have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. “You should keep in mind,” I said, “that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all.” He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.

Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South, England–just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.

Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into–then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who’d seen or even heard about his work. He couldn’t understand it. “It’s sort of a joke,” he kept saying. “Why, in England it’s quite normal. People don’t take offense. They understand that I’m just putting them on a bit.”

“Fuck England,” I said. “This is Middle America. These people regard what you’re doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off.”

Steadman shook his head sadly. “But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort.”

“Look, Ralph,” I said. “Let’s not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly.” I shrugged. “Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?”

“I thought it was because of the Mace,” he said.

“What Mace?”

He grinned. “When you shot it at the headwaiter, don’t you remember?”

“Hell, that was nothing,” I said. “I missed him…and we were leaving, anyway.”

“But it got all over us,” he said. “The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn’t see to draw when we got back to the motel.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The stuff got on her leg, didn’t it?”

“She was angry,” he said.

“Yeah…well, okay…Let’s just figure we fucked up about equally on that one,” I said. “But from now on let’s try to be careful when we’re around people I know. You won’t sketch them and I won’t Mace them. We’ll just try to relax and get drunk.”

“Right,” he said. “We’ll go native.”

**********

It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village. Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn’t handle it anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the “darkies” in the kitchen.

Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I preferred the “French toast,” which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.

Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on–almost from the very moment we started out to the track–we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.

But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:

**********

Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness…But no. By noon the sun burns through–perfect day, not even humid.

Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.

Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people’s front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. “That’s fine, boy, never mind the tulips.” Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.

Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks…black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.

The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. “Why do they have those clubs?”

“Black Panthers,” I said. Then I remembered good old “Jimbo” at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League…they were all turned away. “Move on, fella, make way for the working press.” We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.

**********

Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. “Mayblossom Senility” (Steadman’s phrase)…burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?

The grim reaper comes early in this league…banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he’s the one who’s screaming. Bad DT’s and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.

Yale? Did you see today’s paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers…I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.

I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a table not far away. “Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!” he whispered. “Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!” I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was sketching. The face he’d picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him “Cat Man.”

But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn’t have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day…fat slanted eyes and a pimp’s smile, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge…

Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn’t sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men’s rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. “They’ll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits,” I said. “But watch the shoes, that’s the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.”

In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.

The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I’d warned him about had happened so far–no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks–he shrugged and said, “Right, let’s do it.”

To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. “God almighty!” Steadman muttered. “This is a…Jesus!” He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.

**********

Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track…nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.

Old blacks arguing about bets; “Hold on there, I’ll handle this” (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, “Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail.” Thousands of teen-agers, group singing “Let the Sun Shine In,” ten soldiers guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.

No booze sold out here, too dangerous…no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach… Woodstock… many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.

**********

We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing “My Old Kentucky Home,” Steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice screeched, “Turn around, you hairy freak!” The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12- power glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph’s choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.

Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day’s Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he’d “bagged a record tiger.” The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann’s glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was “retired contractor.” And then he added, with a big grin, “I just retired.”

The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can’t bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he’d been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis.

**********

Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. “What the fuck do you want?” I shouted.

“What about having breakfast?” he said.

I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn’t cope with the chain! The thing wouldn’t come out of the track–so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn’t blink. “Bad luck,” he muttered.

I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. “Christ,” I said. “You’re getting out of control.”

He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. “You know, this is really awful,” he said finally. “I must get out of this place…” he shook his head nervously. “The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him–a model for that one special face we’d been looking for. There he was, by God–a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature…like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother’s family photo album. It was the face we’d been looking for–and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible…

“Maybe I should sleep a while longer,” I said. “Why don’t you go on over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour.”

He shook his head. “No…no…I think I’ll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while.” He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. “I tried to work earlier,” he said, “but my hands kept trembling…It’s teddible, teddible.”

“You’ve got to stop this drinking,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better…”

“Not for long,” I said. “You’ll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT’s tonight–probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They’ll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to The Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until you straighten out.”

He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later–after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart–we had our last meal at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher’s offal, fried in heavy grease.

By this time Ralph wouldn’t order coffee; he kept asking for more water. “It’s the only thing they have that’s fit for human consumption,” he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he’d caught the proper spirit of the thing…but we couldn’t make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he’d drawn. “Shit,” I said. “We both look worse than anything you’ve drawn here.” He smiled. “You know–I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that…and now, you know what? It’s us…”

**********

Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.

A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he’s been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger’s side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: “Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren’t sick I’d kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green—you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you…We can do without your kind in Kentucky.”

Quick, auction off this jersey while it is still worth something!

Is this is the summit for the Mid-American Conference football? Hard to argue against it.

In the past year we’ve had a MAC team play in a BCS game.

In the past week we’ve had a MAC player drafted No. 1 overall.

Granted, this was a weak draft class. Granted, Erik Fisher plays the prestigious position known as offensive tackle. It still counts baby. So much so Central Michigan is literally trying to cash in on all things Eric Fisher.

We could go into how improbable Fisher’s selection is. Such as if he is so good how did Central Michigan lose to Ball State the last three seasons? A Ball State team that scored zero selections in the draft.

Let’s not be bitter. Instead celebrate that someone in our back burner conference could get the attention of scouts so well. MAC football matters right now. As we know that has rarely been the case.

Heck, in the last few years I agreed with critics that the MAC might be better off playing FCS ball. Financially that still might be the case. However the college landscape has changed so much over the last couple of years the MAC is in a great spot.

The Big East (or American Athletic) has been reduced to a corpse not worth joining anymore. Conference USA is a mixed bag of schools that makes no sense. The WAC is gone and the Sun Belt is begging for FCS schools to come in.

The MAC’s greatest advantage has turned out to be their location. The Great Lakes blueprint has kept it stable in the conference expansion talks. The Big Ten is not going to add a MAC school because it has the TV market. Other conferences don’t have any teams in the region to attract a defection. Joining Conference USA or the Mountain West is not worth the added travel expense. Same for the remains of the Big East.

The only scare to the MAC now is the idea of the Big 12 raiding Northern Illinois. If the Huskies keep winning and going to BCS games it could be possible? If West Virginia is not too far away to play in the Big 12 then a MAC school could feasibly do it too. Maybe the ACC tries to get into the Cleveland and Detroit markets? Both seem unlikely but so was Syracuse moving to the ACC five years ago.

The MAC is one of the most stable and cohesive conferences left in FBS. Only the SEC and PAC-12 are ahead in my book. Big Ten fans are not pumped about Rutgers and Maryland coming to town. Only college presidents are.

So UMass, still want into the whatever is left of the Big East?

If Ball State A.D. Bill Scholl hires a coach during the Final Four does it make a sound?

Ball State has a new basketball coach. You may not know this because the athletic department made the mistake of announcing this move on the Saturday afternoon of Final Four weekend. The news of James Whitford coming to Muncie was buried on local stations and pushed to page three of the Indianapolis Star.

Even worse it will take four days from the announcement for the welcoming press conference and by then no one will care anymore. I guess making a splash was not what the athletic department and Bill Scholl was looking for. Let’s face it, the last time Ball State landed a big name and created buzz was Ronny Thompson. The welcoming press conference became the pinnacle of his coaching stay as the program nosedived into a volcano over the next year.

Given that flashback maybe it’s a good thing there is not much hype about Whitford. There was little hype about Pete Lembo and Brady Sallee and that has not been much of a problem.

However, there are two concerns that can be seen from quick observation.

1. Hiring a man who has never been a head coach before is a risk as NCAA regulations may not be verbatim quite yet. Minor things such as what dates a coach can talk to a recruit can be easier to mess up the first time around. There were candidates out there with head coaching experience making the selection of Whitford interesting.

2. The second concern being the fact Whitford could have taken other head coaching jobs in the past but chose not to. The most alarming being Miami University. In terms of the college basketball landscape there is little difference between Miami U and your Ball State Cardinals. Whitford was an assistant for Miami making it strange he would shoot down a job that would appear to be a good fit only to take a position at the school’s rival. Both schools have relatively the same tradition and the same recruiting bases. It just does not make any sense.

So for now I’m excited about the hire as it’s a clean slate for Ball State basketball. Whitford will face more pressure in his first year than Billy Taylor did but the program will start from a better place too.

A big press conference Wednesday can be a good start. Because right now, no one outside Delaware County seems to know Ball State basketball exists.

It’s time. In the words of Michael Buffer, let’s get ready to rumble. We’ve seen our field of 68 BSU alums and friends of the institution come down to two remaining titans. In an ironic twist of fate, one semi-finalist works in the building named for the other. Dave Letterman, late night kingpin, CBS heavyweight, BSU alum takes on Chris Taylor, BSU instructor, notorious sports production expert, and one of the most popular and well-connected people on campus. It’s a CardMadness showdown that’s fitting and appropriate for this our inaugural edition.

