We don't mind a little scalping in Indiana; it's good, healthy capitalism, if a little blue-collar. But we gave it up for the Final Four, and now we might have to put it on hold for one more event:
The City-County Council has voted to make it illegal to scalp tickets to the Super Bowl, part of an effort by the city to bring the game to the city in 2011.
A basketball player succumbs to the dreaded Kerry-Coulter Syndrome, which causes its victims to tell a joke badly or tell the wrong one in the wrong place or at the wrong time:
CLEVELAND
After 10 years, The Journal Gazette editorial page says it was wrong and reverses its opinion, but its reason for doing so isn't exactly clear to me:
Indiana might not lose its very soul if it breaks up the state high school boys and girls basketball tournaments. But it would lose at least as much as it would gain by going to tournaments based on school enrollments.”
In most careers, if you are obsessed with the job, spend too much time at the office and keep taking work home with you, these days you are likely to be told to get some perspective, put some balance in your life, as in, "You wouldn't put 'Should have spent more time at the office' on your tombstone. would you?" But if you are an NFL quarterback, you are praised for your drive and focus:
OK, that's it. Gov. Mitch Daniels stayed too long in Washington and is clearly no longer a real Hoosier. For their food Super Bowl bet, the governor of Illinois is offering up, among other things, a true Chicago delicacy -- deep-dish pizza. But nowhere in Daniels' package is one of Indiana's true claims to food fame -- the wondrous breaded tenderloin.
When I first heard about Barbaro, my reaction was probably about the same as everyone else's, one of great sadness. He was a magnificent animal who did what he was bred and trained to do about as well as it could be done. But when I read something so over the top like this, it makes me cringe a little:
If only we'd had more time with you. You were beautiful. You were brave.
You were the best.
You enriched us all, in the nanosecond that you flashed across our universe.
There may be more Colts fans than Bears fans in this area, but I suspect the Bears fans might be a little more intense. Our weekly Web poll last week was on the Super Bowl, and when I left work on Friday, it was running 70-some percent to 20-some percent in favor of the Colts. When I came in this morning, there were 348 votes, 76 percent for the Bears. Little bit of networking going on there, folks? Calling each other up to urge a Colts smackdown?
What a scary thought for Indiana: Have the Colts carried football past basketball for popularity? But the story is really about pro sports, so it's not really a fair question. If high school and college basketball ever fall victim to pro football in Indiana, we will know life as we know it has come to and end.
With Indianapolis in the Super Bowl, you knew there had to be the obligatory "Indiana is just a bunch of backward hicks" playground taunt. Here it is, from a Chicago Sun-Times columnist who apparently made someone laugh back in high school and has never gotten over it:
This is one of those reports with big numbers that sound impressive until you realize it's mostly fiction, the result of accountants just doing silly calculations to get attention:
