As you know, the NCAA men’s basketball championship game takes place tonight in Atlanta, pitting the Louisville Cardinals of the ACC Big East against TTUN from the B1G.
Can things be worse than a Michigan win tonight? Sure.With the Buckeyes not involved, many of you are no doubt apathetic and won’t be watching. Others of you will be tuning in and hoping the evening ends with the delicious tears of Wolverine fans.
And there’s a small, misguided portion of you that may even be hoping for a Michigan victory because it would give the Big Ten a major sports championship. If this is you, it is probable that you would make an excellent SEC fan.
What’s good for the conference might be good in some way for Ohio State, but cheering for Michigan is simply too steep a price to pay. Do Browns fans root for the Bengals when their team is out of the race? Do Bengals fans yell “yay AFC North!” (or even “yay AFC!”) when the Steelers win the Super Bowl? I think overwhelmingly not.
Whether Michigan wins or not, their fans will be insufferable in every way. This will, of course, be magnified a hundred fold if Trey Burke and company win it all. I mean, how can you tolerate a group of people cheering “Go Blue!” while their team runs up and down the court wearing those yellow highlighter uniforms?
But there are worse things than Michigan winning a national championship in basketball tonight. As a public service to you, the 11W reader, we present a partial list of those things:
Kidney Stones
Of the many things that can go wrong with the human body, kidney stones are one of the most awful. Having passed two in my life, I can attest to the excruciating pain associated with a stone’s movement from the kidney, through the ureter, into the bladder and eventually out through the urethra. That moment of passing a stone has been compared to childbirth, but at least with childbirth you know that something good will come of all the hurting. Not so with kidney stones.
According to WebMD (and everyone who has ever had a kidney stone):
The most common symptom is severe pain.
That sentence may seem obvious, but the words “severe pain” seem insufficient to truly explain what you’ll feel. Sometimes doctors ask you to rate your pain on a scale from 1 to 10. Kidney stones are somewhere around 23 on that scale.
One of the many forms of torture kidney stones can inflict is called renal colic. It can include any or all of these fun symptoms: nausea, vomiting, fever, blood or pus in the urine, and the always-enjoyable pain during urination.
The pain and suffering of kidney stones is far more terrible than a Michigan victory, although the symptoms generally don’t last as long. (They only seem never-ending.)
This is slightly less fun than a Wolverine championship.Being Ripped Apart by Zombies
One of the more gruesome (and awesome) scenes in AMC’s The Walking Dead occurs when Dale Horvath is attacked by a zombie in Season 2. Dale falls backward with the zombie on top of him. While he fights hard enough to keep the zombie from biting him, the walking dead man is able to dig its nails into the soft flesh of Dale’s belly, ripping his innards out in a fit of undead fury.
While this has never happened to me [/furiously knocks on wood], I can only surmise that it would be a tad worse than seeing Michigan fans happily celebrating a national championship. The pain would be incredible and even worse would be the knowledge that you’re not going to make it, even though you kept the cursed zombie from sinking his teeth into you.
I’m not sure it’s any better to actually be bitten, particularly the way T-Dog went down. I think I’d rather go out the way Captain Quint did in Jaws than the way T-Dog was eaten alive. The great white in Jaws would make much quicker work with its three rows of enormous, razor-sharp teeth. Zombie teeth are much smaller and duller and would take much longer to inflict their damage.
Speaking of smaller, duller things that inflict damage over a long period of time, did you know that Trey Burke was from Columbus and was not heavily recruited by Ohio State? You’d think the media would mention that.
The other part that’s worse about being ripped apart by zombies is that it would certainly mean that a zombie apocalypse had occurred, which also likely signifies that Ohio State sports are at an end for the foreseeable future. That's not good for us, my fellow Buckeyes.
Being Subjected to a Sofia the First Marathon
If you don’t have small children that watch a lot of Disney Junior, you are probably unaware of just how much this sucks. This could easily apply to almost any children’s show, and other good candidates are Gaspard and Lisa, Dora the Explorer, Max and Ruby, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and Go Diego Go!
Sofia the First Worst is particularly bad because of her shrill, high-pitched voice and creepy oversized eyes. Seriously, Sofia’s eyes are larger than those of every character on the show. I don’t know if elephantiasis of the eye is a real thing, but if it is, Sofia has it.
Not only is her voice annoying, but she’s always messing with the status quo of King Roland’s castle and generally making everyone else miserable until the end of the episode, when they suddenly all change their world views and applaud Sofia’s enlightened thinking — as if this ever happens in real life. Oh, and there are songs. They are as horrific as you’d expect.
Being subjected to obnoxious Michigan fans after a national title would be a soothing balm if you’d just endured six or seven straight hours of Sofia the First. Then again, no one can tell what a balm's gonna do. They're unpredictable.
Marginally worse than a TTUN title.Getting Eddard Stark’d
It’s bad enough to be beheaded, but what happened to Eddard Stark at King’s Landing near the end of Season 1 of Game of Thrones was worse than a simple be-Nedding.
The blade took only a split second to separate the Lord of Winterfell from his honorable and noble noggin. The buildup to such a horror was even worse. Not only did Stark await his doom with the full knowledge that his two young daughters were there to see it. But adding insult to injury is that he publicly admitted wrongs he never committed and renounced the truths he knew in a misguided attempt to improve his lot and spare his kids. It was the opposite of death before dishonor.
This would be like Jim Tressel being forced to publicly announce in front of Andy Groom and Jon Thoma that punting the football was a futile and stupid part of the game of football and should be abolished forthwith — and then to be refiresigtired (h/t Ramzy) anyway.
The Sun Becoming a Red Giant
It may not happen for about 7.59 billion years, but the sun becoming a red giant will certainly be worse than a Michigan national championship. Scientists may be split on whether or not the Earth would actually be consumed by such an event, but all agree that the planet would be uninhabitable.
A destroyed or uninhabitable Earth means a destroyed or uninhabitable Columbus. And that obviously eliminates the chance for a viable football game in the Shoe.
Even if Ohio State’s campus were airlifted (space lifted?) to another inhabitable planet, it wouldn’t be the same as playing in Columbus. A new, artificial Olentangy River (or Fauxlentangy) would have to be constructed. There would likely be no Adriatico’s Pizza on the new world and no Short North, Brewery District or German Village.
You’d need the entire city to be moved to the new world, like on Boston album covers. This seems impractical. But even so, would a crisp autumn day in the Shoe feel the same? I think not.
So even if Michigan wins tonight and the most obnoxious element of the Wolverine faithful becomes even more insufferable, just remember: things could be worse.