Letterman as a 1-seed made his way to the finals by besting the likes of Miss USA contestants, Hollywood celebrities, Garfield’s creator, and one of the best punters to ever grace the appropriately-named Punter U of BSU. Taylor had to advance as a 9-seed over two former football coaches, a 1-seed former President, an upstart former basketball coach, and the namesake of Scotty’s Brewhouse. The competition that led these two titans of Cardinal-dom to the Championship Game is almost as impressive as they are.

Because of our late start this morning, we are going to audible a bit. Polling will be open until 9am Friday morning where our champion will be crowned. Get it on, got to get it on, no choice but to get it on. Mandate… get it on.

We’ve seen social media play a huge role in this tournament. It was nearly responsible for an epic first-round upset of #1 overall seed David Letterman as 16-seed and play-in game winner Bridget Bobel lost a heartbreakingly close contest and two double-digit seeeds advanced to the Elite 8 and one to the Final 4. The moral of that story is anyone is capable of winning this thing with the right amount of fanfare. Facebook it, Tweet it, email it, whatever you need to do to make people aware that your favorite needs their support.

Today, we decide who joins the aforementioned first half of the Final 4. You can check out round 1 results here and here, our round 2 results here and here, Sweet 16 results here as well as our regional finals here and here, and our most updated bracket here.

Need a refresher on what Card Madness is all about? Click here. Need a bracket breakdown for the 4 different regionals? Check out the Charlie Cardinal Athletics Regional here, the Emens Entertainment Regional here, the Beneficence Campus Admin Regional here, and the Frog Baby “Other” Regional here. Ready to read about our competitors and vote? More after the jump…

CARD MADNESS SEMI-FINAL VOTING

SEMI FINAL #1
(1) David Letterman vs. (10) Chris Miller
In what has become an age-old battle, a Hollywood legend takes on an athletic champion. Overall top-seed David Letterman really needs no introduction, does he? He is the former 12:30am talk show host on NBC, the current 11:30pm talk show host on CBS, and is the namesake of the telecommunications and media building on campus. Arguably no other alum is more visible, vocal, and known than David Letterman. Dave defeated 16-seed Bridget Bobel in a significantly closer than expected round 1 match 57%-43%, defeated 8-seed Scott Halberstadt 87%-13% in round 2, beat 4-seed Joyce DeWitt 79%-21% in round 3, and earned his spot in the Final 4 by defeating 2-seed Jim Davis 78%-22% in the Emens Entertainment Regional Final. 10-seed Chris Miller was the punter of record for 2008 which gets a bit of a bonus with the Cards knocking on the BCS door and all. Miller was also a Playboy Preseason All American and a 2-time coaches All American while in school. He also broke the aforementioned record held by Maynard and is BSU’s and the MAC’s all-time leading punt average record holder at 44.7, ranking top 5 all-time in the NCAA. Miller upset 7-seed Greg Garnica 81%-19% in round 1, upset 2-seed Blaine Bishop 71%-29% in round 2, upset 3-seed Brad Maynard 64%-36% in round 3, and earned his Final 4 berth by upsetting top-seeded Bonzi Wells 79%-21%.

SEMI FINAL #2
(3) Scott Wise vs. (9) Chris Taylor
3-seed Scott Wise, or more affectionately known as “Scotty” is making a name for himself throughout the state of Indiana as an entrepreneur and business-owner. The man behind Scotty’s Brewhouse in Muncie has taken his concept throughout the Hoosier state as there is a Brewhouse in West Lafayette, Bloomington, Muncie, three in Indianapolis, and coming soon to Mishawaka. He also opened Three Wise Men brewing company and restaurant in Indianapolis and has become a sought after motivational speaker. Wise defeated 14-seed Sam Smith 93%-7% in round 1, 6-seed Angela Ahrendts 68%-32% in round 2, Mark “Hot Dog Man” Carter 59%-41% in round 3, and earned his Final 4 berth by beating Papa John Schnatter 71%-29% and becoming the Frog Baby “Other” Regional champion. 9-seed Chris Taylor currently oversees Ball State’s nationally renowned SportsLink program that is the one of the best in immersion programs for communication. Taylor’s work has allowed the students’ work to appear on national broadcasts through Fox and ESPN. He’s also saw the program handle production duties for the NCAA Tournament and even the Olympics. And oh by the way, Taylor’s also a BSU alum. He defeated 8-seed Paul Schudel 79%-21% in round 1, beat 1-seed John Worthen 78%-22% in round 2, knocked off 4-seed Brady Hoke 63%-37% in round 3, and earned his Final 4 berth by beating Rick Majerus 75%-25% and becoming the Beneficence Campus Admin Regional champ.

Polls will be open until 8pm, and our winners will square off on Wednesday for our Card Madness Championship. Spread the word, support your favorite, vote away.