The Sox were shut down by the mighty Devil Rays today in about 2 hours. But at least... at least, hmmm, at least the season is a week away. One week!!!!!!!!!!!! And I rarely use multiple exclamation points.

My dad made a few bucks today because a Louisville basketball player missed a shot at the end of their game vs. West Virginia. Nothing extraordinary about that, unless you consider that the shot was a dunk attempt. Here's the full story:

I was gonna go to the casino with a friend of mine, but this friend understandably couldn't go due to a family issue. So I just chilled at my parents' house, where I'd stopped on my way to the casino. My dad, who'd planned on giving me some money to gamble (for him), took that money and put it on West Virginia, getting 8 1/2 points, against Louisville.

So we sat and rooted for the underdog. WV actually had a twenty point lead in the first half. In other words, Louisville would have had to outscore them by 29 points the rest of the way for my dad to not cover the spread and lose the bet.

When it was 77-77 with seconds to play, he was guaranteed a win--unless it went to OT. It did go to OT.

Louisville ended up going up by seven points with under a minute to play. A barnburner--if only to the gamblers. As the clock ticked under 30 seconds, Louisville tried for a coffin-nailing jam. Imagine all the people who had bet on Louisville, having seen their team cut a 28 1/2 point deficit to a half point deficit, watching as their guy was about to slam one home for the 1 1/2 point comeback victory. And the guy frigging misses it.

Louisville did get the rebound off the botched slam, but held the ball, and fortunately for my dad, West Virginia elected not to foul, and the clock ran out.

This gave me a great idea.

The Oddsmakers Classic Sports Network.

They could show old football and basketball games that went down to the wire (when the point spread is factored in). The video would be the same, but the new announcers would announce the game as if one team actually had those extra points that Vegas had assigned at the time. They'd start off the game with a graphic on the screen showing, let's say, "Falcons 0, 49ers 0." Then the announcer would say, "...and let's put up 6 1/2 for Atlanta" *ding.* And it would say "Falcons 6.5, 49ers 0," and then the game would start. Maybe a smaller graphic could show the "real" score.

Then they'd start announcing the game as if the Vegas score were the true score. And act like they're stumped as to why the players "seemingly keep forgetting the score!"

Think of the possibilities. There must be hundreds of games that came down to the wire point spread-wise that people don't even know about. They could have a "Meaningless Field Goal Weekend." And commercials that say, "Tune in tonight at 7, and watch the fantastic finish from 1985, as Moses Malone goes in for an uncontested dunk at the buzzer to beat the Sonics by a half point!" And you'd see Moses sadly walk off the court as the Sonics inexplicably celebrate the last-second "loss."

There was something like this on SNL in the eighties, now that I think about it.