Your Chance to Help Thabeet the UConn Huskies

I’m writing this latest installment from the comfort of my parents’ house. I arrived in New York for the holidays several days ago, and I could not wait to get here. Prior to landing in Newark, I had gone the entire holiday season without hearing this...


Apparently this little holiday gem has yet to venture west of the Delaware Water Gap. Next December I will not rest until everyone I know in Chicago has experienced the joy of singing and clapping while Dominic begins to dance). But now that Christmas has passed, I’ve turned my attention to one of my favorite times of the year: the advent of conference play in college hoops.

As most of you know, I’m an unabashed and avid fanatic of sub-par, underachieving D-I basketball teams. Fortunately, as a Fordham season ticket holder, I’m rarely disappointed in my quest for perpetually putrid basketball. I don’t understand why you’d want to be a faceless and anonymous person in a massive crowd cheering on some powerhouse of a program when you could be one of just a few die-hards who get to sit in a half empty gym and have the whole place hear you when you tell your friends that, in addition to being a horrible official, the ref also beats his wife.

So when I began applying to graduate schools in the Mid-West, I had to do some soul searching. After all, the Mid-West is home to the behemoths of the Big 10 as well as the home of the largest fupa known to man...



Would I sell out my mid-major conference roots to seek out the immediate gratification of one of the several at large bids that the Big-10 pulls in on a yearly basis? Or would I once again cast my lot with a down and out program, hoping to get in on the ground floor before a meteoric rise to national prominence?

In the end, by choosing to go to DePaul, I obviously opted for the latter. I decided that my first trip to an NCAA tourney game should feel like the grand pay-off to a long and arduous journey, not some trivial honor given annually (like the trophy you would get at Grand Slam for having your birthday party there. Even as an adolescent, I was baffled by this. What exactly did the birthday boy achieve? What kind of coddling culture do we live in when kids get trophies just for surviving the year?). Although I should mention that my decision was made significantly less complicated by the rejection letters that I received from each of the Big-10 schools I applied to. Perhaps, through my statement of purpose essay, they could sense my reticence to join their athletic juggernauts. So with my decision made for me by various admissions boards across the region, I prepared myself for some more of the mediocrity I’d grown accustomed to in the Bronx.

I got my first taste of this mediocrity just a few days ago when the Blue Demons took on the Bible-thumping, rapture-loving, Crazy Christians of Liberty University. Our opponents’ dogmatic approach to higher education proved to be fertile ground for the jeers of the DePaul band and student section. After each DePaul basket, members of the band would shout, “Who’s your Messiah now?” The Liberty bench seemed pretty confused by this chant. Perhaps, like me, they were wondering if the band was aware of the fact that St. Vincent de Paul and the Catholics at my school worship the same God as them. And then, in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, one particularly slovenly member of the band mocked the Flames for their well-known chastity: “You’re entire bench has never been laid,” he shouted. I suppressed the urge to inform him that this was by choice, whereas in his case, it was most likely due to the flatulence resulting from his tuba and his nachos.

Considering the jeers being hurled at the Liberty players, it became abundantly clear that if my school is going to take the next step towards being a force in the Big East, I would have to step up my game in the stands (The Blue Demon barely held on to win in the waning seconds against this inferior opponent despite a barrage of 3's by Golem's little brother).



If I am able to elevate the level of smack talk, hopefully this will result in quality wins against tough Big East opponents. So when #2 ranked UCONN comes to town in January, I want to be ready with a slew of chants far more clever than ones that were broken out during the Liberty game.

For this reason, I am calling upon the faithful readers of JohnClaytonisaRobot to pool their creative efforts and submit chants that will undoubtedly rattle UCONN’s 7’3” Hasheem Thabeet and his teammates (Staff members at JC/Robot like to use a play on words using the center’s name. “Hasheem Can’t Thabeet the Blue Demons,” is a clean and politically correct example. But you are by no means limited to this style, nor are you restricted to clean and politically correct chants. Here’s the UCONN roster for inspiration as well as a link to the women's roster in case you're feeling frisky). After all suggestions are submitted via the comments section on this site, we will put the matter to a vote. The reader who creates the best chant will win an Addidas DePaul athletics tee shirt and a free ticket to a Blue Demons game (airfare not included).