of passage

By

CHUCK CORDER

When I was a little guy &045; still am &045; I had the disgusting habit of biting my fingernails &045; still do &045; for no apparent reason other than I was bored.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but my parents’ method of breaking me of that proclivity was to splash a little Tabasco in hopes that the spicy liquid would serves as a deterrent.

It didn’t exactly solve the problem, particularly since I douse just about everything I eat with a little hot sauce (Frosted Flakes? They’re grrrrrrreat!); however, I stopped and moved on to other annoying addictions, such as &uot;Beverly Hills 90210&uot; and &uot;Dawson’s Creek.&uot;

After the opening games from the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, Mom, you’re gonna have to embalm me with a 50-gallon barrel of Tabasco to keep me from gnawing.

It never ceases to amaze me how scintillating this field of 64 gets every year. The lead-ups on &uot;Bracketology&uot; shows throughout sports networks are always helpful, but they don’t mean jack come tipoff.

Fortunately, I had Manhattan knocking off Florida in the sexy No. 12 vs. No. 5 seed matchup. This makes it 25 times now since the NCAA went to 64 teams in 1981 that a 12 dropped a No. 5 like third-period French class.

If you ask me, it was an easy pick. The Gators got beat up all year in the SEC and they haven’t been the same since one of their top scorers, Christian Drejer, headed to Spain to apparently join Menudo.

The 12th-seeded Jaspers have now won 20 of their last 22 games, have a head coach in Bobby Gonzales, whose name is currently mentioned for every premier vacancy in college basketball, and a V-6 in Luis Flores that can go from 0 to 94-feet in 4 seconds.

I know some of you will commit me for this, but I have Manhattan reaching the East Rutherford Elite Eight. Although I also had Charlotte beating Texas Tech on Thursday.

That worked out real well. What happened? I thought it was spring’s rite of passage for Bobby Knight to implode, slam a phone, flash a bullwhip, yell at a player or moderator and bow out of the tourney’s first round.

What happened to tradition General? Don’t you know change is never good, especially for somebody your age? Keep it simple: choke a player every now and then, have a meltdown at your neighborhood grocery store and keep grinding out those 20 wins every year in Lubbock, Texas.

Not that I have a lot of room to talk here. My alma mater was 17-4 at one point and closed in as fine of fashion as a pair of Fruit of the Looms.

LSU lost seven of its final eight and were knocked from the NIT at Oklahoma Tuesday, prompting one Sooner fan to raise this shrewd sign that he spent most of the night thinking up: &uot;Sugar is sweet, but revenge is sweeter.&uot; This in reference to LSU’s BCS championship win against the Sooners in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4.

Pardon me, but the day a NIT victory becomes tastier than a national championship is the day I pour Tabasco on my Frosted Flakes. Ooops.

Chuck Corder

is a sports writer for The Natchez Democrat. Reach him at (601) 445-3633 or at

chuck.corder@natchezdemocrat.com.