The Fox and Herd

Michael Black
Contributing Writer

0900 7 January 2012 The Hub Saturday clear and sunny

The Thundering Herd are about to stomp them some Kitty Katz. I arrive at The Hub and the first person I see is Moose, his head stuck inside the remote speaker system also known as a Jeep. We hi-dee-ho each other and stroll up to the doors which are yet to be opened to The Faithful. A half dozen or so others are unfashionably early and waiting though Moose has an excuse. He’s working. Radio Fargo-Moorhead, including The Fox 107.9 on which he is producer and on-air drive-time personality (that’s a lot of hyphens-in-one-sentence), is throwing a championship bash for those of us not-lucky-enough-to-get-tickets for or unwilling-to-go to Frisco, TX to watch The Bison defense throttle the high-powered Sam Houston offense and win their first ever D-I National Championship. The doors click open and we pour—well… if nine people can pour— in.

First things first. I move through the venue selecting my squares on the quarter/halftime/quarter/end of game numbered grids. There are four stations under the conglomerate banner here today so I am a busy square dancer. Dave and Robbie, two other personalities and close personal friends of mine, greet me warmly and we exchange Happy New Years, blah, blah, blah. I spot my spot—a booth in the corner—and pitch camp. Backpack stashed under the jacket, newspaper on the table for that “lived in look” and I am off again, roaming and observing. The place starts filling up fast and the $10 breakfast buffet is a popular spot. I am semi-sickened by the odors emanating from the chafing dishes and am glad I blasted down two pieces of toast with Jif before I got there. More people and more people pass by the burly security detail and the hum of HerdMania begins to grow. I nestle into my nest and scour the newspaper (such as it is). To my chagrin, the I-Beam has closed! WTF? Now where am I supposed to take my Attorney from Phoenix when he is in town? Eide-Baily doubles in size via merger. Suits making more money; same old. And Bison Coverage. Wall to Wall Bison coverage. I will be glad when this week is over and all this football hoopla ends. And I mean the coming week. Because just because it’s over, doesn’t mean it’s over. Glowing articles commending our Gladiators, Emperors, Boosters, Ticket Takers, Parking Lot Attendants will cascade over us like a pile of buffalo chips, led by the Fargo Fool-em. Wall-to-wall green and gold. Okay, you’ve earned it, enjoy and then let’s move on. Nothing to see here…

The coverage starts and I am glad I was on time. Otherwise I would have missed some doofus reporter telling us he was eating french fries made from North Dakota potatoes. Whew! Now that’s in-depth reporting; well done, well done, Laddy! Then seemingly interminable yakking by two dudes giving us “in-depth” analysis: “They gotta’ play tough D.” “Turnovers will determine the outcome.” “Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins.” Glad we cleared that up. Former players stop by with puzzling looks on their faces and green and gold on their bodies. They don’t seem sure why they are there and what this guy is asking them or what he wants them to do. Get in formation and take a few snaps? I am reading a book, thankfully, while this is going on so I am not really sure what was actually said or done but I think I encapsulated the highlights above.

Game time is drawing nigh and every table in the place is full. By now Lindsay knows that I am just drinking water, no ice with a lemon wedge and she keeps ‘em coming. I arrange my table to look “occupado”, spreading the paper just so, placing my glass just over there and leaving my reading glass case right here. Time to check my grid (grits?). 9/2, 7/0 and 6/4. The good news is that I have a nice array of numbers. The bad news is that only one combo is likely to score. Eh…

Uh oh; Dave has a vulva. No wait…uvula. No, that’s that weird thing at the back of your mouth. Not a Volvo…oh, hell, those horns that make such a racket at the World Cup Soccer games. I ask Dave, between “waaaaaaaaaaaahs” what the name of those things are and he is further adrift than I am. He asks another producer at the table and he mumbles something about a didgeridoo which we all know is wrong. Well, whatever they are called, A LOT of them are showing up and I am afraid. I slink back to my campsite and yank out my book, drowning my sorrows in Lindsay’s water. She is a charming young woman who has two young kids and she tells me she is working until 0200 TOMORROW! Holy Hell! I make a mental note to tip her well. She tells me the level of drunkenness is low just now but there is a high chance of extreme intoxication on the radar. Come to think of it, she would make a very good Weather Girl. Easy on the Eyes. She flits off servicing the increasing throng and, hopefully, pacing herself. A 17 hour shift? Even I never did that…well, maybe once or twice…but then that was recreational!

