SPARKY AND THE RICK'S WEEKLY COLLEGE HOOPS COLUMN

Sparky and The Rick

This fall, Wagercom.com is proud to present a weekly in-depth look at the week’s biggest college hoops games. For years, Sparky and The Rick have been houseboys for Bea Arthur. As assistants to Cleveland State in the early 1980s, the two were responsible for recruiting and providing coke and strippers to the team’s top players. The Rick was dismissed in 1986 after evidence came out indicating that he had in fact said Michael Jordan was not ready for the next level and that Sam Bowie was a five tool player. Sparky, that same year was found sleeping in a strip club, where he had been in a semi-coma on a couch in the VIP lounge for four days. While The Rick continued to freelance scout for no money for the Clippers in the Mid-Con conference, Sparky’s lone venture into college hoops came when he was turned away from a Northwestern-Illinois game because he refused to give up the box of pop tarts he had shoved down his pants in 1998. After several years of pleading, Ms. Arthur came to the two’s rescue and encouraged them to put their combined talents to use and pick college basketball games. Here are their pre-season, major Division I college picks:

America East:

While Boston University is home to many a homely girl, it is the top team in a league rich with great coaches and terrible talent.

ACC:

Sigh, it’s Duke. We hate making this pick. And by hating this pick, we mean we really hate it—worse than the Fantastic Four movie that Sparky tried watching twice on a plane only to fall asleep fifteen minutes in. Sparky also recently made out with a female Duke graduate for four hours on the first date only to get the “Let’s be friends call” the following day, meaning all Duke graduates are idiots and should be shat on. But the team has both Shelden Williams and J.J. Redick, who happen to play ball good.

Big East:

UConn. We love this team even though we’ve never met anyone who’s actually gone to Uconn, Sparky thinks he might have tried to proposition an undercover agent near the Hartford Civic Center, but isn’t sure. Anyway, with a healthy Marcus Williams, the Conn walks away with the conference.

Big Ten:

Michigan State. According to The Rick, Maurice Ager is hung like Seabiscut, which, according to a movie, was a horse that saved the world from the Great Depression. Knowing The Rick’s, um, “love” of animals, Sparky thinks Ager and his enormous, um, assets will lead MSU to the league title.

Big 12:

Texas. Since Sparky is currently writing this column from downtown Dallas and is a distant relative of the Kennedys, we make this pick outta fear for his life. Also the team has the best frontline in the conference and Daniel Gibson at point.

Big West:

Pacific. We have no idea who plays for Pacific. Hell, we don’t even know where Pacific is. But they have won two straight division titles, and put money on a third.

Colonial League:

Old Dominion. Some book writer once described this conference as college basketball at its most pure. We read that book and almost convinced Sparky to go back to graduate school in political science, because it made him realize sports writing is all crap. Anyway O.D. has four starters back including 2005 player of the year Alex Loughton.

Conference USA:

Memphis. Man we’ve seen craps better than this conference. In fact, The Rick took a 10-minute crap and we compared it to what it would be like watching a conference game and realized the crap was better. While Memphis is a strong Elite 8 possibility, this conference lost four of its best teams to the Big East and added six more teams including Marshall. We didn’t know Randy Moss still had eligibility.

Mid-American:

Sparky grew up with this conference and would like to tell you there’s more to it than Gary Trent and Ron Harper. There’s good basketball here from top to bottom and it starts with A, as in Akron, which smells like ass and is home to the 7-medical school program every Indian kid in the state goes through because they’re not smart enough to go to a real school and then take the MCATs, but will tough it out for a tourney bid.

Missouri Valley:

Creighton. For all of you reading this at a junior college, presuming there is actual reading that goes on in junior colleges, welcome home. They should just have every team in the league adopt a jucco and have them play instead of having to go to the trouble of recruiting them.

Mountain West:

Air Force. Fisher DeBerry is right: there are fast black people. They just don’t happen to play for Air Force, where former Nuggets coach Jeff Bzelik runs the Princeton offense and, by doing so, has its cadets asleep usually with ten minutes left in the first quarter.

Pac-10:

UCLA. We tried, really tried to find a decent team in this league, but all The Rick could come up with was UCLA. Sparky tried telling him that it was not 1968, but apparently Jordan Farmer and Aaron Affalo are good enough to lead the Bruins in a down year out West.

SEC:

Kentucky. The Rick loves Tubby and in fact asked the UK Coach to adopt him and volunteered to wear diapers to re-enact the entire growing up process, but was rebuffed. Oh, be careful of ‘Bama.

WAC:

Nevada. We like this team not just because of the state’s lax laws on prostitution and in Sheri’s Cabaret, has the best strip club in America. This team also features center Nick Fazekas whose teammates have dominated the conference for the last four years.

WCC:

Gonzaga. According to Ms. Arthur, everyone else sucks.

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