06.30.08 JAY BILAS IS THE BEER BARON

College kids, as they are wont to do, create drinking games based on events they watch as a collective. It's a way to make some fun out of all the drinking they're doing anyway. In the case of the NBA Draft, a few have sprung up seizing on Jay Bilas' frequent describing players as "long" or having "upside". The ESPN analyst has caught wind of such games and enforced a self-imposed moratorium on using the trigger words. Because he's a dick.

I am aware of the drinking games that are based upon the use of such terms, and I did my level best to reduce binge drinking across the country. We all have to do what we can. Instead of "long," I used the terms "length," "stretch," "elongated," "extend" and the ever-popular "considerable linear extent in space." With one player, I stated that his arms "extend beyond normal or moderate limits."

Whaddayaknow? Someone who went to Duke is an uptight cockcramp. Also, people who use the idiom "level best" in conversation are only able to do so because they've tightened their sphincter to an airlock that would rival a space shuttle. Most drinking games based around television broadcasts have a wide range of things that require the viewer to drink. Seldom are they based on one talking head's commentary. So while Bilas may have stopped someone from having eight beers as opposed to, say, having nine, him getting drunker and drunker on his own sanctimony is an addiction to goes unchecked.