Easter Sunday

The most fascinating thing to me about the NCAA tournament to date, in this day and age of religious fanaticism and overreaching causes (I mean, come on, does a fish really need to have "rights"), is that no one raised a stink about playing on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

I'm the last one to take a stand either way since I believe a nation is best served by the separation of Church and sports (yes, I'm talking to you Cris Carter and Randall Cunningham). I just found it interesting that no one on the Catholic side of the ball (and Lord knows there were enough of them in the tournament this year besides just Notre Dame and Marquette) or anyone affiliated with these schools, spoke out about the tournament taking place at the tail end of Holy Week.

I realize the Archbishop of Rome has been pretty busy lately finding new sins with which to tax my Catholic guilt, including pollution (I know I'm a sinner but every morning when I start my car??) but he is missing the one event during Holy Week that combines a "who's who" of sins, including gambling, drinking, profanity and the offensive foul. That last one is the one that gets me the most. If you watched this weekend, you saw more charging fouls than a fraud conference put on by Captial One. These kids put their head down and their best street ball foot forward to recklessly drive for a "me" basket. What happened to an offensive scheme? What happened to a game plan? Davidson won that game against Georgetown because they were more in control. Memphis almost lost to Mississippi State for the same reasons. Yes, an offensive foul should be considered a sin--how do you commit a foul when trying to score? It's basically the equivalent of giving to charity using money robbed from an old lady.

But I digress.

Back to Easter weekend. Again, I'm not advocating that anyone should consider not playing the games on Easter. I just can't believe that some do-gooder blowhard didn't come up with the lame brain idea to protest this outside all of the arenas in force on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Is society actually taking a step towards being more civilized and worrying about things that really matter? But wait, there's the whole St. Patrick's Day fiasco that brings me back to earth. Local church officials declared St. Patrick's Day needed to be celebrated earlier in the weekend instead of the Monday of Holy Week. If St. Patrick's Day is that important for the local church to protest and that took place on the MONDAY of Holy Week, why isn't anyone taking a stand against the tournament?

Maybe it's because the Archbishop has Notre Dame and Marquette in the church office pool.

Peace,
Reg