In Howard Stern's "Private Parts," there's a scene where Howard's programming director has given him a list of inappropriate words that he's no longer allowed to say on the radio. In order to get around this, Howard conducts a mock game show where he has contestants fill in the blank. The one I remember, for example, is Howard tells the callers that it's the sound a rooster makes and the phrase is "_____ a doodle do." It's hilarious.
There is nothing funnier than when you can find a tiny loophole that gets you around an annoying rule. Like when you found out you couldn't get in trouble for saying "ass," because it also means donkey.
If you are on the other side of the loophole, however, it can be the most annoying thing in the world. For instance, through a series of confusing salary cap loopholes, this summer the Miami Heat went from being completely out of the LeBron James sweepstakes to eventually winning. As a big Knicks fan, this was excruciating to watch. The Knicks had basically spent the past decade preparing for this summer, while the Miami Heat spent three weeks on it and ended up getting the three best free agents.
Knicks fans felt like the best friend who had put in all the effort and spent tons of time with a girl, only to have the new kid who just moved to town ask her to prom. We know Miami fans won't treat that team right either; they could care less about basketball and don't appreciate how lucky they are.
Now obviously that whole debacle happened months ago, so I should get over it. Due to an incident last week, however, I recently thought about all of this again. Last week, The Dartmouth, my own newspaper, chose to print my name in a story that portrayed my fraternity in a not-so-great light. It was like "Et tu, Brute?"
Feeling homeless and betrayed, I had an idea while watching SportsCenter that night. If LeBron James, who felt Cleveland betrayed him for not getting him another superstar, could figure out some contractual loopholes to create a Superteam somewhere else, why shouldn't I look at my contract to see if I could do the same?
Step one was obviously to read the fine print and figure out the exact wording of my contract. I needed to make sure I had a legal way out. This was pretty easy though, because, as it turns out, I don't have a contract.
Step two was to see what other free agents might also be looking for a new home so we could create a new Superteam. Luckily, I didn't have to look far. Kevin de Regt '11, the author of the online athlete blog, the Deregtorate, was also quite disgruntled. Despite lots of pressure from fans of his blog, he hasn't been able to get his column into physical print.
Thus the two of us decided to team up and look for a new paper to "take our talents to." First we checked out the Jack-O. Lots of history, owner of a great mascot and certainly a major player in on-campus journalism.
Next we looked at The Dartmouth Independent. Small-market team, our fraternity brother is the editor and since it's independent we were pretty sure that meant we could write whatever we wanted.
Finally, we checked out the Generic Good Morning Message. We liked the e-mail delivery system, we liked the variety of content and we were very impressed with new writer Alex Black '11.
Deciding where to go was a very tough decision. After much deliberating, and conversations with our respective moms, we knew what we had to do. We contacted ESPN about doing a "The Bigger Decision" one-hour special, but we're swiftly turned down. That was fine, but then DarTV shot us down too, which was pretty tough to swallow.
Unfazed, I'll just announce our "Big Decision" here. Next week we'll be taking our talents back to The Dartmouth. We're gonna finish where we started. Unlike LeBron, we a) are loyal b) aren't wimps and c) don't have to deal with any "Delonte West"-type rumors with other members of the paper. We're both excited about the decision and look forward to our futures with The Dartmouth.
Disclaimer: I didn't actually feel betrayed by The Dartmouth. You know how on "The Simpsons" they always make jokes about the Fox network? That's what this was supposed to be like. I never really considered leaving and made up pretty much the whole thing. Including the part about being impressed with Alex Black's work.
