The reason I lose interest in sports video games quickly is the sheer ease by which I beat the computer opponents.

I’ll play a season of baseball, have 12 All-Stars, win every award, sweep the World Series and only have one superstar suspended for steroids.

Lauren Prochaska of the BGSU women’s basketball team.

I’ll play a college football season as, say, Eastern Michigan, go 12-0 and win the Orange Bowl. Dominance, as impressive as it can be, usually defaults fans’ interests. This is why Roger Federer, Jimmie Johnson and sometimes Tiger Woods can be classified as boring.

It’s also why I’m having a hard time rallying around this extremely dominant BGSU women’s basketball team.

There’s no other explanation for this. After all, any other women’s basketball squad would be another lame footnote in my personal sports world, but these girls are attending my alma mater. Usually that’s supposed to help one’s interest.

It’s not like they’re underperforming, either. Coming into the last weekend of February, the Falcons are 24-2, with those 24 wins all happening after a 0-2 start. Three more wins and they finish the MAC regular season undefeated. And yet … I’m only sort of excited over that feat.

If our reality is God’s Xbox, he accidentally set BGSU season’s difficulty on “easy.” No, check that, he set it on “cakewalk.”

It was fun and exciting watching their overtime wins over Northern Illinois and Western Michigan. It was even more thrilling seeing the intensity around the team as they beat Toledo on Feb. 12. Then they had a couple more routs against MAC opponents. Then it was … yawn, I think I’m going to get some sleep now.

Perfection — or at least a long stretch without a loss — can really inflate a team’s ego to dangerous proportions. But BGSU coach Curt Miller, much like New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, knows how to wield the psychological Ginsu knife and pop any possible overconfidence swelling in the locker room.

That’s nice for the team, but —and I really hate saying this — I really hope they lose one of their final games before the MAC tournament. Any kind of defeat after the regular season and a certain supernatural being might change the game difficulty to “WNIT.”

Or maybe it’s not the perfection. Maybe it’s the magic from the 2006-07 team that is still fresh in my mind. I vividly recall, while on a business trip, driving 30 minutes out of my way to an almost empty sports bar with satellite TV just so I could watch the Falcons’ second round NCAA tournament win over Vanderbilt. It may not be fair to compare this 2008-09 team to the Sweet 16 girls, featuring Kate Achter’s endurance, Ali Mann’s leadership and Liz Honegger’s incredibly catapult-like shooting technique, but unfortunately that’s the yardstick against which they’ll be measured.

Again, it’s not that this team is bad. Or lazy. They’re highly motivated, well-disciplined and watching them should give any human with a central nervous system the chills.

But I’m sorry that two-year memory is just shining brighter. I guess the Falcons are just going to have to advance further in the NCAA tournament this year, assuming they qualify for it.

And once the Falcons reach their eighth straight Final Four in 2017, I will again grow weary and recycle this article for you to read, while updating all the names, numbers and dates. Please plan accordingly.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Futon Report, Sports.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.