Things I Read While Pooping That Smell Worse Than My Poop - Vol. I

Media walk - no, run - a day in Indiana basketball player's shoes

IU only has one basketball player? If it's Eric Gordon, they'll be better than they were last year.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. --

I'm cold.

The Indiana University men's basketball coaches failed to kill me Wednesday.

Oh my god! What?

Not that they didn't take their best shot.

I think the NCAA would be very interested to hear about this.

Most coaches deadbolt the doors or hire snipers to patrol covered practice-field fences to keep media members miles away. IU basketball coach Tom Crean and his new strength and conditioning coach Je'Ney Jackson welcomed 25 of us into Cook Hall on Wednesday.

Oh, haha. This is classic Bozich hyperbole!

To toss 20-pound medicine balls off the walls, the floor and, occasionally, our shins.

Holy shit, that's not a sentence. Not a fucking sentence. I am reading sentence fucking fragments in a fucking newspaper.

To lunge, twist, bounce, spring and gasp across the glistening new practice court.

Well, fuck it, I guess.

To jump rope, hop up and down on padded walls and risk complete cardiac arrest in a dozen other ways.

Rick Bozich don't give a fuck about an Oxford comma.

I used to laugh at people who considered jumping jacks serious exercise.

Wow. You're a dick. That would be like someone over-analyzing your articles and bitching about the shitty grammar and content therein.

Seventy-five seconds of jumping jacks felt like running the Boston Marathon, especially when Jackson ordered two bonus sets with multiple-style leg kicks.

This mental image, coupled with Bozich's lisp, is hilarious.

(I pause here to rearrange my ice pack, swallow a second dose of Advil and wonder what I was thinking when I agreed to this assignment.)

Yeah, this sounds like real torture. I mean, you did jumping jacks for somewhere between 75 and 90 seconds. And they say being a sportswriter is a cushy job!

Then I jogged — NO WALKING!!! — with the group several hundred yards over to Memorial Stadium for another reminder that a 21-year-old Doctor Bo isn't walking through that door.

Can you imagine this? 25 dipshit sportswriters forcing bad puns while huffing madly. I've had a few internships in newsrooms and I tell you, these guys are not exactly a paragon of good health.

At the football stadium we crouched in front of a truck tire that weighed more than Charles Barkley and kept flipping it over until we covered 10 yards.

I believe about 1/9 of that sentence.

There were crab crawls, sled pulls and people carrying other people up the stadium steps.

This entire article should have been about that last clause alone, because, really??!!

I'm pretty certain something else happened, but you'll have to ask somebody else. That's when I asked if I could call 911.

I'm sure that got quite a laugh. Also, sports columnists are rarely funny. Or clever. This should not come as a surprise to anyone that has watched ESPN over the last twelve years.

“That's not even the tire we use when we do that drill,” said Bobby Capobianco, a sophomore who plays forward for the Hoosiers.

Yeah, I would hope that you, Bobby, a shitty-basketball-playing 20-year-old in peak physical condition, can lift more than fat old men. Then again, I did see you try to rebound last year.

Really? Coach Jackson brought out the big-league stuff for us?

No. You just typed that.

“No,” Capobianco said. “This tire is a lot smaller. Ours is about twice as big.”

OK, that's what she said. And, yeah, I know. You said that. If this graf were on the ACT, 95% of it would be slashed due to blatant redundancy.

“And three times as heavy,” said IU freshman Will Sheehey.

NO SHIT? This line is tantamount to, when writing a research paper, you use a total throw-away-though-topical quote so that you can bulk up your works cited page.

Great. When are we going to practice free throws?

Shut up.

Actually, there won't be any serious work on free throws until the end of next week when practice officially begins. Until then, Jackson is as important as any coach on the Indiana staff.

That's what every strength coach strives for. "You may not know me now, but I'm extremely important in the couple of weeks leading up to the commencement of fall practice!"

He arrived from Southern Mississippi in early July. Verdell Jones, the junior who led IU in points last season, remembers the day. Jackson called a players' meeting.

Well, yeah, who forgets meetings?

Now, wait. I might be wrong here, and Bick or Grammar Guru can verify in the comments, but shouldn't this be "players," not possessive? Doesn't Jackson "own" the meeting?

The players thought that meant a meet and greet. What they met were the truck tires, sleds and crab crawls.

"Hey guys, we're meeting with the strength coach today. Wear athletic gear."

"I bet we just shake hands and eat sandwiches. But I'll wear my shoes just in case."

Not that they complained. They're sick of hearing that they finished 10-21 last season and lost 11 straight Big Ten Conference games by an average of nearly 17 points.

Jesus, really? That's really fucking awful. Need I remind you that the Big Ten has eleven teams, meaning IU lost to everyone and someone twice by 17?

Related: Iowa plays in the Big Ten.

“We're tired of getting bullied around by the Michigan States and Purdues of the conference,” Jones said.

Quote rewrite: "We're tired of getting bullied around by the Michigan States and Purdues and Michigans and Iowas and Northwesterns and Illinoises and Ohio States and Minnesotas and Wisconsins and Penn States of the conference."

“I think we've gotten bigger now, so now we can do a little pushing back.”

That sounds a lot like fouling. You should try, also, to learn how to, you know, score and everything.

The 11-game losing streak began with a 15-point home loss to a dismal Iowa team. That game still makes Crean as nauseous as I felt when a medicine ball nearly bounced off my forehead.

"Ooooohhhh, that medicine ball almost hit my forehead. I might barf."

Parallel: "I have to leave early, so those cars get better gas mileage."

Parallel: "I only smoke when I read the mail."

Parallel: "This kind of tastes like tornadoes."

Parallel: "Basketball is difficult, like a fireplace."

This is all to say: that doesn't make sense.

“That's the one loss that continues to make me sick to my stomach, because we literally got shoved around the court,” Crean said.

"The other ten," he went on to say, "were fine."

“And we didn't do anything about it. If we lose games,

Yes, IF.

it's not going to be because we absolutely got out-toughed and people were more physical than us or they came in that day and decided they were going to punk us. That can't happen.”

Quick question: Is Bobby Capobianco your center? The veracity of this entire column relies on that answer.

What will happen is another preseason media workout session before next season. I suggest adding video analysis and free-throw shooting. Please.

Annnnnnd, circle!