The Wake

Dear Bob Bruininks and Joel Maturi,

This is the University of Minnesota, okay? We invented basketball. I believe it was in the autumn of 1876. And in a barn, no less! Basketball is hard enough, but those pioneers had goats, chickens and cows setting up shop at the top of the key. Dung everywhere you stepped. Have you ever bounced a basketball in dung? It doesn’t work, doesn’t work at all. And yet, basketball was invented here, at the U.

The three-point line? Our idea. Michael Jordan? Our idea. Duke? Our idea. Point shaving? Our idea. Do these names mean anything to you: Rick Rickert, Kris Humphries … wait, who are they?

For our drunkenly studious enrollment, this current crop of “basketball teams” is utterly unacceptable. Let’s not bother talking about the rats deserting the sinking ship named Pam Borton.

Rats! All of you, Rats!

I have bigger fish to fry. A fish named Monson. This guy, with his “good academic standing” and “high graduation rate”…You aren’t running the engineering department Danny boy. It’s a basketball program. Pay players, plan boat trips, get Jan Gangelhoff back here writing those transcendent term papers of hers. For the love of almighty Dylan, do something! I know what should be done.

Get the great Clem Haskins back here and get him back here yesterday. Bruininks, Maturi: get on your hands and knees; beg, pray, offer frankincense and myrrh, or dare I say sexual favors, whatever it takes! Bring back Clem.

Clem is a full-fledged, unequivocal, bona fide winner. Vince Lombardi, Red Auerbach, Casey Stengel and Clem Haskins are on the Mt. Rushmore of coaches. John Wooden would shit in his depends if he had the basketball IQ of Clem Haskins. And because of some small petty insignificant minuscule cheating scandal we let him go!? For shame University of Minnesota. For shame.

Did Clem have his players caring about, non-important, frivolous issues like homework or obeying the law? Hell no. He cared about one thing, and one thing only, damn it! Winning. And he got us to the holiest of lands—the Final Four—a land that makes Mecca look like a dump filled with baby diapers, rotten eggs and maggot-filled raccoon carcasses.

Even in my most psychopathic, delusional drunken states I wouldn’t bother dreaming that Monson could somehow, someway, get Minnesota to the Final Four. What’s he going to do, play by the rules? You think Dan Monson has the mental or testicular fortitude to doctor S.A.T. scores? You think Dan has the know-how to hire paper writers and test takers? Dan would rather have the team study, learn and become educated than do their damn jobs: beating Iowa to the boards, trapping Indiana near the sidelines, and urinating across the Madison campus. Actually that last one is all of our jobs, and we’ve been slacking, people. Get to it.

Clem Haskins is a winner, not a pussy. He’ll smack around some professors—tenures be damned! He’ll write some term papers — the best darn term papers the U has seen in 30 years! He’ll pay top high school recruits to come here for two years — capitalism at it’s finest! That is because Clem knows how to win with the 3 P’s: pillaging, plundering and philandering. Pillaging the booster’s checkbooks, plundering the academic integrity of the school, and philander just about anyone and anything you see.

Monson just philanders himself. And we don’t need a coach who philanders himself. We need a winner. We need Clem Haskins.