If There Wasn't A Losing Team

...Shank would have nothing to tweet about:

Stayed up past midnight watching women's BB last night. Reason? UConn had COMPETITION. Huskies lose in OT. Showed class in a classic!

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 1, 2017

Familiar With The Subject At Hand

Question - should Shank really be lecturing others about class / the lack thereof?

Classy of Gino to finally pull starters up 80-51 w 1:50 left in national championship

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 6, 2016

Here's another question - why does Shank hate so many college basketball coaches?

Piling On

Once or twice a year, Shank will write (or tweet) something that makes him look like a jackass across the country, and he did just that with his tweet on Saturday, criticizing the UConn women's basketball team for the crime of being too good. In addition to the Deadspin post mentioned below, Jay Bilas and Holly Rowe went after Shank on the Dan Patrick Show this morning, the Hartford Courant took the obligatory Connecticut shot at him as well, and we have a local follow-up from CBS Boston.

Now here's the interesting part - Shank went on Toucher and Rich this morning to explain / defend the tweet and respond to UConn coach Gene Auriemma's comments. He wrote his column a few hours later. If you're brave enough to listen to the Toucher & Rich segment, you will note that nearly every thing he talked about wound up in his column. From that you can conclude that either he used that interview to write the column or his column was already written and he pretty much read from it to do the Toucher & Rich segment.

Now that's how you recycle, folks!

Foot In Mouth Again?

Not content with a mere tweet about the UConn women's basketball team kicking ass and taking names, the Grandmaster Troll of the Boston Globe bangs out a column about it, where he further expands on his 'thoughts'.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It’s not because they win championships every year. We love dynasties.

It’s not because they are female athletes. We love women’s sports.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Contradict yourself much?

It’s because they have no competition. It’s the margins of these victories. The defending champion University of Connecticut women’s basketball team is virtually never tested. They seem to win all their games by 40 points. This is not UConn’s fault, but it’s also not good for the promotion of women’s basketball as part of our national sports landscape.

Competition is why we watch sports. Who is going to win? Without that drama, sports would be no different from the theater, ballet, or symphony. The UConn women are so good they have stripped their sport of all drama and competition and made it similar to performance art.

This is good for the game?

Stolen from the comments section - "The average winning margin by UCLA during their streak was 23.5 and it was 30.3 in the 1970-71 season. The Oklahoma football team won 47 straight games from 1953-7 with an average margin of victory of 28. Obviously both of those streaks were bad for their sport."

That was it. I went to dinner and didn’t think much of it.

Whoa. Husky Nation was not happy. My Twitter feed and e-mail box were peppered with angry UConn fans.

Fortunately, I’m used to this.

Dan Shaughnessy - pissing off his readers since 1981!

Then, UConn's coach drops the hammer:

At least that’s what I thought before UConn coach Geno Auriemma returned fire Sunday.

“When Tiger [Woods] was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf,’’ said the coach. “Actually he did a lot for golf. He made everybody have to be a better golfer.

“We don’t appreciate people for how good they are and what a good job they do, we always have to compare it to something. It’s only in women’s basketball. It’s the only sport where that happens.’’

Then came the zinger: “There are a lot better writers than Dan Shaughnessy, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad for the game.’’

Good one, Geno. And so very true.
...
Sports don’t grow in popularity unless people watch them on TV, and I don’t know a lot of sports fans who enjoy 98-38 in a tournament game.

The Huskies have no competition. Sorry, but how can this be a good thing for women’s basketball?

I think a comparison can be made to professional cycling and soccer. Did cycling grow in popularity during the Greg LeMond / Lace Armstrong dominance in the Tour de France? I think it was marginal at best. Is soccer, the world's favorite sport, growing in popularity in the United States? I think a lot of people watch the World Cup, and that's about it.

It's pretty clear to me that Shank wrote this just to piss people off, even if he made some valid points. That's the mark of the Grandmaster Troll.

UPDATE AT 8:18 PM: This column, in conjunction with the obligatory Deadspin pile-on post, is definitely bringing a little more attention to women's basketball, isn't? Mission accomplished, Danny Boy!

UPDATE II, AT 8:25 PM: Stolen from the Deadspin post's comments section, Shank's case falls apart some more with the comparison to the UCLA teams under John Wooden:

"The numbers are nearly identical.

UCLA Undefeated Seasons: 4

UCONN Undefeated Seasons: 5

UCLA Longest winning streak: 88 Games

UCONN Longest Winning Streak: 90 Games

UCLA Titles Under Wooden: 10

UCONN Titles Under Auriemma: 10"

UPDATE III, AT 8:40 PM: OK, this Deadspin comment was just too good not to repeat here:

"On the one hand, this is yet another terrible take by Shaughnessy. On the other, he is producing remarkably regular bowel movements for a man his age."

