New Wave B-Ball

I was on a walk the other day, when I saw a sign that said, "Go IWU B-Ball Team! You Can Do It!"

At first this struck me as a nice gesture, a sign of good fortune even, for the IWU B-ball team. Then it occurred to me: Which B-ball is being supported here? I realize that I shouldn't have such confusion over such a simple reduction of letters (for convenience reasons I'm sure) but I was stumped.

B-ball could mean any spell of things. For example, when I was a young lad, probably six or seven years old, I had, or I thought I had, lots of friends. At the end of the year, I would always have them sign my yearbook, as a sign of goodwill I guess. When I read these entries later in the day, I realized that not only were elementary students short willed as far as leaving lasting mementos are concerned, but they are also vague and ambiguous. There was one entry that said, "Thomas. You are good at B-ball. HAKAS." (HAKAS here meaning 'Have a kick ass summer.' We thought we were being sneaky by using this acronym, but the teachers soon found out and we were reduced to HAGS, 'have a great summer.' Lame.) I don't recall who wrote me this small and less than fantastic message, but it got me to wondering: which b-ball was he/she referring? how many had seen me experiment with said b-ball? I went home that day quite distraught.

This brings us to the present: what is b-ball? I have asked several sources, and I have gotten several answers. The first and most obvious is basketball, a sport known for it's shortening of words, I suppose. A close second is baseball, but how many people outwardly would right, "Go IWU B-Ball..." in support of such a mundane, albeit boring sport that said university isn't even very good at?

My last option is to make up a new sport with "B" as a new word other than basket or base. The first creation that i came up with was Bassball, a sort of sport where the objective is to finagle a live bass from point "a" to point "b" without dropping said floppy fish. Bassball could also refer to a bunch of bass players blocking a bunch of flying objects with their larger than life instruments; think tennis ball gun, like in American Gladiators.

(Thirdly, I think Bassball could be any ball sport with a soundtrack that has a ridiculous amount of bass, bass that vibrates the ground and makes it near impossible to stand or navigate a field without falling. Imagine what tennis would look like...)

My favorite new b-ball sport, though, is Boogieball. Known for it's disco inspired uniforms, Boogieball is set to the music of the late seventies, where disco and afros were king. The objective is to be as "fly" as possible, carrying a large beach ball (or other ball in equal size) across a field of players who are dressed equally as flashy, their main objective to out dance the ball carrier. I realize that this game would not only be slow, but laborious, as the players would have to out dance each other in order to throw the beach-ball sized ball into a net guarded by the "sugardaddy," (equivalent to the goalie) who is the largest most intimidating member of the team.

I predict that scores would rarely go into the upper single digits.

Boogieball is the future of B-ball, folks; the confusion of b-ball will be no more. Just as soon as I find more Bee Gees and sequins...

-t.