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The Daily Dose/September 10, 2010
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...
HUT, HUT HIKE: Official Writer's Shack fave the Mount Union Purple Raiders football team opens its 123rd season of intercollegiate football Saturday at Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
All right, they aren't going to win the NCAA D-III title every year, but they still retain their Fave status. The Purple Raiders were runners-up last year, losing to Wisconsin-Whitewater Communists in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl 38-28. It was the fifth straight year Mount Union and UW-Whitewater met in the national championship game, with Mount Union winning three times, in 2008, 2006 and 2005.
Gameday: This is the first meeting ever between Mount Union and UW-Oshkosh. Larry Kehres begins his 25th season as head coach, too, and his tenure must be considered the most successful in the history of college football. Kehres has a career record of 289-22-3, which comes out to an average of less than one loss per season, which is really good.
FunFact: Mount Union has won ten of the last 17 NCAA D-III football titles and the last 18 Ohio Athletic Conference titles.
Oh Yeah: Mount Union is 139-5 this century.
STILL MORE WRITER'S SHACK FAVES: Our plucky Chilean miners keep plugging away at survival a half-mile the ground.
Up And At 'Em: They've actually settled into some semblance of a routine. After rising at 7:30 breakfast is delivered and then they clean up their living area and then they shower in an underground waterfall and then have lunch and hold sick call.
General Hospital: The list of maladies is growing: fungal and skin infections are stll prevalent, of course as is constipation and bad teeth and, since the smoking lamp is out, tobacco withdrawls.
Let Us Pray: The miners are given the afternoon off. The religious ones, which, under the circumstances, is more or less everyone, will pray together to whomever they think will do them the most good. Then they catch up on their rest and correspondence
Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel: Lights out is at 10pm.
Uh, No Rush, Guys: Our fave aspect of this story, at least until they're rescued, is that the tally of miners who have had mistresses present themselves at the mine is now up to five, though the exact number of mistresses each miner has isn't entirely clear, though one has had four women not his wife claim to be his main squeeze.
Betting Window: As noted in this week's NFL Bottom Ten, and interesting prop bet for this tragedy is what will happen first: the miner's rescue or a Chicago Bears victory?
Well? Tough call. We usually don't do predictions here at the Writer's Shack, preferring to make fun of people and events after-the-fact, but the Bears are really bad this year, so we'll take the Chilean miners on this one.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SOMETHING OR ANOTHER: A chicken named Mike was decapitated on a Colorado farm on this date in 1945. Whomever had been tasked with preparing Mike for the kitchen table did not do his job properly and Mike was left with an ear and a brain stem and would survive for two more years.
We Are Not Making This Up: Mike's owners hit the road with him, whoring him out to assorted side shows where Mike pulled down the 1040's equivalent of $50,000 a year.
Damn Communists: In one of the most famous sporting events ever played, the Soviet Union hands the United States its first loss over in Olympic basketball, 51-50, in the gold medal game.
Oh, Jesus H: This was one of the great fiascos of all time. With a few seconds left the US trailed 49-48 and Doug Collins stole a pass at half court and was fouled while going in for a layup.
With three seconds left Collins was awarded two free throws. He made them both to give the US a 50-49 lead.
Uh-Oh: As Collins started to shoot the second free throw, the horn went off. One official looked towards the table, but play wasn't stopped. After the free throw was made, a Soviet assistant coach charged the table asserting the Soviets had called a time out.
Dry, Technical Matter: Under the rules at the time, the Soviets would not be allowed to call time out after the second free throw, so it was imperative they get a time out called before the second free throw went off. As it was, they inbounded the ball and were bringing it up the court when the officials stopped play with one second left.
What In Thee Hell Is Going On Here? No one really knows if the Soviets called timeout or not. They insist they did, but you would expect that, and the Americans said they didn't, which isn't a bulletin, either. Soviet head coach Vladimir Kondrashin was not coaching his first basketball game that day and, honestly, it is not particularly reasonable to think he did not call a time out and that Germans working the scorers table got confused and didn't know what the hell was going on.
Aichiwawa: Exactly why Germans, who - then as now - know squat about basketball, we're assigned to work the scorer's table for the gold medal game is anyone's guess. It didn't help that in international basketball at the time timeouts were called by coaches pressing a button on their bench that notified the scorers table. It is entirely possible the Germans mucked this up and sounded the horn as Collins shot his second free throw to try and rectify matters.
Back On Message: The officials were in a box. They were not aware the Soviets had requested a timeout - if they actually had - so there was no real reason to stop the game with one second left and the Soviets bringing the ball up the court. Had they not done this the game could've ended and FIBA could've sorted the matter out after the game. No matter what FIBA decided to do after the game, it could not have turned into a bigger imbroglio than what transpired. Led by FIBA general secretary Renato William Jones, who had no authority to do so, it was ordered that three seconds be put back on the clock and the Soviets be allowed to inbound the ball from underneath the basket.
Don't Blame Me: The officials complied with this order, even though there was no reason for them to. One of the referees for the game was a Brazilian named Renato Righetto, who was working his third Olympic gold medal game. You would think he would've known better, and perhaps he did. He refused to sign the official score sheet for the game and said the Soviet victory was 'completely irregular'.
It Get's Worse: When play resumed it resumed not with one second on the clock, but with three seconds left on the clock and the Soviets inbounding the ball under the basket, just as they did after Collins' free throws.
Or so they thought. The second official, a Bulgarian named Artenik Arabadjian, brilliantly gave the ball to the Soviets without checking the clock, something even your most average high school official knows to do. The Soviets inbounded the ball, threw up a shot that missed and the buzzer sounded.
The Americans celebrated. And why not? The horn had sounded to end the game and they were winning 50-49.
The game clock, however, was showing 50 seconds. The horn that sounded was the scorers trying to get the officials attention that the clock wasn't working properly.
Oh Good Grief: Enter Jones again. For the second time he ordered three seconds be put on the clock. Even the Soviets will score if given enough chances and Ivan Edeshko was able to throw a long pass to Aleksandr Belov, who eluded two Americans, and scored a lay-up that gave the Soviets a 51-50 victory.
Thought For The Day: The Thought for the Day will return. We're too worked up over reliving the 1972 Olympic basketball fiasco to come up with anything beyond profanities.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Detroit was the US city that was on the final ballot for the Olympic games that were awarded to Munich, West Germany.
Today's Stumper: What is the status of the silver medals the US Olympic basketball team earned at the Munich Olympics? - Answer next time!
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