4A
Wednesday, March 15, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: BIG 12 CONFERENCE
South should not rise again for conference tourney home
Just who's running this thing, anyway? After the Big Eight Conference tournament finals Sunday, talk once again turned to moving the tournament permanently out of Kansas City or initiating a rotating tourney site.
Much press has been devoted to the topic. Jonathan Rand, sports columnist for The Kansas City Star, demonstrated in a March 13 column why the tournament is special to the area. An editorial in a recent Lawrence Journal-World detailed some of the controversies surrounding the expansion of the league to the Big 12 in 1996.
But the issue isn't being forced by those in the Big Eight. Rather, the call to change the tournament site, to move the conference offices and perhaps to install the commissioner of the faltering Southwest Conference as the new Big 12 commissioner is drifting up from down south.
Should the Big 12 move to the Big D?
Representatives of the four Texas schools Texas, Baylor, Texas A & M and Texas Tech — seem to believe that Dallas should be the new Mecca for the conference. Get the tournament out of the cornfields. Bring the offices to a real city. Hire a real leader. Wait a minute, are we hearing you correctly?
First of all, Steve Hatchell, commissioner of the crumbling SWC, should be first in line to thank the Big Eight for salvaging the Texas schools from an uncertain fate. Instead, before the dust scarcely had settled from the Big 12 pact, he vowed to do everything in his power to yank the conference offices down to Dallas.
If this is done, the conference tournament may not be far behind.
This would be akin to the state of Kansas, upon being admitted to the union more than a century ago, asking to move the nation's capital from Washington to Topeka.
What gall.
With the issues of revenue sharing and huge television
Texas schools are out of line when they suggest moving the Big 12's finals from Kansas City to Dallas.
contracts for football and basketball on the table, how can the Texas schools justify any such move?
Big money on the table for the Big 12
The Big 12 has a five-year, $100 million contract with ABC for football slated to begin in 1996, and CBS has expressed a great deal of interest in acquiring the rights to the Big 12 basketball tournament championships. While the SWC has a fairly strong football history with Texas and Texas A & M, the Big Eight has the national champion, Nebraska, as well as perennial powerhouse Colorado.
The basketball question is a no-brainer. Has anyone even seen a SWC basketball game recently? The only show in the NCAA tournament is the conference champ Texas, seeded 11th in its region. The Big Eight has five teams in the dance, and the conference's Big Monday broadcasts on ESPN garnered the highest rating of any of the conferences.
Kansas City here we come
Oh, and did any of these Texans watch the NCAA tournament selection show? That was Kansas City, the NCAA national office. And yes, that was Bob Frederick, KU athletic director and chairman of the selection committee.
Any requests from Hatchell, Texas boosters, alumni and other representatives for the four Texas schools, to move the offices or the tournament, can only be chalked up to selfish arrogance. We Midwesters, amidst the wheat fields and corn crops, couldn't possibly have what it takes to run such a big conference, could we?
Yes, it's arrogance. It is that arrogance, however, that may take a foothold and cause irreparable damage if the Big Eight schools let it.
MATT GOWEN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
What's the word if she's more than a girl, not just a friend?
I consider myself a language slut. I go for words in a big way. I love their nuances and histories. In fact, I don't think I had my first erotic dream until Mom got me NFL sheets with all the teams written out in stylized script. I especially love words when they get together in groups: novels, poems, essays, and well, whatever. They run together, one line on top of another. Each phrase and sentence clings to the previous one, satisfying it, understanding it, waiting for the climactic resolution to follow only a verb or two away. I disgust myself.
I even enjoy groups of words poorly put together. Ooh, junior high creative writing. Ahh, Reader's Digest poetry. Sure, I struggle with a Grisham novel the way I used to struggle with Annie's, um, skoelaces in the seventh grade and the way this sentence struggles with the inevitability of falling into a metaphorical abyss. But I still get satisfaction.
Perhaps it is because words have their way with me so much that I have gotten so frustrated with my present quest for the right word.
Maybe I'm too easy. Maybe I need counseling. Don't know.
For a while now, I have been looking for a noun to replace "the female person who means a lot to me," which is immediately followed by "but, we're not married or living
STAFF
COLUMNIST
together or anything." Coming out of someone else's mouth, this usually sounds like "girlfriend." Girlfriend sounds dumb to me. It was OK at 14 and still OK at 17, but now it doesn't cut it. She's more than a girl and more than a friend. She's a ... what?
Significant other? Ridiculous expression. Surely that was spawned by some absurd party host desperately p.c.-ing his way into the good graces of a few gay couples and a few shacked-up 50-year-olds (where the use of boyfriend or girlfriend would be utterly bizarre). Besides, I have trouble understanding the numbers involved. Other what? Is there another one or an original one that I don't know about?
