For most sports lovers across the nation, Missouri State isn’t exactly well known. Besides a couple great showings in the dance in both men’s and women’s basketball, we haven’t really proven ourselves to be a top quality sports school.

MSU alum and Phillies first basemen Ryan Howard, though, may help change that as he plays in the World Series.

Since hitting the big leagues, he’s made a humongous splash when it comes to numbers and recognition. Over the past seven years he went from small town player to basically a household name, and no one is as surprised as Howard.

Howard started out in St. Louis, where he grew up and practiced baseball with his dad. When he got to high school, he was a great prospect for colleges but it seemed that no scouts were looking his way so he ended up at Southwest Missouri State, or MSU as it is now, and started his career.

Howard even had to walk on at first, but he quickly impressed the coaching staff and earned a scholarship and a permanent spot in the lineup. From there on it was a quick few years with a great junior year at MSU, and then finally a draft by the Philadelphia Phillies in the fifth round of the amateur draft in 2002.

Howard earned the Rookie of the Year in 2005 after replacing all-star Jim Thome. He has been the NL MVP, won the Home Run Derby, been a two-time all-star and is now trying for his second World Series title. Needless to say, Howard is giving himself, and MSU, some recognition.

Football

Missouri State evened their record to 2-2, losing to the University of Northern Iowa 35-7 in Missouri Valley Conference play last Saturday in front of over 15,000 fans at Plaster Sports Complex.

The crowd was the ninth largest ever for a Missouri State football game.

UNI, ranked third in the nation coming into the game, picked up where they left off in last year’s 42-0 beat down of the Bears and established a comfortable 21-0 lead at halftime and coasted to the end of the game.

The Bears were finally able to get on the board with seven seconds left to go on a five-yard touchdown pass from Cody Kirby to Clay Harbor.

The Bears, now 0-1 in the Missouri Valley Conference, head to Youngstown State the first weekend of October for another tough Missouri Valley Conference matchup. In their previous game, the Penguins, 3-1, shut out Indiana State 28-0.

Ice Hockey

The Missouri State Ice Bears opened up their season with an impressive sweep of Eastern Illinois.

The Bears beat the Panthers 9-2 on Sept. 25, with Senior BJ Norman putting up three of the Bears’ nine goals.

The Ice Bears continued their dominance in Saturday’s matchup, handing Eastern Illinois their second loss of the season 8-3.

Missouri State plays on home ice for the first weekend of October in a two-game series against the Ferris State Bulldogs at Mediacom Ice Park.

The first game starts at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, and the second will be at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3.

Cross Country

The Missouri State Cross Country team hit the ground running, literally, finishing first in their opening dual against the SBU Bearcats and finishing fourth overall in the Missouri State Classic.

Led by Sophomore Terry Philips, who was named the Missouri Valley Conference Cross Country Athlete of the Week on September 22, the Bears will head to Chicago on Saturday, Oct. 3, to compete in the Sean Earl Lakefront Invitational.

Contributor

In one of my recent classes, a professor was relating a story from when he went to Missouri State. He said how in the beginning of the fall semester, his fraternity decided to show some school spirit by getting permission to light a bonfire between the old McDonald Hall Arena and what was then Briggs Stadium (now the Plaster Sports Complex).

The reason for this was the football team; they hadn’t managed a win yet and the frat pledged to keep a cauldron boiling in that space until they scored a win. By the time winter break rolled around, there was ice and snow all around the cauldron, and the frat gave up to a season of utter failure.

Now, some people love sports. I’ll be honest and say it’s not exactly my thing. When people get riled up and really enthusiastic about their favorite teams, it’s probably a harmless way to occupy their time. But when it comes to school spirit, academia and a question of where we spend our money, there has to be an examination of the facts.

Colleges often invest heavily in a sports program to raise the prestige of the school and attract students and sales of both tickets and merchandise. It’s an investment in the lives of those involved and the future of the program, with returns of success, increased enrollment and profits. When those returns don’t materialize, we have to consider the other opportunities that exist by investing in quality programs and other methods that promote student success.

It’s no small secret that the MSU football team has not been very successful recently; 4-7 this year, 6-5 last year and 2-8 the year before that. The men’s basketball team has done a little better, going 11-20 this year, 17-16 last year and 22-11 the year before that. The woman’s basketball team loses about 2 games for every one they win.

