Ryan ChartrandThere was more on the line in the Georgetown versus Ohio State NCAA basketball game Saturday than I ever would have imagined. It came down to me not caring at all about the pools I was in and I really didn’t care at all about who I ended up beating.
While my bracket was good and still finished pretty well, it didn’t matter. There was one person that I needed to beat, had to beat, and if I didn’t beat, would haunt me for a good long time. But, low and behold, it was just a matter of seven points that crushed me, my ego, and my ability to smile for a good long time for the reason that I lost to my girlfriend.
Yes, that’s right. I picked Georgetown and she picked Ohio State. That was all it came down to in the end if I were to have a better bracket. It became my obsession not with the tournament, but to beat her after she had been beating the crap out of just about everyone, since as of the beginning of the championship game,1 she was in 10th place in all of Cal Poly. Whether she was lucky or not in picking her teams,2 it doesn’t matter, because I lost to her in one of sport’s biggest spectacles which is all that March Madness has to offer.
At one point, I was even asked if my girlfriend won the whole tournament on facebook and took home the $25,000 grand prize, and would even share some of the money with me, if I would be happy for her for beating me. I instantly knew the answer. Of course I wouldn’t want her to win the $25,000.
Why, you may ask? Easy. My manhood is not worth a mere 25,000 bucks3. Because of this embarrassing loss to my girlfriend, I’m bringing you this guide, in how to be a man. Because in times like this, it is important to rise up against lucky women like my girlfriend, who demolished our brackets and any sense of fun we had from NCAA basketball this year.
The first step to be a real man is don’t clean anything. Ever. Yeah, that’s right. If these girls think they’re so damn funny knocking off our brackets, we can get them back. The easiest way is to do this is to do absolutely nothing. A real man doesn’t dust and sure as hell doesn’t vacuum his bedroom floor. You with me, fellas? Good traits of a man’s floor is to have a total of one paperclip, half a Cheerio4, and if you look closely enough, random hairs that if collected could likely put you as a top donor to the Locks of Love Foundation.
Gross? Who cares. It’s also gross that these women filled out a bracket in the first place.
Moving on…no more letting girls watch anything on Lifetime, Oxygen, or TLC5. Actually, while we’re at it, we can cross off “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Sex and the City” and “American Idol.” Rather, to be a man, you must make your girlfriend or girl friends6 sit with you as you watch “SportCenter” over and over again, NASCAR, or anything that Larry the Cable Guy and his other redneck friends have on TV. While I hate both NASCAR and all comedy by those redneck comedians, it doesn’t matter, for we are at war to fight the good fight by doing the most stereotypical male things we can. Cause hey, in the immortal words of Jeff Foxworthy, “You know you’re a redneck if you believe dual airbags refer to your wife and mother-in-law.” Wait, he makes millions off crap like that? Shit, who cares cause HELL YEAH FOXWORTHY WE GOT THEM!
The third way to prove your manhood is a big one. This will take all the strength and courage that you have but it is absolutely necessary. It will take a year or so before this can happen, but we’ll do it. Men, we must petition facebook to let us fill out brackets for the women’s NCAA Tournament. This way, we can fill out a bracket and beat these women in their own sport. Yeah, that’s right. If they can beat our brackets in men’s basketball, we can go in and beat their brackets in women’s basketball. We’ll have to diligently watch each game to make sure our brackets are strong, but in the end, any wins that we have will be satisfying ones.
Wait, who am I kidding? Watching women’s basketball is almost as painful as, well, watching women’s basketball. It’s slow, boring, really slow, and also really damn boring. Forget that idea. I guess we’ll just have to do better in next year’s tourney, fellas.
1 Which is as of the same time I’m writing this article.
2 And, of course, it was all luck.
3 Cause that shit is priceless.
4 Even if you can’t remember the last time you had any.
5 Unless they are showing reruns of “Trading Spaces” from when the hot Paige Davis was the host.
6 Notice the space in “girl friends” gives you that distinction.
Mike Heimowitz is a journalism senior and Mustang Daily humor columnist. Tell him which teams he should have picked at mikeheimowitz.com.