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SATIRE
By Michael Torley, Staff Writer
It has been a rough week for our men’s basketball players. The first failure was last Wednesday’s game against Creighton. You probably saw it. I saw it. Not only does Filip need justice, but Xavier also needs redemption.
Then came the big matchup: the Pitino showdown. Despite the redemption looking like destiny, X did NOT give it to them. If X gave anything to Papa Pitino, it was his 900th win.
Imagine my surprise, in the wake of that horrendous loss, when I received an email that night from the man, the myth, the absolute Chad himself, coach Richard Pitino. Richard, or as we used in the email conversation, Ricky P, asked me what he could do to improve his team. It was a monumental task, but I was ready. Like all good basketball managers-for-hire, I had to start by looking at the film.
Our recent opponents, the St. John Red Storm, are powered by Gatorade, a protein-based diet, and most importantly, the blood of communists.
When I say the film, I really just started by looking at Wikipedia and taking my own experiences of watching and being at Xavier games into account as well. While looking on Wikipedia, I noticed something alarming. Xavier has a lot of competition in the Big East, and this competition, despite claiming to be a religious school, has mascots and teams that I would not define as holy. I’m looking at you, DePaul Blue Devils; and you, St. John’s Red Storm. Is your Red Storm powered by Satan, or the communists? Whichever, it cannot be good.
Xavier needs to present itself as the clearly dominant Catholic and holy team. Yes, Villanova may have Pope Leo, but we have something much better. I’ve been scouting these guys for a while. School Spirit? Check. Endless love of God and Jesus? You bet ’cha. Can they shoot some hoops? Yes, and they can do it better than those people on Jimmy Fallon making the jackpot shot.
And now, introducing your new Xavier players: the popes who bless our student section! If we need to get more holy, I think we could recruit the Athletic Chaplain Fr. Murphy and university chaplain Fr. Eric to help round out our starting five, having that backup in case one of our players needs some holy water.
Let the popes from the student section bless the game ball before every game. Pray to the basketball gods that Aquaman stays clutch, that Filip can make a floater, and that Pitino doesn’t burst a forehead vein.
When pitching the idea to Ricky P, I could tell he had his reservations. Most notably, those guys could make some layups, but how could they fare against some of our tougher foes? What Ricky P needed was some court experience, and thankfully I knew just who had the court experience to rock him right out of the park!
To explain how I came across these players, we’d need to flip the coin and take a look at the women’s basketball team. Now, while we could simply merge the teams, that would upset A LOT of our competitors, leading to them calling us that dirty, dirty word: cheaters.
Instead, I found these players through the halftime portion of the women’s basketball game. Not only can these players play ball and put themselves up against child sized opponents, but they also can rake in our program copious amounts of money through sponsorships.
Now, they could be expensive to recruit, but they have huge levels of Name, Image and Likeness all across the Tri-State, and it has been done before, why not do it again? Introducing… our team of mascots! This group includes the likes of Blue Blob, D’Artagnan, FC Cincinnati’s lion, the Chick-fil-A cow and even more mascots who I don’t know what companies or groups they promote!
With this team, plus the genius strategy of the basketball being swallowed by the Blue Blob (with it still dribbling so no travelling calls) to prevent turnover, this team would be unstoppable! Plus, it would show who REALLY runs the 513. However, if some feel left out, we could always be open to recruitment. I see you, UC Bearcat; I know how badly you’d want to be on the team, and I’ll still consider you. With the knowledge of last week’s insightful Newswire Back Page piece in mind, I think the Bearcat and Blue Blob could put on quite the game for us. We’ll just have to see.
All in all, I just want our team to not be suffering from the bad luck it’s endured over this past week. Whether we need to overhaul the entire team, or simply acquire All Wright’s brother Always Wright, it must be done for the good of the team. And Ricky P, if y’all pull off the mega-redemption you’ve been planning behind the scenes for the next game (and I know you’ve been working on them Ricky P, don’t lie to me), then just put the suggestions on the backburner, they’ll be next season’s fixes.
