Supposedly, if you tell people your birthday wish, it won't come true. Well, on my 19th birthday, I'm compelled to tell you my wishes.
As I turn 19, I wish that WEEI didn't exist (for those of you who don't know, WEEI is Boston sports talk radio). There's no easy way to say this, so I'll be blunt: The people who call into WEEI's talk shows are society's "bottom of the pot." I woke up to WEEI for four years of high school, and in all that time, I heard maybe four semi-insightful comments from callers.
The hosts aren't much better. John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, the morning show hosts, once called an African-American student a "METCO gorilla," yet they remain on the air. "The Big Show," which is the afternoon program, consists of four or five guys yelling unintelligible insults at each other. Callers spend more time discussing host Glen Ordway's weight than they do discussing sports topics. At night, Mikey Adams generally produces a respectable program, but the callers to his show tend to be equally uninformed as those of any other show. So why should the station exist?
I wish that someone would uncover a recruiting scandal at an SEC football program. Every year, fans of SEC teams complain about how hard it is to go undefeated in the SEC and that their one- or two-loss team is actually better than an undefeated team from the Big Ten or the Pac-10.
You know what? They're probably right. You know what else? They brought it on themselves. I'm sorry, SEC fans, that your teams didn't make the title game. Maybe if your coaches didn't need to give recruits Cadillacs in order to compete with the other schools in the conference, the SEC wouldn't be such a tough place to play. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure that this goes on at just about every college football power. It's just that the SEC is the biggest violator, and thus, it's the most likely to spur a major clean-up effort.
I wish that people would stop thinking that they can run the Boston Red Sox better than Theo Epstein. Folks, this guy is a Yale graduate who is one of the top five baseball minds in the game. Under his direction, the Sox have made the playoffs three out the past four seasons. You know how many times they made the playoffs in the four years before that? Once, in 1999. Theo knows exponentially more about baseball than just about all of us. And while part of the fun of the Hot Stove season is to speculate and second-guess, Sox fans need to adhere to a simple principle: Trust Theo. He brought us our first World Series in 86 years! Cut the guy some slack.
On a related note, I wish that every team in baseball was forced to adhere to a strict salary cap. Every team, that is, except for the Red Sox. Why? So we can always win - obviously.
I wish that Carmelo Anthony were half as charismatic as Lebron and D-Wade, so we could actually have a new Michael, Larry and Magic in the NBA.
I wish that Charlie Weis would eat Pete Carroll.
I wish that NASCAR was fun to watch.
I wish that Brady Quinn will not get drafted by the Oakland Raiders because then I'll have to root for Al Davis.
I wish that fight promoters would stop trying to get the public excited about foreign champions that no one can recognize and throw Latrell Sprewell in the ring. I'd pay $49.99 to watch Spree "feed his family" on Pay-Per-View.
I wish that John Madden, Brent Musberger and Tim McCarver would simply get on a ship (? la the ending of "Lord of the Rings") and sail off, never to be seen again.
I wish that I could watch hockey. It seems really cool, but for some reason I just can't get into it.
I wish I could find a way to end this column. Funny thing though: After watching the Notre Dame-USC game, I found one. I wish that a crater would open up from hell, swallow USC and force that stupid Trojan warrior into the Devil's servitude for all eternity.
How's that for an ending?
Will Herberich is a freshman. He can be reached at William.Herberich@tufts.edu.
