I opened the first campus bookstore shortly after I acquired my first two students. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but students are something of a prerequisite for a college (despite what the faculty may think). Anyway, my original bookstore had a very unique focus–selling books. Call me crazy or a literalist or whatever, but I’m fairly certain the purpose of a bookstore is the purveyance of paginated knowledge receptacles. Evidently, that notion has evolved over the years to include more items.
A whole lot more vulgar, tasteless, overpriced items.
Don’t get me wrong. I like making a buck, and I sure know how to do it. That dome didn’t gild itself after all. But when the bookstore rivals Sacred Heart for size and opulence, I’m calling it a problem. And do we really need a special recording of the Victory March played on the Celtic harp (for the low, low price of just $29.95).
So I think it’s great that the bookstore and the Freemasons who run it give back to the campus community by sponsoring Bookstore Basketball. I’ll admit that I didn’t take to basketball the first time I saw it played–it seemed too frantic compared to football, and the lads weren’t wearing enough clothing. But it seems to be just the thing to keep students active and focused in the Spring, when thoughts turn to other, less noble, pursuits like ditching class, making fruity tropical cocktails, and breaking parietals simply because the ground has thawed.
I never had need of any athletic tournament because I had a working farm. My lads knew how to use a hoe–a boast of which I am proud, but which always elicits naughty laughter whenever I say it, though I know not why. Nothing discharges excess energy like plowing a field or herding cattle. Since my successors, in their infinite wisdom and lust for modernity, buried my farm under a golf course, several unnecessarily luxurious residence halls, and that obscene bookstore, I suppose basketball suffices for burning off Spring fever.
And I have to say, my favorite aspect of Bookstore Basketball are the filthy names for the teams. I have a rather adolescent sense of humor that has never been aided by spending a century or so on a college campus. Hence my appreciation for the Dillon Pep Rally, the Keenan Revue, and the 500 iterations of potty humor that pass for Bookstore Basketball team names. If only the white-glove-and-lace wearing old ladies over in the Oberkommando der Student Affairs could loosen up a little and learn to laugh at truly creative crotch jokes.
So I have one modest request during this coming Bookstore Basketball event: Would some team please incorporate my name into a witty-yet-tawdry moniker. And let’s all give the moneychangers who run the bookstore some thanks for all the cash they must pour into the basketball tournament. They may charge an arm and a leg for basic supplies, but at least they give a lot of it back by building all of those basketball courts and paying for thousands of uniforms…
…They do foot the bill for Bookstore Basketball, don’t they? Because if they don’t, that giant roundball grudge-match should be in search of a new name. Oooh, I bet we could make a ton of money selling those naming rights!
EFS CSC
Son, in 199 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard, incontrovertible facts: There is a God, and I'm pretty tight with Him.
Now I’m going to tell you a whole lot of things I’ve kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew me. I was along before your time, but you all know what a tradition I am at Notre Dame. And one of the most important things I ever said was, “Friends, sometime when my University is up against it and the breaks are beating the students, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win at everything for Padre. I don’t know exactly where I’ll be then, friends,” I said, “but I’ll be looking right over your shoulder.”
- Good Fridays w/Padre: WORTHY! - November 30, 2018
- Good Fridays w/Padre: The Horror - October 26, 2018
- Good Fridays w/Padre: BALLS! - September 7, 2018
By “Sponsoring” Bookstore Basketball, you mean charging students to play on free public courts, correct? Gotcha.
I’d try to mount a hostile takeover of the whole tournament so as to make it free, but CSC-Basketball just doesn’t have the same ring as Bookstore Basketball.
I made seven 3-pointers in one bookstore basketball game – easily the highlight of my pathetic basketball career. Unfortunately they later informed me that 3-pointers are still only worth one….
Is the bookstore chronically incapable of not ripping people off? If they ran interhall football, a touchdown would probably cost you six points.
Just wait till they start charging to park in the bookstore parking lot…oh wait
It’s only a matter of time before each graduate is assigned a minimum spending amount per annum. Damn… why didn’t I think of that years ago…