Storming the Court

I'm in this crowd somewhere.



It was 2010, after the Badgers football team upset top-ranked Ohio State. Was it fun? You bet. Was it safe? Absolutely not.

When Kansas State's men's basketball team upset Kansas last night, they stormed the court. Jayhawks coach Bill Self gets it, but he wasn't thrilled.

Here are his comments, via WaPo:

“I wasn’t nervous for me,” Self said afterward. “There were several students that hit our players — not saying like with fists, but when you storm the court, you run in, you bump everybody, stuff like that. This has got to stop.

“Court storming is fine, but surely, you can get security to the point where player safety is not involved like it is over here. The last several times they’ve won, they’ve stormed the court on us. That’s disappointing that that happened again, but we also allowed it to happen again by not playing well. 

I agree with everything he said here. Especially with the bigger point about player safety. It's not a problem until it's a problem.

Oscars speeches

The Oscars telecast as a whole was pretty ho-hum, but there were a few acceptance speeches that really hit home for some people.

The sincerity of Best Actor winner Eddie Redmayne

The social statement on women's rights by Patricia Arquette

And my favorite, the weird, different speech by Graham Moore.

The acceptance speeches, for the most part, were spectacular. Often, they're the best part of the show. So why are we trying to play these people off? I understand the dangers of live TV, and working within time constraints and all that, but for many people, like Graham Moore, that was probably the best 5 minutes of his life. Why cut it short? Certainly there has got to be a better way than awkwardly playing orchestra music over the top of these speeches.

OSCARS

I don't really like awards ceremonies, but I like awards, if that makes sense.

I've seen Birdman and it's...interesting, but it wouldn't surprise me if it won best picture. It's apparently going to be a very close race.



What that all means is that this is historically close.

Read more here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-race-for-best-picture-is-among-the-closest-in-oscar-history/

Piggly Wiggly Bumper Cars

I know, we shouldn't be making fun of this poor old man but...come on.

The good news is that no one got hurt, right?

BRING IT ON: MINNESOTA

I'm disappointed I missed this yesterday, because this is the real highlight of the weekend.

There was apparently some controversy at the MSHSL state dance championships. HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS. DANCING. DRAMA.

No, it wasn't the Rancho County Toros. (PS - There must be some clovers in the atmosphere)

IT WAS RIGHT IN OUR BACKYARD.

Per Deadspin (and yes, DEADSPIN IS REPORTING ON HIGH SCHOOL DANCE)

Officials disqualified five Minnesota high school dance teams after their symbolic protest at the state finals over a rival team's alleged plagiarized championship routine in what was basically the exact plot from the classic and very great high school cheerleading movie, Bring It On.

The allegation is that the drill team from Utah's Copper Hills High performed an incredible routine last year which Faribault then plagiarized and performed this year. One theory is that Faribault ripped it directly from Copper Hills after seeing it on YouTube; another is that Austin High School, another Minnesota squad, saw Copper Hills's routine on YouTube, stole bits of it, and then performed a new routine in a competition earlier this season. In that very competition, Faribault performed after Austin, and were so taken with it that they jacked Austin's routine—which, of course, wasn't completely theirs to begin with.

The MSHSL investigated. And they found that no tomfoolery or shenanigans had occurred. 

After a review of the report from the school and a review of video and other information, there was complete consensus on the part of League staff and the Dance Team Rule Coordinators that a violation had not occurred.

Their outfits and makeup is terrifying. I hope this isn't the last we've heard of this story.

Wayne's World

I got sucked into the SNL 40th anniversary special last night, and I'm glad I did because it was spectacular.

You forget how good some of the sketches are, especially iconic stuff like Wayne's World.

Mike Myers and Dana Carvey have still got it.

Kanye is the worst.

Friday the 13th

I don't buy much into supersitions and Friday the 13th and bad luck, so I'm glad there's research to back me up.

Per Vox:

A more plausible hypothesis might be that Friday the 13th itself doesn't cause bad luck, but it does lead people to behave differently out of fear or anxiety, thereby causing things like accidents.

Subsequent studies, though, don't support this idea idea either.

While a Finnish study found that female drivers were more likely to get in accidents on the Friday the 13th, a subsequent follow-up found the correlation disappeared with better data and more controls. A German study similarly found that the number of accidents and errors that occur during hospital operations is pretty much the same on Friday the 13th as on other day