It’s been less than 24 hours since I told you the secret to generating hastily written content that will make you rich. Speed is the name of the game, but it isn’t everything. No one wants cold Chicken Soup guy or third-rate sloppy Koontz. That’s bush. League. So now, you’ve got to focus your power while staying true to your speed training.

To illustrate this, I put together tonight’s column with a slight beer buzz, a TV blaring and a McFlurry emptied and spread across my bare chest. Here we go:

1. Sergio Kerusch was Western Kentucky’s game MVP and played great. He also made a point of coming back out as the next teams were warming up so he could walk through the stands to shake the hands of all of his team’s fans. He picked up children, high-fived the elderly, helped the Kentucky-fried fatties check their blood sugar and generally seemed like a great human being.  He even was polite and happy when we congratulated him.
2. However, something needs to be done about his father’s garb. Maybe it’s a lucky shirt that one of Orlando Mendez-Valdez’s 37 family members had made at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, but it may be time to invest in one of those snazzy jerseys the fans love to wear. Or, we could just start working on a remake of The Wrestler. Your call, Pappa Kerusch.
   PS: Your son is seriously a great kid and you did a heck of a job raising him. Just don’t dress him. Ever.
3. Speaking of how people who experience great success should be mocked for their fashion decisions, the WKU fans all love to wear bright red basketball jerseys. This is cute, but it begs the question: when are you too old to wear the jersey of an 18-22 year old boy that is paraded around 25-30 times a year for your amusement? Our crack science team has not reached a firm conclusion, but our working theory is: You can start wearing jerseys once you are out of diapers, but you need to take them off for good once you end up back in diapers again.
4. We know you read this site because you love looking stylish, so let’s stay with the fashion critique theme. Former North Texas basketball player and current Graduate Assistant Quincy Williams has been looking downright dapper all season long, wearing a blend of fine suits and shirts that would make a wolverine purr. In other North Texas apparel news, I had to steal a pair of athletic socks from Ioannis this morning just to leave the room. Quincy is a fashion plate even though he just left the team last season, and I’ve got a graduate degree and have been a working professional for five and a half years now. You win, Quincy.

   

5. Speaking of style, University of Arkansas Little Rock fans proudly support their basketball program by pledging their undying devotion to the (Just the) Tip-In Club.
   
   Apparently that trick actually works in Arkansas. What’s next? The Motorboaters for the rowing team? The Donkeypunchers for club boxing? Your booster club should not match the name of a frat guy’s fantasy football team. Just a tip. Feel free to take it in (to consideration) as far as you’d like.
6. If you haven’t picked up on it yet, Western Kentucky brought a very large contigent of fans. And, oddly enough, a contigent of very large fans. Fat people in the South liking college sports is no shock, but the weight distribution was the kicker. All of them pretty much had the same body shape as their beloved Big Red mascot. Terms like “FUPA” and “camel toe/moose knuckle/pillow taint” are inadequate to describe it. Consequently, the elevators in a two story arena (that has escalators all over the place) got quite a work out from the red-clad faithful. They should pretty much scrap the elevator signs and just call them Topper Lifters. How someone at that school ever did enough physical activity to reach the top of a hill manually is beyond me.
7. We mentioned yesterday that John Ratzenberger is going to be the Grand Marshall of this weekend’s Hot Springs Saint Patrick’s Day parade. The fun part is that the arena billboard seems promoting an appearance by the Famous Chicken de San Diego much more aggressively. In fact, the Chicken gets 5 times the face time on the video boards than ol’ Cliff Claven does. Needless to say, Cliff is noticeably pissed off about it in his ad photo. I’m sure he wants to know… “Er… Ah… What’s up with THAT?”



8. If the sports schedule gods at ESPN wanted to help some fans out and make a conference and a city some good money, they would move the tournament dates up one day and let the men start on Saturday and end Monday. The games were still well attended, but the drop off from yesterday’s crowd was at least a third. The local UALR crowd dropped by about 40% from what they had last night.
9. Speaking of the UALR fans, the second game tonight was mostly awful to watch. In fact, it was likened to a sharp iron stilletto heel being driven into my left testicle while Nickelback covered Jon Secada’s greatest hits. Even so, the fans pretty much gave up on cheering from the second minute of the game on. The team might have have fed off more energy if the Hot Springs city officials just bussed in some stroke victims or a bus full of tightly-secured mental patients. It was like sharing the arena with the cast of Awakenings .
10. Still, UALR fans were able to keep it all in perspective. As one of the journalist covering their team moved quickly to get a post game quote, he was still able to cheerfully catch the eye of another fan and tell him the big news of the day. “Didja hear? [Former Arkansas receiver] Matt Jones got busted again!” Sir, you are no Brett Vito.
11. Although the late game was gas station hot dog quality basketball, we all found ourselves falling in love with the University of South Alabama. Their guys have a really high hoops IQ and seem to be extremely well coached. They moved well on defense, communicated constantly and were able to anticipate plays and movements to lock down their defense. They didn’t just flail their arms all crazy like many college teams. They used their bodies and hands in quick, assassin like movements to poke away lose balls and contest running and floating shots without committing fouls. Their coach may be insane and a possible cheater, but he knows his hoops.
12. UALR has weird tubas that remind us of some kind of space-age toilet bowl. They are almost like the waterless urinals at Fouts Field, only you can poop in the tubas.
    
13. In other band news, the South Alabama band is a great group of kids who let us hang out with them through the second half. One of their traditions after every made free throw is to yell “Whoosh! U-S-A! South in your mouth!”Never one to miss a phallic joke, I had to go over and ask them if they do the same cheer during ladies basketball. The trumpet kid smiled mischievously and said “hell yes.” I wonder if they have a Tip-In Club?

14. Today we visited the Gangster Museum of America. Most people who aren’t me probably never knew what a huge role organized crime played in forming Hot Springs (Just kidding. I thought the tournament was in Little Rock until last week.) We learned all about how the city built itself on gambling, whoring and good-old fashioned American-Italian-American violence. Being half-Italian, I always find myself staring at the large noses in mobsters photos trying to figure out who looks the most like my relatives, and imagining myself cowering in a corner like a woman when it was my turn to run the family business.
    The museum cost a cool $8.50 - which was more like $10,000 during The Depression, not that anyone had that much money. We were shown a ton of short films that featured an old whore, a local historian, and a 10 minute trudge through the sewer. We were starting to lament our lost money until we were allowed to hold one of those amazing old-timey machine guns. The look on the tour guide’s face when we took this photo was priceless (may be slightly Photoshopped):

    

15. The North Texas basketball team was worth making this trip for. They played hard and, as cliche as it sounds, left their hearts on their sleeves. When Tristan Thompson fouled out at the end, he just stood still for a second, and then you could see the emotion wash over his face as he tried not to cry. These kids really care about the program and each other and you know this run and the way it ended is going to drive them next year. See you in 2010, Hot Springs.
16. My favorite part about this Hot Springs trip? Even though my team suffered a heart-breaking loss, I can still say I experienced a happy ending today.