Upsets a-la-cart? People want what brings home the bacon
There was a report on NPR, probably from the Better Bacon Institute, that claimed bacon sandwiches helped neutralize the effects of a hangover.
In other words, that's why you saw Kenny Perry with a skillet this morning. He looks more likely to throw down a couple with the family than most well-toned golfers, and he surely deserved a pop or two.
In fact, Angel Cabrera looks like a guy who will toss down a bevvie or four too, and then bacon up the next day (after all, the Better Bacon Institute has powerful marketing and lobbyists).
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| Not to worry, Kenny, that feeling can be fixed with a nice bacon sandwich. (Getty Images) |
After all, this has been that kind of year. The NBA is about the Celtics, Lakers and LeBron James. The Super Bowl featured the Arizona Cardinals but was won by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The NCAA basketball champions were North Carolina and Connecticut, and the BCS was won by Florida.
And while we know the orthodoxy of modern sports -- the fans want familiar names and teams to the point where they won't watch teams that come out of nowhere -- well, the hell with the orthodoxy. Sometimes you have to open yourselves to other possibilities because the same old same old doesn't cut it every time.
Now the BCS is almost arranged to make sure there are no surprises, Utah notwithstanding. Utah was an example of both the impossibility of the preseason afterthought to win the title, and the power of the protest. In the end, though, the protest came too late, and with due respect to Orrin Hatch's legislative grandstanding on behalf of his own constituency, it won't change the way the system is skewed toward the heavyweights. Not until after 2015, anyway.
The same is true of the NCAA basketball tournaments. Between the pod system and the selection committee's ongoing disdain for mid-major non-champions, the path is actually clearer for the biggest names than ever before. North Carolina earned its title to be sure, but there is no denying the bracket is more constricted than ever.
And golf ... well, golf is actually the one place where this can happen because while we want the tour to be only about Tiger Woods, here's a fact: He hasn't won half the tournaments he has entered, and he's by far the best of his generation.
Which is why, in the end, we could get Kenny Perry and Angel Cabrera on the final hole and whacking the ball to hell and back -- because even with Tiger Woods, golf is perhaps the last sport that allows for alternate possibilities, despite our couch-based demand that the biggest names win everything all the time.
And we say this acknowledging that Perry has been among the best players on the tour over the past year. And that Cabrera is the only active player other than He Who Must Be Obeyed to have both a Masters and a U.S. Open title.
We would like to think there is always room for the uber-upset, but there isn't. Indeed, the chat shows are always incredibly skewed toward the few familiar teams and names, because the people who define those shows (the producers, not the on-air chimps) believe the familiar is the safest and most populated ground, and therefore the one that gets the most attention. It's how we end up getting sick of Brett Favre and Terrell Owens and Alex Rodriguez and the other perennial hot-listers. Even when presented with surprise names and teams, we are given the same old same old, because the same old same old pays someone's bills.
Thus, Kenny Perry and Angel Cabrera, who went to the trouble of giving us a brilliantly weird and dramatic Masters, will still be outsiders a year from now, because there is only room in the national consciousness for The One. Unless we embrace the idea of ordering off another part of the menu, we will end up knowing a lot about a little and almost nothing about the rest of the universe.
Starting with Kenny Perry and the bacon sandwich to end all bacon sandwiches.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