Now, big deal, right? Why am I trashing on these teams? Because of the inordinate amount of spending and money that goes into these things. According to a Cornell study, “indirect benefits to colleges from successful athletic programs are very small”. Colleges that win championships have a three year spike in donations and applications. Another study by the NCAA itself says spending on athletics is a poor investment, with few financial returns. A few schools are very successful, and the rest aren’t, but want to be, so there’s a positional arms race, with different colleges trying to outspend each other, thinking that a few more bucks will make players perform better. There’s a notion that a coach will emerge who can make everything better, and he deserves whatever we can pay him.

However, most successful sports teams are dynasties. People perceive random fluctuations in the performance of any system to be patterns and find significance where there is none. This is why we try to recruit and hire the best, to build a dynasty of our own, and until it gets done right, or clicks, there’s a lot of random performance. Back to the subject of money, lets take the Plaster Sports Complex (and ignore the much more powerful and costly example of the JQH Arena).

It was originally a construction of the Works Progress Administration, part of FDR’s means of employing the unemployed. It cost $60,000, a costly sum for the day. Its last major renovation was in 1992, which made it the PSC that it is today. In 2006, they finished installing Field Turf synthetic grass for $1 million. Last summer a Jumbotron system was installed at a cost of $2 million.

Noam Chomsky says “Sports… offer people something to pay attention to that’s of no importance. That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And… it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in discussions of sports as opposed to political and social issues.”

If Missouri State is expecting a return on the investments they’ve made in sports, they’ve found themselves duped. Someone told me we threw away 1.3 million dollars last year on football (besides the jumbotron, I assume) Instead of continuing a costly “arms race” of sports spending on unrewarding ventures, why not decide to build an educational department that can stand out in the state and the nation?

It seems unfair to waste tuition and alumni money on projects that don’t give us our money back, when we could have said, “Let’s have the best political science/biology/theater/whatever department in the state”. As far as I know, MSU has nothing worth bragging about like SLU’s nursing program or Mizzou’s Journalism school. And that’s because we’ve kept focusing our attention on something that Dr. Chomsky would call “training in irrational jingoism.” We can read that as “defending bad ideas against all odds.” That’s certainly the motto of resource-sucking institutions like organized sports.

Today, we’re keeping that bonfire burning, same as it was decades ago. This time, we’re just throwing our tuition money on it.

Cut the crap.

They use bears, puppies, royalty, clouds and even babies, but is all this squatting around the subject really necessary?

And do these cute little images really help sell toilet paper?

People crap. They use toilet paper to wipe it off their butts. I don’t think it’s a big revelation.

Granted, it is not the most lovely topic to rip into, but when you make your living selling toilet paper, I would think you couldn’t completely poo-poo-ing around reality.

Logic, though, in this instance, seems to have gone down the toilet in favor of cute babies, cuddly dogs or other images ass-backwards to the actual function of toilet paper.

Perhaps the closest to advertising truth I’ve seen out of the industry comes from Charmin, with the cuddly cartoon bear who takes us to the heart of the wilderness where he and his friends line up to take dumps next to a tree (and use Charmin, of course).

Given the size and diet of a bear, I’d probably recommend other animals stay clear of that tree afterwards.

All kidding aside, while the Charmin ads are creative, they still just run around the truth of the product.

The sad thing is, there is just so much potential for comic relief.

Heck, in the last 10 paragraphs, I’ve come up with enough bad puns to fill multiple commercials.

I think a toilet paper company that flushed all the euphemistic bullcrap of their competitors and made some very creative and funny commercials could really turn the industry on its ass.

And there may be hope.

A brief search of the web found one such TP brand.

ShitBegone.

Unfortunately, the originators of this product apparently did not know their shit, so to speak.

After selling 150,000 roles, they are now looking for someone to take on their name and logo for a small royalty fee and crank up production on ShitBegone once again.

With the right person pushing the product, ShitBegone could eventually take the throne in the TP industry, forcing the competition to sit down and take notice.

Heck, I would buy it. At the least, I think it could be a top seller at Spencer gifts.

Is anyone up to the challenge?

I hope so, cause I’m tired of all the crap the TP industry calls advertising.