The Jazzy Bahsoun

Life's our oyster and we're gonna suck that bitch down with a champagne chaser.

Behavioral Therapist
MA Developmental Psychology, Columbia
BS Psychobiology/ French, UCLA

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Movies to See:
Mission Impossible
Haywire
Shame
A Dangerous Method
Underworld:Awakening

TV Shows to Watch:
Portlandia
The Life & Times of Tim

Book to Read:
Game of Thrones
by George R.R. Martin

Album to Listen to:
The Black Keys
El Camino

Person to Hate:
Newt Gingrich

Group of People to Despise:
Fox & Friends

Bitchin Links

Blogs and Writers of Note

Mary's Website

Mary's Blog

Ravi's Blog

Lauren's Blog

Cheryl's LiveJournal

TV Squad

The Soup

Cracked

Best Week Ever

The Chive

On Location Vacations

Cute Overload

Michael Moore's Blog

Joel Stein Columns

Maureen Dowd Columns

Secular Coalition of America

Richard Dawkins

Personal Stuff

My Facebook

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My DVD Collection

My Books

Machatz Self-Defense

For Politics and Political Satire

The Huffington Post

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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Ain't It Cool News

IGN

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DVD Active

Movie Stinger

AdTunes

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HuffPost Comedy

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People of Walmart

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Strong Bad Email

Japander: See Actors Embarrass Themselves Abroad

Landover Baptist Church: Jesus Loves You Sometimes

For Bruins

The Daily Bruin

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Bruin Basketball Report

UCLA Bruin Marching Band: The Solid Gold Sound

The REAL $UC Application

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Monday, February 06, 2006
The Linguistics Bowl
It's the day after the Super Bowl so, naturally, the testosteroney (the San Francisco treat) energy flowing in me begs me to write something about sports today. It doesn't matter whether I could care less who won this year's Super Bowl or that it was really boring and predictable or that I just watched so I could have an excuse to have chips and salsa for lunch or that Mick Jagger totally creeps me out. Now for those of you worried that I'm going to talk stats or something like that (I couldn't if I wanted to), fear not, this post will haave at least some sort of complaining which may or may not be entertaining.

I didn't really get into sports until coming to UCLA. I would watch the Super Bowl every year, sure and the occasional Laker game, but I didn't really know any of the rules or intricacies of the sports. I wouldn't pay attention to the football games in highschool because I didn't know what the hell was going on most of the time. But, in college, since I started to attend every football game and a lot of basketball and volleyball games as a result of being in the band, I learned the bulk of the rules and could watch games with some understanding and be able to enjoy them more. I'm now pretty enthusiastic about college sports, as you may conclude from my inclusion of the UCLA basketball record and future games on my blog. With that said, I don't think football is a proper sport. Basketball is, and a really good one at that. But, I digress.

Football, to begin with, does not have a proper name. Football, as it's known in every other country in the world, is soccer, which makes sense. You're only allowed to use your foot to make the ball go. No hands are involved, for the most part. In American Football, the foot is used to kickoff at the beginning of the game and after scoring and to get extra points. That's why I move that football be known as something like tackleball or rushball or something else that makes more sense to the game. Second, the players shouldn't be allowed to wear all that padding. If they went out onto the field in jerseys and regular pants, then that would be a sport. Actually, I think that's called rugby.

Other sports have names that make sense. Baseball, basketball, dodgeball, volleyball (I guess), raquetball.... but other sports don't even involve the word "ball" which is confusing, I think. Golf. Where the hell did they come up with that name? Golf should be called puttball from now on. Or wimpball. Tennis. I enjoy tennis but the name makes no sense. Netball. Wackball. Those are all more catchy. Squash. That's just ridiculous. Isn't that one just raquetball but more dangerous? Raqball. Raquetdeathball. All better names. I think the involvement of a ball is what throws off the namers of sports. The sports that don't involve the use of balls (no pun intended) are pretty straight-forward names. Swimming, pole-vaulting, track, wrestling... Nascar is not a sport folks, not even close.

In any case, I guess my point is that the vernacular of sports just gets too complicated for the casual watcher to follow. I've gone to every damn football game at UCLA and a ton of basketball games over the past 3 years and still do not understand all the fouls and technicalities of the games. At some point, these sports have to be stripped down and simplified. If you Google the NCAA Basketball rules, for example, there is a manual online that is about 200 pages long. There is no need for there to be rulebooks that long for any sport. If any sport is that complicated that it needs an encyclopedia to be able to play, then that sport is not a sport. We have to start small, though, with the names. If we start small by changing the names of sports to make them more universal, then the rest will come. If not, then all we're left with is literature and nature. The horror, the horror.

Programming Note: I know the Olympics opening ceremony is this Friday and we all want to see how gay the designers have made it this year, but please, at least Tivo the 2-hour series finale of Arrested Development. I'm confident that Showtime will pick it up, but who knows when that'll be.
3:28 PM
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