The Red and Black

But it never hurts to gripe about the little things every now and then. Sometimes it just makes you feel better.

Now, I love playing basketball, but, as a shorter-than-average player, I understand the disadvantage that guys like me have every time we take the court.

I'm nowhere close to being a Steve Nash, much less a Stevie "Franchise."

However, I am able to realize a blatant injustice when I dribble upon one.

Take intramural basketball for instance.

Just last year, me and my lazy, beer-drinking, former- high school role player friends got a pretty good team up, and we played the four-game regular season.

We won mostly, and won big sometimes. Then came the tournament -- the single elimination "A" league, or "All Campus" tournament.

After a win by mercy rule in the first round and a narrow escape in the second round, we faced a team made up of several members of the University's track & field team in the quarterfinals.

As you might expect, we were no match for the scholarship sprinters and high-jumpers, and we got blown out badly.

They went on to the finals, and we went home to whine for a while, then celebrate our loss by going downtown.

Similarly, last season we made it to the quarterfinals before losing to D.J. Shockley, Tony Gilbert, Bruce Thornton and several other football players.

How, I implore you, am I supposed to guard Shockley, or Thornton for that matter?

And how is our goofy big guy going to stop the middle linebacker of the No. 3 football team in the nation?

I don't know, and he obviously didn't either.

Something's obviously out of whack when a multi-millionaire superstar such as NFL Pro Bowler Champ Bailey is out there playing ball against 5-foot-7-inch point guards with average (at best) skills like me.

(Note: Bailey is enrolled in school here, and is therefore allowed to play intramurals, which he did.)

I wonder if Steve Spurrier knows about that. I doubt it.

I understand that the scholarship athletes just want to play basketball too, but come on. Teams like us have no chance, and there's only about two other teams that do.

Maybe all but those three top teams should sign up for the "Best of the Rest" league, but what's really the respect in winning that?

All I ask for is at least a chance be given to the little guy -- the team that looks like a bunch of clowns but actually contains players that aren't half bad.

--Steve Sanders is a sports writer for The Red & Black.

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