50-48 #22: NOTES ON STOERNERING

(Originally published 3/2/08)

50-48 #22: TIMEOUT! NO, WAIT, NEVERMIND, or, I LOVE THE SMELL OF NELTNER IN THE MORNING. IT SMELLS LIKE (slow, contemplative stare off into the distance) VICTORY. (with bombs and everything; napalm. and then there will be a surfing contest—the deadened souls and avarice of men who have become comfortable with killing, or such is the way I interpreted it), or, NOTES ON STOERNERING

It is generally agreed upon, I believe, that the Razorback athletic program is ruled by a series all-powerful dark overlords who seek to crush our spirits in a grand scheme to lull us into buying discount retail products and chicken, chicken, chicken. The scenario generally runs something like this: ACT 1: The Hogs play well in the first half against an opponent with superior talent, thriving as it were on moxie and fan enthusiasm, feeding off of us as we hope to feed off of them, wishing desperately for our lives to be filled, fallaciously or not, through the simple stand-in of a group of youths in red scoring more points than a group of youths in, say, blue. ACT 2: Halftime. Snacks. Some of us piss. Some of us talk to our friends about good times or regrets or the big sale this afternoon on retail products and chicken. Perhaps we scratch ourselves in private places, glancing coolly around to make sure no one is watching. ACT 3: The Hogs begin to falter early in the second half, but play well enough to maintain a slight lead, though it becomes clear that they've lost whatever it was that made them so impressive in ACT 1. We, the audience, begin developing the tumors in our lower intestines that will one day metastasize and kill us. ACT 4: The Hogs collapse, as our intestines assured us they would. We, the audience, contemplate suicide, then quickly move on to murder. Then we head toward the exits, now combining our two early ideas into an elaborate murder-suicide plot that would finally fell the corporate giants who brought this indignation to our doorsteps in the first place. ACT 5: We, the audience, lose our nerve. Instead, we go buy retail products and chicken. THE END.

Well, wait right there, all you Shakespeare-typing monkeys! Yesterday's game against Vanderbilt might have officially given us a score of 78-73. But in reality, the score was HOG FANS 1, DARK OVERLORDS 0.

The Hogs managed to buck an all-too-familiar trend yesterday, as they rallied to stave off defeat, even as they faded down the stretch. It was not something they could do alone. Along with guts and heart and determination and blah, blah, blah, the Hogs had THIS YOUNG MAN, an LSU castaway who made a monumental error down the stretch. (We Razorback fans know this phenomenon as "Stoernering.") Ross Neltner called a timeout that Vanderbilt didn't have in the waning seconds of the game—a technical foul—giving Arkansas two shots and the ball, with which they secured a victory against the #14 team in the nation, who only four days prior had defeated the #1 team in the nation.

We can choose to look at this victory two ways—cosmically, of course; always cosmically. First, we can be grateful for the win, relieved that yet another big victory will probably squeak us into the NCAA tournament field, where we will inevitably Stoerner ourselves in the first round, then begin hunting for retail products and chicken. Second, we can lament this win as an example of what we could do if we could only shake the Stoerner from our systems. We can see the game as a monument to wasted opportunity. I choose the latter.

Want an example? Wednesday night, the Hogs managed to score 56 points to lowly Alabama's 59, in front of a crowd of sixteen (counting ushers and concession personnel) at Tuscaloosa's Coleman Coliseum. It was (to extend the Stoerner metaphor) one Tennessee fumble after another as the Hogs floundered their way to inevitable defeat. (As the familiar refrain of, "Fuck this. I'm going to Walmart," wafted through the night air all around the state, pleasing a group of crusty, stolid businessmen, smoking cigars in a darkened conference room somewhere beneath the earth in an underground lair in Bentonville.)

And so we drift between potential and simulacrum, forever losing our grasp on what the proper expectations for our team should be. It's as if someone came along and removed that chubby, curmudgeonly cat from the Garfield comic strips, creating an entirely new fictional universe where the would-be cat owner was instead a paranoid schizophrenic. It's value comes from its familiarity, but the meaning is completely different. (Yes, of course there's a link: ENJOY.)

If this trend is going to change, if we are going to continue to find success in the overwhelming face of historical defeat, then we are going to have to get pumped up. We are going to have to find a way to un-Stoerner ourselves. To forever rid us of the dark overlords raising and crushing our expectations all in a grand plot to send us out fetching retail products and chicken.

But never fear. As reported here at 50-48 last week, baseball can save us. The Diamond Hogs have won 2 of 3 since we last met, defeating Kansas in a mid-week game before traveling to College Station, Texas for a tournament. On Friday, young Aaron Murphree hit his second game-winning homerun of the season (this one in walk-off fashion) to defeat the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs 9-8. Yesterday, we took one on the chin, going down to the tournament hosts 15-7. Today we play Ohio State in the finale. The pitching faltered against A&M, but our pitching is young. It's far better that these growing pains happen now before conference play. That way, when it's time to take on Tennessee, we won't completely choke and fumble away a golden opportunity...(so to speak)

And while we're talking baseball, I'd like to announce that 50-48 will be represented at the Arkansas-LSU baseball series in Baton Rouge later this month. The presence of your narrator at the football and basketball contests in that den of iniquity has helped the boys in cardinal come away with victories both times. He is confident that his presence will do the same for the Diamond Hogs. He is also confident that his bleacher seats, combined with the drinking done on hot Southern spring afternoons, will probably lead to an ass-whipping of one kind or another. He assures you that such a potentiality will not keep him from insulting our corndog brethren. Nor will it stop him from screaming, "Go to hell, LSU," in the middle of the national anthem, just like Ole Miss fans taught him to do. He will not feel guilty about this, as it was his great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather who wrote that song in the first place. He considers it his birthright to modify it however he sees fit. Also, he will, whenever possible, continue to refer to himself in the third person, as it is giving him incalculable joy at this very moment. Now that he thinks about it, he might even give himself a nickname.

But no matter how many times he refers to himself in the third person, he still realizes that the joy it brings is temporary. Championships last forever. The Diamond Hogs are going to be fine. Hogball, however, is going to need a bit of un-Stoernering if they are going to reach the Sweet 16. (Remember, lo those many months ago, when we began the season ranked in the teens and we were a glam Sweet 16 pick? Ugh.) But we are on the right path. Thank you, Ross Neltner, wherever you are, not only for giving us a vicarious chance to beat LSU's ass again, but for putting us on the path to success. To redemption. To glory. To a new Act 4 in the flower of our basketball lives.

I'll leave it there for this week. I hear Walmart's having a sale on Tyson chicken...

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS