No, I haven't gotten married suddenly. Rather, that title is a reference a recent post-game speech by a college basketball coach, in which he said his wife could shoot better than his team, among other insults. His rant has gone viral. At least, I assume it has "gone viral" in the sense that people are watching it online. I do know that it spread across television quickly. I don't think that's considered "going viral." Maybe we should call that "going bacterial" or something.
It was a weird experience seeing it repeated on sports news shows and updates. I believe it was the first time I've ever seen the progression of Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame in real time. At least, fifteen minutes was the amount of time it took me to get sick of seeing it. Ol' Andy didn't anticipate that fame would greatly outlive our interest. The coach's rant will live on in talk shows and recaps forever.
That for me thinking: There are some famous college basketball coaches, but generally they don't get a lot of mainstream renown. For instance, I'm something of a sports fan, yet I only recently realized that Mike Krzyzewski, Mike Shuh-shev-skee, and "Coach K" are all the same person. I've also heard of John Wooden and Rick Pitino. Beyond that, I can only think of Bobby Knight, and he's mostly famous for his tantrums too.
But this coach has just vaulted to the top of the list. There are surely other coaches that have accomplished great things on and of the court, but they remain anonymous, while some jerk with no sense of restraint (or coaching skills, it would seem) has become a celebrity.
My point is that it's unfortunate that fame so often comes from poor behaviour. Usually sports is - for better or worse - a meritocracy. But even there you can see The Ford Effect, where the biggest rewards are not for success but for being ridiculous.
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