Hoops TV Reviews Duke, Insults Cheerleaders

Duke cheerleaders - attractive, intelligent, and well dressed

HoopsTV, which seems to have a bit of a schizoid personality, with really interesting stuff like Dan Wetzel's interesting articles on Jonathan
Hargett and Durham Emanuel, also seems to feel a need to establish what we guess
they think is street credibility.

This review of
Duke's season swings toward street cred, with such witticisms as "Fresh
Meat" for new players,  "The Deal" for season analysis, and
"putting the smack down" for last season at Duke. Nothing wrong with
this in principle, but bear in mind this is a slick marketing effort by a
substantial corporation, not a bunch of hip-hop kids in the hood. Sprewell out
front, green eyeshades in the back.  That's a fact, Jack! 

What's really annoying though are the comments about
the cheerleaders.  The corporate honchos who are sponsoring this
hip-hop hoops wanna be riffing should know that nothing is sexier than
smart.  If they don't think so, they have obviously never dated a smart
woman. Duke's cheerleaders will be spending half the year in Bermuda by the time
they're 40, so let's get real about who's putting the smack down on whom.

It's funny, but comments like this would be, we assume, unwelcome in the
offices of HoopsTV and most corporations (just ask human resources in your
company and you'll get a pretty good idea), yet it's ok to put on a web page
posing as an icon of hip-hop culture.  America - what a country.

 

 

 

postcript

After the dumb article about Duke cheerleading, we poked through HoopsTV.com
a bit to see what else was around. While we appreciate their depth - there's a
lot of stuff - you'd think a site this big and this ambitious would be more
careful about what it prints. To be sure, we make typos on a regular basis - the
other day we alsmost put Iowa for Idaho, for instance, and we get flagged
consistently for this.  Ben Sherman is great at it.

On the other hand, we don't have editors. We don't even really have a budget. 
Anyway, we broke these down into three categories: dumb typos, sophomoric
sexism, and just weird comments.  A lot of this is amazing, but the most
surprising of all is the blatant anti-Catholic statement (see casual sexism) and
the suggestion, by Dan Wetzel who should know better, that Al McGuire is already
dead.

Poor editing...

• 20. Missouri – Quinn Snyder is building a basketball machine in
  Missou, pulling off recruiting coups left and right and putting the Tigers on the front page. 
• 18. N.C. State – They have Dominque’s nephew. That alone should be enough to get them into the Top 25. 
• Darius Miles and DeShawn Stevenson each did something recently that Chris Duhon never came close to
  achieving...They failed every single standardized test that would have rendered
  them eligible for college ball next year (excluding Deshawn’s discounted inflated SAT scores). 
• Freshman point guard deluxe Jason Williams played erraticly early but by season’s end he looked like a vet dropping 6.5 dimes a game.

Casual sexism...

• It’s the second best time of year on college campuses, as the bronzed beauties return from summer break just itching to show off their tans and get, ahem, “reacquainted.” (For the record, the best days on campus come when the Spring Breakers return in full glow and, God bless them, mini-skirts.) Conversations go something like: “How was your summer?” “Awesome, how about yours?” “Cool. Didn’t we sleep together once last year?” “Ah, yeah, we did. Wanna get naked?
• Secondly, the good Roman Catholic girls at PC don’t even get naked to shower. 
• In a hard-fought game, our girls come out on top. It took a total team effort on the part of our Dream Teamers. From Pam's unedited scouting tapes, to Cindy's veteran savvy comin' off the bench, to Jenna's unstoppable triangle offense, our Golden Girls showed the world a thing or two. Elle, Anna and crew put up an unbelievable fight (the hairpulling was great), but they just didn't have the firepower of the Dream Team. Don't mess with the U.S. 

What were they thinking?...

• Losing Parker is a blow to North Carolina and new Head Coach Matt Doherty. Although the Tar Heels are loaded with front court talent, including 7-foot Brendan Haywood, 6-11 Kris Lang and 6-10
  Brian Bersticker, the physical, skilled Parker was expected to make major contributions.
  Bersticker over Peppers?
• 23. Wake Forest – <!b> Robert O’Kelley might be the toughest dude in the
  ACC. The dude straight wins games all by himself. Not lately 
• That's the man, an American original from Queens. You'd say he was street smart but you'd have to wonder what street the man grew up on. I-95 doesn't run through that much wisdom. He
  was a walking, talking philosophy lesson, the 1970s version of John Chaney.
  Dan Wetzel buries Al McGuire a bit prematurely... 
• The more athletic and speedy opponents like Zona’s Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Gardener and Chapel Hill’s duo of
  Ed Cota and Joseph Forte took the Cardinal’s lunch money with ease. 
  Cota athletic?