Shush!

All this fog we’ve had this week has me drifting off into the past, which, at my age, can be a dangerous thing. But there I am, thinking of my undergraduate days, killing time watching Ray Meyer and his Blue Demons practice at Alumni Hall. I doubt anybody, even Dave Corzine, ever thought they’d go pro. Ah, the myth of the amateur athlete, the true warrior. I’m a sucker for it. Which explains how I ended up watching the second half of the Northwestern-Illinois men’s basketball game last night. It went into overtime before the Wildcats posted a 96-91 win. Beating the tenth-ranked Illini gets Chris Collins’ Wildcats that much closer to a NCAA bid come March. Did I in fact feel the excitement, was it palpable? As a rule, I try to avoid cliches, but the essence of college sports is based on myth, and myth is a kind of cliché, though popular and unquestioned. So, yeah, you could feel palpable excitement. And the crowd was electric, too. But the NU fans snapped me back to reality with their chants of “Guilty! Guilty!” directed at Illinois’ Terrence Shannon Jr., The senior forward is facing a rape charge stemming form an incident in Kansas last September. The university suspended Shannon, who won a restraining order last week in federal court which allows him to continue playing. Restraining orders make it hard to dream of Jason and the Argonauts on a hardwood floor. But, since I’m in full cliché mode here, let those without sin be the first to cast brickbats, and we don’t even know if Shannon is guilty of the charges. Apparently, in Evanston, paying $64,887 in tuition (or having their parents pay it) entitles students to fill Welsh-Ryan Arena and boo whomever they want. Silence is golden. Cliches out.