Time to Believe The 'Great Light Blue Hype'

"Don't Believe the Hype," Public Enemy front-man Chuck D warned some 15 years ago.

Well, I disagree when it comes to the world of sports.

I learned my lesson two summers ago.

It was in that summer that I helped coach a soccer team of 7-year-old boys and girls. Things were going great until one kid who was missing not three but four front teeth bet me that he could do a bicycle kick.

I thought that he, a mere 7-year-old, could never pull off a bicycle kick. Thirteen seconds later, my summer took a turn for the worse. Not only did the kid pull off the kick, à la Pele, he added insult to injury by doing his best impression of Ty Cobb, cleating his spikes and crushing my genitals. This counselor should not have underestimated his pupil and should have stood farther away from the kicker.

On the very dismal bright side, all the kids thought I was really funny and wanted to do the "bicycle thing" to me all summer.
I never let it happen again.

A few hours later, checking to make sure that I'd still be able to father children, I couldn't believe how horribly I'd underestimated the little tyke.

Just because he wore a Dumb and Dumber chic bowl cut, watched Dexter's Laboratory, and still believed in Santa Claus, I assumed he was incapable. He had me beaten right from the start. Despite the improbability of him pulling off a bicycle kick, he believed in himself and the hype of an indefatigable child.

In any type of athletics, be it high school, college, amateur, pro, or playground, hype is an incalculable asset. Coaches always say, just "be confident." And they are right. That advice alone wins championships.

Believing in your team, in yourself, in your bicycle kick, is sometimes all that is needed, even when the chances of pulling off your goal are slim to none.

Bill Parcells, a future Hall of Fame coach, goes to such superstitious extremes that he is reported to have gone back to a dentist's office, sat in the chair, got up and left for four Sundays in a row, simply because one Sunday he had an appointment and he won his game later that day. That's what gets him up. He believes it.

The Cincinnati Bengals are now 5-5 after upsetting the previously undefeated Kansas City Chiefs last weekend. (Which this columnist predicted. Okay, I'll stop the bragging, as I am near last place in Pixbox). Chad Johnson of the Bengals guaranteed this victory to the press days before, a bold call for a less than .500 team. Little did they know.

Sports are so competitive that athletes need to take any advantage possible. Sometimes such intense pressure leads to bad judgment in the form of grossly large muscles and an increase in baseball cap size.

That is not good.

Steroids destroy the integrity of sport, and they cheapen victory. Just ask Ben Johnson. The Canadian sprinter was stripped of his gold medal at the 1988 Olympics after testing positive for steroids.
Real winners, those that wear their victories honestly around their neck or on their finger, find rage of a different sort. In the match between two equal physical specimens, the one that genuinely thinks he can win is going to do so.

So whether you get up by counting the tattoos on your arms, chanting, cheering, slapping a big metal sign, or whatever it may be, do it.

Columbia has long been a haven of athletic mediocrity. But the times they are a-changin'.

The athletics department now reports directly to the big man himself, Lee Bollinger. Sports teams, with a few notable exceptions, are posting seasons over .500.

Women's cross country won Heptagonals and finished second at Regionals. The men's team finished second at Heps behind Steve Sundell and his new course record. The men's soccer team made a gallant run at the league title. Even our very own beloved, notorious loser, the football team, finds itself in a fight for second.
Believe the hype, my friends, because all it takes is a little hustle behind our muscle and things start to look very different.

The mentality of a winner is not arrogance, although sometimes it manifests itself as such. It's not aggression, although sometimes it also appears this way. No, the mentality of a winner is one of knowledge, the knowledge that you are damn good, and that hell is going to freeze over before you back down.

We have long been a school of academic winners; it's been our bread and butter since the institution opened.

Finally, that wealth looks like its going to spread.

At the end of the day, even if Columbia never wins another Rose Bowl or another Cristina Teuscher never graces our pools, the least that we can do is push our bowl cut to the side, wind up, and kick a damned good bicycle kick.

One never knows what giant might fall.

So take that, Flavor Flave.