Someone Forgot To Call Their Bookie

Looks like Shank missed his chance to make an easy $100 or so:

UConn Women beat Miss St. 98-38 in NCAA tourney. Hate to punish them for being great, but they are killing women's game. Watch? No thanks

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) March 26, 2016

Shank's Twitter followers were their usual supportive and understanding selves:

@Dan_Shaughnessy you punish us by not retiring

— Richard (@richardnh33) March 26, 2016

@Dan_Shaughnessy Did John Wooden kill his game?

— RMoore1999 (@RMoore1999) March 26, 2016

@TonySchnell @Dan_Shaughnessy if you had a daughter on the team, you would feel differently. Give these women the credit they deserve.

— Patty Murphy (@pmurph98) March 26, 2016

@Dan_Shaughnessy Yeah, it's about as fair as it was for those Russell teams with 8HOF players on the same team.

— Allan Ayers (@RareAyers) March 26, 2016

Shank Goes Provincial

Not exactly a stretch for Shank, but he latches onto UConn's Jim Calhoun as the Huskies make another Final Four appearance. I can picture Shank doing Kevin Garnett-like chest thumps when he's laying this out on the keyboard:

But Jim Calhoun belongs to Boston. And we take some pride when one of our guys keeps showing up in the Final Four.

Calhoun was born and raised in Braintree, Mass., just a few miles south of Boston. He was a three sport star at Braintree High, home of the Wamps. He earned a degree in sociology at American International College in Springfield. That's fitting because basketball was invented in Springfield and Springfield is home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, where Calhoun was enshrined in 2005.

Calhoun's first coaching job was at AIC. In 1971-72 he was back in the Bay State League, coaching against the Braintree Wamps for Dedham High. Then it was on to Northeastern University on Huntington Avenue in Boston.

Perhaps a bit over the top, but Shank does indeed like Calhoun, which ran counter to my initial reaction to this column, that Shank was just shamelessly jumping on yet another bandwagon...

What? No Blue Christmas?

Not content to write yet another meandering picked up pieces column, he even manages to choose weak Christmas music:

Picked up pieces while listening to Mitch Miller Christmas carols . . .

How can you not pick The King?

What follows from the dreadful opening sentence is the fruitcake of sports opinion columns. Feel free to regift this one!

Another Picked Up Pieces Column

Shank treats us to the columnist's version of the mulligan. There are a few interesting tidbits, but it's more accurate to describe this particular column as 'something written after a Super Bowl hangover', including shots at Bill Belichick, Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Garnett, and, yes, there's an Elvis sighting.

One nitpick - it's 'Baba O'Riley'. At least he didn't call it 'Teenage Wasteland'. Nice editing job, guys...

Shank Logic: New England Only Extends to Rt. 128

Dan's in Minneapolis ostensibly to cover the Boston College Eagles' post-season efforts in the NCAA tournament (one-and-out, as it turns out).

Since his March 20th piece wasn't time stamped, there's no telling when Dan filed his column, but it wasn't posted to Boston.com Friday morning ... or maybe the Globe techies collectively lurking in their mothers' basements figured out a way to prevent me from accessing it in a timely manner here in Atlanta.

Be that as it may, Dan returns to his hackneyed ways with a trip down memory lane, invoking a variety of cultural icons and limiting the boundaries of New England to the 128 beltway. Then, in inimitable Shank fashion, he contradicts the basic premise of his story and proceeds to briefly outline the March Madness experiences of other men's hoop programs that -- technically, I guess -- exist in other parts of New England.

He begins, "Without the Eagles, New England would not be involved in an annual nationwide sports festival that has grown to monstrous proportions."

Huh?

After invoking the names of Forrest Gump and his sidekick, Bubba, he then morphs into extolling the tourney's popularity by trotting out "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars," mentions the president (of the U.S., not of BC), and lamented the fact that "nobody noticed" BC's No. 2 ranking in college football in 2007, because we all were hung over from the Red Sox World Series victory and caught up in the Patriots' march to 18-0.

Writes Dan, "New England's history in the NCAA basketball tourney is ancient and rare." Uh, last time I checked, Connecticut is actually considered a New England state ... and I seem to recall a couple of latter day NCAA championships trolled in by the UConn men from Storrs.

Combine that minor fact with this next Dannism, "This is BC's 10th NCAA Tournament appearance since 1994." Hardly ancient history, Danny Boy.

The Shankster also delivers this gem, "As every Worcester schoolchild knows, Holy Cross won the thing back in the day when Bob Cousy was a freshman on Mount St. James (1947)." Dan, perhaps you spent four years at Holy Cross, but you obviously never ventured off campus. Having spent the bulk of the Eighties living and working in Worcester, I know that 99 percent of the schoolchildren in that city only know that the Holy Cross campus is just on the other side of I-290. Trust me, the Crusaders' foray into the stratospheric regions of the NCAA tournament in the late 1940s isn't a staple of the Worcester school system.

So, what are we left with? Just another meandering column that Dan slapped together without doing any footwork. In other words, back to one of the trickster's basic templates. And they pay him to do this. Shame, shame.