Remember when you were young and it was summer time, and you would come in after a long day of playing ball in the yard, or swimming, or fishing, or smoking refer in your friends corvette that one summer? You'd come in the house and there would sit your mother with a cold, COLD glass of lemonade or a popsicle or even a fudge sickle that looked so good it almost couldn't be true. She made you feel like everything would always be sunshinie and always be okay.
And remember that time when you and johnny from down the block were ramping bikes and you fell and broke your arm? Your mom would take you home from the hospital and wrap you in a protective world of video games, pb&j and pizza, making you feel like everything was going to be okay?
That's the point: my mom and your mom alike are designed by nature to make us feel like everything will be okay.
Then, THEN we grew up, and we started cheering for Mississippi State. And when basketball season came around we get excited for what the season may hold. And every year heartbreak ensues, and our instincts kick in to look for some reassurance, but there is none. No sir/mam, because this one mom can't help us out with. We pleaded with her over and over but she kept telling us "I can't teach the motion offense son. I can't help this team," but we didn't believe her. Then as season after season of the same teasing torment went on, we realized, mom was right.
So as we go through this trying 2011-2012 season; a season that was once, like so many others, filled with all the promises of potential NCAA glory, we must remember this: it isn't the team's fault for playing bad this year. It isn't Coach Stansbury's fault for doing a poor job coaching. It isn't even the Hump hype man's fault for lacking at being decent at "hyping."
Nope, this is all mom's fault. You conditioned us to think it was going to be okay always, and then we fell in love with Mississippi State basketball, and well, it hasn't been okay ever since.
*Note: no individual mothers are being singled out in this piece. Mothers are gifts to us all, so please do not take your Mississippi State basketball-laced anger out on her. She's sweet and this isn't really her fault at all. But we, for entertainment purposes, thought we'd blame it on her. We're sorry. Please don't tell our own mothers about this.