My Magnum Postpus

There is a lot that one could say in trying to determine the winner of this weekend’s game about matchups and schemes and other sport things (insightful), but I am not a sports guy, I am a BLOGGER. So rather than watch footage and do sports research (boring, yo), I will use the quintessential 21st century tool to solve disputes: the Wikipedias.
It only seems plausible that the school with the most interesting and diverse alumni base would win the game. Luckily there are massive articles listing “People” for each school. And because we can only talk about Greg Oden making McFlurries for so long, I decided to expand it to all Buckpeople and Tropersons of interest. IT’S MY BLOG AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO.


Okay, so without further ado, the first ever Football Competition Anticipation Speculation: A WikiBattleia.

Greatest Contribution to the Arts:

• tOSU: Jim Jinkins. Jenkins created Doug, Saturday morning’s answer to Midwestern dullness. I watched this show when I was young, although I don’t remember anything except that Doug’s best friend was named Skeet Skeet Skeet Skeet Skeeter.
• USC: Art Clokey. Creator of arguably our most iconic green, claymation, anthropomorphic rectangle, Clokey famously created Gumby by accidentally smashing a ball of clay under a textbook, slapping some eyes and a smirk on it, and exchanging that at the bank for tens of millions of dollars.
• Winner: Look at legacies: Gumby has spawned a bad pizza chain, a military mantra, and the non-fatsuit peak of Eddie Murphy’s career. Doug gave us “ironic” hipster shit like this. USC 1, tOSU 0.

Greatest Contribution to the Internet:

• tOSU: Larry Sanger. Someday when they give out the first Papa Johns.com Presents Nobel Prize for Internet, Sanger will be on the short list. He’s the co-founder of Wikipedia, which every day teaches me about things like this, this, and this.
• USC: Chris DeWolfe. Co-creator of MySpace. I’m sure in the cryo-future, we will look back and appreciate the modern advances given to us by MySpace, but until then it is the worst.
• Winner: Let’s be real--the entire premise of this post is based around using Wikipedia. You try and write something this insightful (OPINION) on MySpace. USC 1, tOSU 1.

Greatest Contribution to Science

• tOSU: Roy Plunkett. Plunkett’s invention of Teflon may be one of the most influential and versatile of our time. From modern cookware, to ball bearings, and to Gore-Tex, we see the impact of Plunkett’s virtually frictionless substance every day.
• USC: Richard Knerr. Dude invented the freaking hula-hoop.
• Winner: He invented the Frisbee too? Shit, son. USC 2, tOSU 1.

Greatest Contribution to Raising America’s Children

• tOSU: R.L. Stine. Author of the Goosebumps series, Stine basically taught me as a kid to stay away from ventriloquist dummies, Polaroid cameras, piano lessons, summer camp, theme parks, cuckoo clocks, basements, snowmen, and the rest.
• USC: LeVar Burton. Was Reading Rainbow not the greatest show ever? Plus this from Wikipedia: “Some of the celebrities who have read on the show…Flavor Flav…and Hulk Hogan.”
• Winner: You could argue that Burton will be remembered more for being on some nerdy show for nerds, while RL Stine will forever be the guy who kept me from sleeping, ages 8-11.USC 2, tOSU 2.

Greatest Contribution to Ruining America’s Past Time

• tOSU: George Steinbrenner. Most of what I know about Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, I’ve gleaned from Seinfeld. So basically, he only eats calzones, wears Lou Gehrig's pants, and has no face. But really, he’s known for overseeing a clean batch of players and allowing fans to contribute substantially more of their income to the team they love.
• USC: Frank McCourt. McCourt has only been the owner of the Dodgers for five years, so he hasn’t had much time to destroy the franchise. But you can’t blame him for trying, with a 50% increase in parking costs this year, this guy, and especially this guy.
• Winner: Screw the Yankees. USC 2, tOSU 3.

Greatest Contribution to Ruining My Saturdays

• tOSU: Kirk Herbstreit. Brent Musburger really has the worst life. Last year he had to travel to Lubbock three times. And every Saturday night, he falls asleep Herbstreit laying in the hotel bed next to him, drifting off muttering about “heart” and “grit” and “who wants it more.”
• USC: Petros Papadakis. The worst thing about “down years” in the Pac-10 is that ESPN won’t air USC games against crap teams, which means we have to watch them on FSN WITH PETROS YELLING AT YOU FOR 4 HOURS.
• Winner: While the powers that be have made sure never to let Petros out of the greater Los Angeles area, we can’t be so lucky on the Herbside. USC 2, tOSU 4.

Greatest Contribution to Awful Animated Movies

• tOSU: Chris Wedge. After achieving “critical” “acclaim” with his animated film Ice Age, Wedge proceeded to direct Robots, a !funny movie starring post-funny Mel Brooks, never-funny Robin Williams, and how-do-people-like-him-funny Drew Carey.
• USC: Robert Zemeckis. Zemeckis directed the great Back to the Future films, Forest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Then he retired! Haha no, then he ruined movies. Inexplicably, Zemeckis has decided that when we go to the movies we want to watch 2 hours of uncanny valley Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie.
• Winner: Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol featuring something like 4 different motion captured Jim Carreys looks to force officials to cancel Christmas 2009. USC 3, tOSU 4.

Miscellaneous Achievement

• tOSU: Yang Huiyan. Yang is China’s wealthiest person, with a net worth of $1.6 billion dollars, and has the distinction of being only 28.
• USC: Grace Quek. Wikipedia says it better than I ever can: “Pornographic actress, famous for engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 men over a ten-hour period in January 1995, setting a world record, with the resulting footage being packaged as The World's Biggest Gang Bang.”
• Winner: No contest. USC 13, tOSU 4.

Well what a surprise. In a USC sports blog, written by USC enthusiasts, USC happens to win this totally made up and arbitrary contest we created. And they covered the spread.