I have heard the word "partner" used. Very hip, this word is. It suggests an equality, a rethinking of value systems. It suggests, "(S)he is my soulmate, my other half, my picture-completer." But I find this word endearing only if a couple has been together for several decades. The time element somehow gives one
the right to use it. It too many times, "partner" comes out of one person's mouth while the other person smiles and thinks, "Jerk. He wasn't my partner when I made the bed. Or doing the dishes."
Well, that leaves words like sweetheart or honey or babycakes or some other lump of saccharine that slips off your mouth before you know it.
These names may work well for some. In fact, I recommend their use. It keeps you from calling Julie Brenda or Brenda Tracy or some other colossal mistake that will get you no covers and a very frosty backside. These cute little names, quite honestly, should not be made available for public consumption though. They gross people out. Besides, public displays will get you branded as a misogynistic, insensitive pig. This is a name to stay away from. It's almost as bad as "Democrat."
For now, I guess I'll get around the whole label thing. Instead of, "This is the female person who means a lot to me, but we're not married or living together or anything." I'll let
Oh, and for now, I still go by "boyfriend."
John Martin is a Lawrence first-year law student.
Suggestions for a one-way ticket to not getting out of a ticket
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Let me start by saying that I have the utmost respect for our nation's police. I admire their duty to protect and serve the people of our country. Their jobs consist of constant battles with vagrants, drugs and a host of other concerns.
follow the same rules of the road as cars do.
Adam Lyons Deerfield, Ill., freshman
English interpretation part of class learning
Mopeds, motorcycles deserve road respect
Students who argue that their GTA's should speak English reasonably well have a point. However, this does not mean speaking it exactly the way you do. A professor in California I know generated bitter complaints when he was a TA in Texas. No one could understand him. He grew up in New York City. More recently, a department at OU had a lot of complaints about poor English spoken by one of the professors — from London.
Your education is not just the content of your classes. One of the facts of life is that English is a world language, and you might as well get used to it.
However, when one has the
inevitable meeting with the men and women in blue, the opinion one has may change drastically. I would even bet that Gandhi might have uttered a few expletives had he ever been ticketed for jaywalking.
On a recent trip to Dallas, I was pulled over for
Because of the large number of students, Lawrence has an abundance of motorcycles and mopeds. At times these vehicles may be difficult to see. What may be only a minor accident for a car can have tragic results for moped drivers. I urge everyone to be extra careful when driving and to pay particular attention to mopeds and motorcycles.
rolling through a stop sign. As the officer left my car and told me that I was free to go, I began to think of several things that would have been either really funny or extremely dangerous to say to him. I have decided to show this list to you. This is not a top 10 list but rather some thoughts and comments that might get you arrested the next time you are corralled by the local police.
Adrian L. Melott professor of physics and astronomy
I am writing in regard to the March 6 article "Student in serious condition after moped accident." I was upset to hear about the terrible accident that occurred on Ninth and Ohio Streets.
Hey, thanks for pulling me over. I was going to stop anyway because that body I have stuffed in the trunk was making so much damn noise that I couldn't hear the radio.
Do you have a bottle opener I could borrow?
Do you think that if I gave you a hundred bucks, we could forget this ever happened and you could be my personal T.J. Hooker for the night?
I was recently involved in a moped accident as well, though luckily mine was less serious. My moped was totaled, but I only received relatively minor injuries. I am angered by the lack of caution shown by automobile drivers when sharing the road with mopeds and motorcycles. Drivers of vehicles with four wheels do not seem to respect vehicles with only two. It is important to note that moped and motorcycle operators
Mopeds and cycles deserve to receive the same respect that operators of other vehicles do. Hopefully, the fortunate incident that occurred on March 4 will bring attention to this problem.
Sorry I ran that red light, officer.
I'm so damn drunk I didn't notice it.
Look, just because you're rechanneling latent homosexuality doesn't mean you have to get snappy with me. I have feelings too, you know.
Can I see your gun? I just want to compare it to the one I have in the glove compartment.
I'm sorry it took me so long to find my license. It was stuck underneath my bong.
Even though you're going to let me off, would it be possible for you to frisk me anyway?
Look here, Ponch, if you don't hold on a minute, I'll be forced to get out and kick you in the groin. Understand?
How 'bout instead of giving me that ticket, you just give me a spanking. I like spankings.
Feel free to use any of these at your leisure. Just don't mention my name.
Carter Vookel is a Dalias sophomore in English.
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