Embrace Lacrosse

Ahh, Memorial Day Weekend, a magnificent sports weekend if ever there was one. With the added bonus of a Monday off in a three-day weekend, sporting events abound. \nSure, there are plenty of baseball games to watch, preferably in person, and there are the playoffs in basketball and hockey as both wind down their seasons. There is also some stupid little car race going on in Indianapolis named after our bike race. Well, I'm not really all that excited for that aspect of the weekend. What I'm really looking forward to is the Final Four of college lacrosse. That's right, lacrosse, baby.\nSee, there are many people -- especially in this state -- who are really excited about the Indianapolis 500 this weekend -- and yes, I know it's not named after Little 500, I'm not that dumb. To me, it's probably some of the most mind-numbing television you could watch, right up there with watching golf or anything on the Lifetime channel. \nI mean, where is the excitement in watching a bunch of cars going around in a circle at high speed? Sure, the crashes are fun, but you can always catch those on Sportscenter -- which brings up my second point, which is that most people watch the race just for the carnage, not for any of the skill, albeit minimal skill. But really, what is there to watch? You can put drops of food coloring in your toilet and flush it and watch them race around, and that's a lot cheaper than dishing out the money for the ticket. \nIt's true that the Indianapolis 500 is an Indiana tradition, right up there with "Hoosiers" and, uh, high school basketball. Are there any other Indiana traditions? Well, I digress. My point is, just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's a good thing. The Cubs have a tradition of losing, but I think they -- and all their fans -- would agree that all the losing is not a good thing.\nSo I will be glued to my TV this upcoming weekend, but for a different sport altogether. The Final Four of the NCAA Division One men's lacrosse tournament. This year's tournament will be taking place at Rutgers University with the semifinals Saturday on ESPN2 and the Championship game Monday on ESPN. \nThis year's championships promise to be exciting, with the top two seeds in the tournament -- Syracuse and Princeton -- making the final four. In the semifinals, Syracuse, the number one seed, will be facing off against Notre Dame, and Princeton, the number two seed, will be playing against Towson for the chance to play for the championship.\nLacrosse is a great game that combines many of the good aspects of other popular games, such as the number of players of soccer, some of the skills from hockey and the speed of basketball (well, probably playground basketball, not that slow down thug NBA ball) and is starting to gain popularity throughout the country. \nWhile the number of varsity teams, such as the ones participating this weekend, are not very large, almost every major university in the country features a club team with their own national tournament, including our very own Indiana University. \nSo this weekend, in the midst of your drunken stupor celebrating your day off from classes or work, maybe you should change the channel on your TV from the big race to the big game. You will get a chance to watch numerous finely-toned athletes running around at high speed and running into each other. It will kind of be like watching the big race, but in the lacrosse game you get the added bonus of watching all the players hit themselves with big metal sticks as well! Let's see some race car driver use a big stick when he's driving around that stupid little oval.