The Chronic Curmudgeon

I'm guessing you were either the dork sitting down in front or the guy(?) in the back row on the right. Either way, I think it is very noble of you to post a photo of your old hair band.

Leave it to a zealot like you to cherry pick the very worst from the '70s and parade them around as if his examples were the seminal, definitive symbols of a bygone era.

The '70s also brought us gem such as Steely Dan, "All in the Family," the EPA, and more. Why don't you go pick on a decade that deserves vitriol: the '80s. Maybe even the one we're in, come to think of it. ...

BTW...as I sit here looking a the guy sitting down in the photo's front row, it amazes me to know you were in a band in the '70s.

Sorry, Doc...didn't see that you had already flown this joke.

I will now incur the wrath of the 80's kiddies like me. I think all of the 80's up to about 1986/7 should be removed from everyone's memories. The one or two bright spots that people keep pointing do not make up for the complete and utter dross the first five years of that decade.

I can't get rid of the 70s because my dad still claims he made out with Jane Fonda at Studio 54 or one of those crazy NYC nightclubs in the 70s.

I think the old man has lost it but he's been preaching this story since I was born. It's possible, my family produces very charming men.

As for the 80s, we can't knock the decade that gave us Miami Vice, Georgetown basketball and Wrestlemania.

OMFG........you really were in a band years ago. that IS you in the front row. incredible!

Doc - you're just jealous because by 19, you no longer qualified for a hair band, or hair anything else.

Brent - your continual defense of the 70s is as incomprehensible as the fact that a doofus idiot like Tom Green could once have been married to someone who looks like Drew Barrymore. Steely Dan was named for a vibrator -- and the vibrator made better music. All in the Family ... gee, a lovable bigot; what a fantastic concept for a TV show. The EPA, in case you hadn't noticed, has been gutted by the criminals currently in office and is a shadow puppet now. The 70s also produced wide ties, sideburns, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Journey, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, prog rock in general, "I Love The Nightlife," and pieces of crap like "The Man From Atlantis," and "Baa Baa Black Sheep." Face it dude, the only redeeming element of the 70s was "The Electric Company."

Doc/Brent - I was in a band in the *80s.* Get it right.

McRob - while "9 to 5," "Morning Train," and "Celebration" -- not to mention pieces of slog like "The Trip To Bountiful" and "Out of Africa" do in fact give the early 80s much to be ashamed of, I can redeem the early 80s for you with two very simple words: Heather. Locklear. 'Nuff said.

Corey - I once made out with Jane Fonda at Studio 54 too. As for your items of the 80s worth keeping, I'd throw out the wrestling (while I admit to being a fan as a kid, it became a joke as soon as Vince McMahon railroaded all the local promotions across the US out of business, and made it a steroid-laced circus). Georgetown basketball... don't get me started. John Thompson and his lack of academic standards and willingness to raid jails for players is part of what turned me off from basketball. Give me Phi Slamma Jamma or Danny Manning or Keith Smart's late shot to win any day. I'd keep Miami Vice, though. I'd also keep Guns-n-Roses, Eraserhead, Blade Runner, The Breakfast Club, and Ginger Lynn Allen.

MU Hoop - what the hell are you doing here? We don't obsess over a D-II basketball program on this blog... you must be in the wrong place!

It sounds like the vibrator has made great music for you indeed. For the more fortunate among us, it is the band that has made the better music. ...

BTW, yuo and I shall never see eye-to-eye on this '70s thing. Every band you mentioned -- short of Uriah Heep, whom I've never even heard of -- is a personal favorite.

You obviously read too much press on Georgetown including the Post story that called Thompson the Idi Amin on basketball.

What jails did he raid? Where are the arrest records? Who were the kids in question. Surely the NCAA would've taken him down of all people. Sounds like another case of Hoya Paranoia. Now I know why Georgetown's teams were perceived the way they were, but I hope you are above believing that junk.

Sorry, Corey. As Tim will attest, whether one agrees with me or thinks I'm an ass, I am at least consistent: I am a staunch proponent of the *student* part in student-athlete, no matter which school or sport we're talking about. And I have a big problem with coaches who spend their time trying to lower or relax academic standards at their institutions. Call me an idiot, but I think that kids should only be playing for a school if they could actually have earned admission academically. (Patrick Ewing is the first and most obvious example that comes to mind of a Thompson player who had no business at a school of Georgetown's academic quality.)

Thompson spent years arguing that Prop 16 and other efforts by the NCAA to actually focus on academic standards were somehow racist and unfair, and I found that to be a highly offensive position. Did he really mean to argue that black kids couldn't meet the same standards as white kids and therefore the standards had to be lower for them? (Didn't Paul Hornug get crucified recently for trying to say the same thing about Notre Dame?) If we're arguing that on the K-12 level, "black" schools and "white" schools don't provide equal levels of education, that's a fair point and one that society must address -- but I think we should do so at the K-12 level by doing what it takes to achieve equity there, not by lowering standards once kids get to college.

Part of the reason I just don't get into college football or basketball anymore is because athletes, coaches and the pro leagues treat college simply as a minor league, to be tolerated for a year or two until the kid feels ready or has the skills to move on. And call me an idealist, but I think that's a joke. If the NFL and NBA want minor leagues, and if athletes want to focus on playing their sport rather than getting their education, fine. Let them set up minor leagues like baseball and hockey.

But college is for kids who want an education, not those who want a stepping stone for anticipated riches in the pros. How many of the kids at some of those underfunded and under-serving urban schools could have had better lives if they were the ones admitted to these colleges, not the basketball players who have no interest in education in the first place?

Thompson was highly infuential in raising the opportunity level for black coaches, and for that I respect him. But he was also influential in hastening a decline in standards that has left me feeling cynical and disintrested about college sports - and for that I have no respect.

As for jails and the kinds of kids he recuited, I'll grant you that he was no Bob Huggins (who is my least favorite college sports personality of all time) or Jerry Tarkanian, and he can't rival the Jimmy Johnson era Miami Hurricanes for sheer numbers on the police blotter. But Allen Iverson, Victor Page, and Kenny Brunner (true, he was at Fresno when he got arrested but he was a G-town recruit) were all arrested at some point, just to name a couple and without doing an extensive Google search.

I don't like what Thompson did at Georgetown, sorry. Our friend Tim is a hoop fanatic and once was an asst coach; I'd be willing to bet he could build a winning program somewhere if his recruits weren't held to the same academic standards as everyone else at the school, and if character didn't have to count.

Are U serious? get real, stop the crying.