Crank Calls

Today was hands down the best day of work...in terms of humor. I got in this morning at 10am and connected to the women's Big East basketball teleconference like I do every Thursday morning. So after listening to that for an hour, I had to disconnected and jump to the men's call that began at 11.

Everything seemed according to plan and normal until one "member of the media" asked Marquette men's coach Tom Crean (and I quote), "If [he's] ever put his balls in his players' faces and if so, did they like it?" I was floored! The coached had no clue what was going on and replied, "I don't understand." The caller hung up. We all figured one person had called up and pretended to be a media member to mess around...we were wrong. Throughout the entire conference call, which lasted a little more than an hour, countless crank callers dialed in asking coaches inappropriate comments. They started out blatantly asking these disgusting questions, then decided to cover them up with a serious question like the following cranker:

"Coach, you guys played against Georgetown's Roy Hibbert last week. He's been playing very well this year. How excited does that make all of the white bitches on campus?"

Again, these are direct quotes from these crankers. The moderator of the teleconference personally said 'yes' or 'no' to those media members in que to ask a question. I found it very strange that a "reporter" from the Sacramento Bee would care about the Big East on the other coast. These (what I'm assuming are kids) pretended to be reporters from newspapers or radio stations. The best is when one of them gave a fake name for a paper like the Hartford Courant, was denied his question, only to be followed by the REAL reporter from the Courant!

So after that hoopla was complete and I got at least a solid hour of laughing in, I buckled down to business. I cut tape from Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez and wrote a story for it. Unfortunately, the Pirates have two games between now and next Wednesday when they play Rutgers, so I can't voice my piece until Monday.