Over The Pylon

I will freely admit that the large majority of my college Monday nights were spent watching half naked dudes roll around on a canvas while thousands lived and died along with them. No, I wasn’t partying at the Delt house. It was wrasslin’! Not wrestling, mind you. Wrestling of the properly spelled variety is an Olympic sport, dominated by Eastern Europeans and frankly makes the thought of watching paint dry sound appealing. I’m talking about wrasslin’!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon of wrasslin’, allow me to explain. Take 20,000 of your closest friends, preferably of a southern persuasion with limited tolerance for non-WASPy type things and cram them around an elevated square with foam wrapped elevator cables connecting the four corers and you have a good start. Let’s throw in a heaping helping of libations, most likely cheap domestic American beer (bonus points if there is “Milwaukee” or “Natural” in the name or is casually referred to as “Diesel”) and we’re almost there. You just need one person to walk out, insult the city you’re in, the friends surrounding the ring, and extol their own physical prowess, skill in the bedroom, etc. Have another friend walk out and interrupt them, claim to be better at all of it, compliment the city and fans, then hit the first person with a chair/table/bell/tv monitor, and you have yourself a wrasslin’ match, ladies and gents.

So as this will be our last preseason post before we move to a gameweek rotation, I thought it appropriate to go a little off the grid and do some comparing. Much like our game week look alike posts (the one that spawned the upside down mop phenomenon) these comparisons could be visual. They could be personality. They could be a whole host of things. Hell, in Coach Lembo’s case, he even told us who his favorite wrestler was. Which, incidentally, has to take the prize as the strangest question he received in his first few weeks as head coach. We’ll save Lembo for last. Off we go…
Morry Mannies: Ball State’s legendary voice at the mic means only one thing. JR. If you’ve watched wrestling in the past decade or so, Jim Ross was the soundtrack to the awesome times, ladder matches, and “I Quit” matches that colored my collegiate Monday nights. Ole JR was the rocksteady beacon in an uncertain world much like Morry was in the Lynch and Parrish years and the narrator for the high times of Degeneration X and the Rock and Sock Connection much like Morry’s 2008 campaign. We didn’t care that he mispronounced things, never gave the score, or went off on wild tangents, and for that, we thank him.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the gold mine that is Jim Ross, take a listen.

Plus you get to hear the wonderfulness that is Jerry “The King” Lawler, who if pressed I would say is our very own Jeffrey “The King” Weller.

Bill Scholl: The head man in charge of the athletic department, though a new and a relative unknown when it comes to personality and its accompanying quirks.  And it’s quite the badge of honor to finally get referenced in a parody post from OTP. That means you’ve arrived in the scope of BSU athletics. However unknown and despite the lack of fun poked, in the ship that is the SS BSU Athletics, Scholl is the captain. Or the CEO if you will. And personally, whenever I think of CEO, I think of Mr. McMahon. One thing I secretly pray about is that as Scholl walks to the Scheu, he does it with the shoulder shake and purpose that Vince walks with. Whether Scholl has the swagger, confidence, and power of Vince or not remains to be seen, but one can only hope if he ever has to fire someone, he does it with the gravel in the windpipe that McMahon apparently gargles with.

Donovan Jarrett: Low hanging fruit? Perhaps. But Donovan Jarrett according to the BSU roster is the most dense of all. Clocking in at 327 pounds, he’s the space eater to eat all space eaters, similar to Mark Henry. Though Henry isn’t the name brand wrassler like The Rock or Hogan, he had a niche in the WWE, much the same way we’re hoping that Jarrett will this year as the anchor of a Cardinal defense that may very well hold the key to whether or not this season is ultimately a successful one.

Brady Hoke: For the HokeManBeast, this was a challenging one. While a current head man at UM, Hoke will always be a part of the Cardinal family as he showed last year when he checked out his nephew in the spring game in Muncie so he certainly fits for this post. The challenging thing is who exactly to cast him as. Hoke was a tireless worker, fierce when needed, but also caring and kind when the situation dictated it. At his most basic root, Hoke was the true dichotomy. Much like who we have cast as Hoke…Mick Foley! Foley was known for his wildness and fearlessness. But in true dichotomous fashion, he also showed his soft side and gave us all perhaps the best highlight of Raw ever with kind of a very similar voice to Brady’s.

Sean Baker: Does the Soul Eater really warrant anything other than The Undertaker? And not weird motorcycle riding Undertaker. I’m talking embalming, casket rolling, spooky as hell Undertaker.

Jo Ann Gora: MUST. NOT. MAKE. CHYNA. JOKE.

Pete Lembo: I found this one to be the most challenging. When Lembo was first hired, the athletics staff asked people to tweet in questions for the new head man. Of course being the blogtastic beacons of randomness that we are, we asked about music, wrestling, and who he would want to play him in a movie. I will say that his choice of Robert Deniro was a missed opportunity. The casting call for cinematic Pete starts and stops with Jon Lovitz. His music choice? The Doors. Not The Who or Zep, but I’ll allow it. His wrestling favorite though caught me by surprise. Pete?

Don Muraco, you say? Admittedly, that was before my time, but through the glory of YouTube I was able to find some footage of Don “The Magnificent”. And anyone who wrestles while eating a meatball hoagie may be my favorite as well.

Someone get Pete a meatball sub pronto for chomps between series. If it worked for Muraco, I’m sure it can work for Pete “The Magnificent” Lembo. But I have to tell you, I think there’s a better comparison to be made. Lembo has done the marketing of six men, built the name of a program, and nearly single-handedly made a program relevant again and a part of something that many of us thought was going to be a challenge. Instead, Lembo has ingratiated himself to alumni, local businesses, and recruits and built some fire with a limited pool of resources. With marketing and success like that and the ability to spurn on a crowd, there’s one particular wrestler that comes to mind….

Here’s hoping Pete “The Magnificent” Lembo can help Eastern Michigan with some directions on how to shine that football up, turn that sumbitch sideways, and… well…. you know the rest.

4 Days.

Filed under: BallStateFootball |