The pulse of the place quickens, the low murmur begins to come to a hum and then the uvulas start blaring…A lot. Of course I have ear plugs with me at all times (two sets) but I am so far removed from the bustling crowd that I determine they won’t be needed. The talking heads on the screen now have ties on so that means we have Gone National. ESPN2 has yanked the mics from the French fry analyzing local yokels and we are about to begin. KICKOFF! The decibels in the room are now at a steady 60 as the standing room crowd stand looking outward, ever outward. It is a peculiar sight to see two people standing nearly back to back but looking directly opposite, North and South in this case, at the television monitor showing exactly the same thing on the walls (there are 3.2M of them at The Hub). I think it is sort of like the International Dateline where it is Monday day here and Tuesday just over there. At any rate, this crowd is Interested.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Football is…ah, hell. I am tired of saying that. I will just say that I am not a fan. However, it is nearly on a par with baseball as far as book reading goes. Not quite but close. You can read an entire book at a baseball game and not miss a thing. That is the beauty of baseball. I like baseball. For football though, you have to look up, oh, every minute or so because then they are playing. Otherwise they are conferring and moving on and off the field (what exactly is a grid iron anyway; can you press shirts with it?), strategizing, scratching (though baseball has them on that one by a mile), scraping Fallen Warriors off the grass, celebrating, penalizing, measuring things, reviewing things, all manner of things, taking “time outs” (I used to get them at Holy Spirit Parochial Grade School all the time; you would think I would like football just based on that), marking off (that’s bad; not at all the same as a discount at Herberger’s), doing “further review”, icing the kicker…the list just goes on and on.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, reading. So I manage to get 70 pages read AND learn that NDSU coach Craig Bohl flies his own plane. I wonder if the university bought his like they did The President? Cripes, can you trust The Coach with a $3.2M King Air B200? That’s a lot of plane and I am not sure that the flying school in Detroit Lakes is set up to school you on that one. Besides, The President NEEDS a fast airplane to get around. Who in their right mind would expect The President to drive a car to Bismarck? “Ha, ha, ha, that‘s a good one…,” he basically replied when asked about having the University pony up $550,000 a year so he wouldn’t have to pump his own gas in Jamestown. Well, what his mouthpiece really said was “…(it) would be an inefficient use of his [President Bresciani’s] time” not to use a $3.2M airplane to go to Bismarck. (Obviously not an Economist.) Oh, and he is going to Bismarck to tell legislators he (The University) needs, wait for it… more money! Oh, and he is telling the taxpayers and tuition payers (parents) that he, wait again… needs more money? So tuition is going to continue to spiral upward and out of reach for many. But hey, Daddy needs a new pair of…um…Beechcrafts, I guess. If it’s good enough for the Royal Swedish Air Force, it’s good enough for Dean Wormer, err, El Presidente Bresciani.

This has me thinking of last fall when I was sort of going to school at NDSU. I walked through many a parking lot going hither and yon. What impressed me most about the university was not the ivy covered walls or hot co-eds, but the number of “SF#’s” licensed cars and trucks. Turns out “SF” means “Bresciani’s Cars,” or something like that. Tens of cars, dozens of trucks, scores, hundreds, thousands, ACRES of late model SF cars. “What in hell does a university need with so many cars and trucks?”, undergrad Mike pondered as he considered the $100 per credit hour tuition rate. Mature Adult Mike replied, “Well, they are professionals and they know what they need.” And what President Bresciani needs most is, apparently, more money for cars and jets. Hmm, has he been watching MTV’s Cribs again?

The Volvos have been blaring almost non-stop. No, wait, not Volvo, not uvula, not vulva …vuvuzela. That’s it. Well, they were loud. And the Bizon won. And President Bresciani still needs your money. And Lindsay still has 11 hours to go on her “double shift”. And I need to get to the Fryin’ Pan for some dinner. Go Bison. Bison Went. And so did I…

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)