When I began writing for the Daily my freshman year, the ever infamous Elliott Wiley, a grizzled veteran writer, imparted the following words of wisdom/warning upon me:
"A girl has never ever come up to me in a frat and been all up on my jock saying, 'ooh, I like the way you used alliteration in that sentence,'" Elliot said. "But, what you can do, sometimes, is you can tell girls that you play the sport you write about. Sometimes that works."
First of all, lying to get girls is absolutely wrong. Unless you're Elliott Wiley. Second of all, no offense to the men's cross country team; maybe you guys have groupies - how else did Mike Don get mono - but whenever I've used the line "Hey, I'm a member of the men's cross country team, wanna dance?" at Sig Ep, these are the responses I've gotten:
1) "So?"
2) "You run 100 miles a week for fun?!"
3) "Aren't you guys supposed to be, like, really, really skinny?"
4) "Stop talking and dance with me in gross, sweaty anonymity!"
That's what happened. Whoops, I mean, none of that ever happened, I was at home watching a movie with my awesome girl. But if I had actually tried, that's probably what would have happened. But cross country is an exception. I think Elliott meant that trick works if you're covering what I would call the "money" sports - baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, etc.
And whether or not the trick works, I think Tufts athletes, at least those who play "money sports," get more ass than regular Tufts students. I don't think I'd go so far as to say that sports teams at Tufts have groupies - the Beelzebubs are the only group on campus who I've ever really seen to have a pronounced following - but, from impressions and from talking to several former Jumbo athletes, it's fair to say they get more ass.
Being a writer does not usually help you. The only columnist who probably could get ass off the basis of her column was Amber Madison (she was a sex columnist, froshies; check the archives). I know that Amber could because she lives next to us, and when one of my housemates found this out, I thought he was going to pull a John Belushi-on-the-ladder-in "Animal House."
It's easy to understand why professional athletes get girls: they're rich and they're famous. Tufts athletes are neither (well, they're no richer than anyone else at Tufts). But they do have a few things going for them. Dave pointed out that the baseball and football teams have DU, the soccer and lacrosse teams have Zeta Psi, and hockey has 123. Evan (name changed to avoid embarrassment) noted that women's tennis is hot (always a pronounced advantage in getting ass). Greg said that he thinks the advantage goes not to athletes but athletic-looking people.
And obviously, as you grow older, the sportswriter sits in the press box eating a hot dog while Barry Bonds is taking steroids, so the more pronounced the last advantage becomes. We write about them and make them look good, and then they get the action. Sometimes life just isn't fair.
But maybe sex and sports, with their dripping sweat and banging bodies, muscles and angles, swiftness and power, are intertwined. At their core, maybe sports exude a kind of sexuality. After all, from warm-up pants to Brandi Chastain, it's about taking things off. In fact, sports have a long and storied history of nudity. Just look:
776 B.C.: One naked Greek beats another naked Greek in first Olympics.
1998: Olympic Ice Skater Katarina Witt poses in Playboy; Tonya Harding gets jealous.
2001: In a high school tennis match against Harrisburg Christian, I tear my lucky shorts and boxers (both of which had been worn about 8 million times) down the front diving for a ball, in the process exposing myself to the Christian mothers watching the match. They immediately whip out their cell phones to call their lawyers to file for divorce from their husbands.
2002: Hundreds of nude Jumbos run past a trustees dinner at President Bacow's house. Endowment goes down; tuition goes up.
2004: Janet Jackson entertains America during the Super Bowl.
2004: Two of my housemates have to run around the house naked after losing in Beirut and failing to get a rerack (well, one runs, one struts).
See, you can learn a lot about the present from history. Historically, in many Central and South American cultures, the winners of sporting events gained power in society, and thus got the girls. See how far we've come: back then, winning the World Series would put you in charge and get you girls; now, it only gets you girls.
And sportswriting doesn't. So I'm putting it on hold next semester to go to Prague, missing out on my Eagles winning the Super Bowl to find out just how much the rest of the world hates us. Stay beautiful.
