The Greatest Sign Ever at a Sporting Event
FOR SALE! (keep reading…)
It was my Sophomore year at Syracuse University. I lived in Sadler Hall, right across from the Carrier Dome. It was Monday- Big Monday, according to ESPN- and Georgetown was in town. I got out of class when a saucy Red-Head who I had been trying to bed asked me to go for some food before the game. Now this was not a date or anything- but it wasn’t nothing either. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a meal alone with this girl- then head to the Dome for the game on National Television.
Instead, I told her I had to go do something. I would love to do it another time, but I have to… well… make a sign before the Game. She looked at me strange like she had thrown it out there, offered it up, and I had smacked it down like Dikembe Mutombo.
I’m sure you’ve seen, as I have, the numerous signs at sporting events that oh so creatively take the acronym, say, “ABC” and turn it sideways, so it says something like:
Another
Bills
Championship
Or even the people with less intelligence (is it even possible?) that make up sayings that don’t even use each letter at the beginning of each word. E.g.:
Every
Syracuse
Player
kNows how to win!
In this Blogger’s humble opinion- signs like these are the bane of human existence. Just think of how long the person must have just sat there, on scrap paper first, going through phrase after phrase, never getting it right. “College Basketball Surplus. No, no. Carrier Beckons Sound. No, no. Cheer Basketball Syracuse! No, doesn’t make sense. Come on, why can’t I think of a witty saying… wait… wait… Can’t Beat Syracuse! Yes! I got it! I did it! Get me some markers, I’m gettin’ on TV!”
Frankly, it sickens me. Sickens me so much that I was willing to throw away a pseudo-Date with a saucy Red Head who I longed for in order to make my own acronym-filled sign.
So I did. I went right up to my dorm room, got the large piece of poster board that I had used my Freshmen year for a Super Bowl Pool in Day Hall (squares kind of pool), turned it over, and dug out my colored pencils- for I was to make the ultimate sign. The best sign anyone had ever seen at a sporting event. Oh, they would be talking about this one for years to come, I was sure of it.
And, oh, it was beautiful. Not beautiful like a warm Spring morning or beautiful like a young Elisabeth Shue, but beautiful like a newborn baby (you know, when they are actually really ugly, but no one admits it and it’s only beautiful because a person made that thing).
So I rolled up my Baby and headed across the street to the Dome. I became quite nervous as the game started. Not because my Orangemen (this was before they were just the “Orange”) were playing a tough Hoyas Team, but because we were getting closer and closer to the first TV Timeout. I wondered if people would get it. Were they even ready for a sign of this magnitude? So when the clock went under the 16 minute mark and the ball bounced out of bounds, the ESPN cameras penetrated the Syracuse Student Section.
I arose from my seat, held my sign up high with pride. The people behind me were extremely confused at why I was holding up a 2001 Giants/Ravens Super Bowl Pool and the people in front of me were just plain confused. I looked at them as they stared back in bewilderment at me. They didn’t get this:
If you don’t get this, then you don’t like Mel Brooks movies, you don’t like the comedy of Mitch Hedberg, or his imitator, Demetri Martin. It never made it on TV (to shock the world) and I never held it up again. Not because of the confusion, but because I’m just not a ‘Sign Guy’. I can’t hold it up at every time out, I don’t have the enthusiasm to shake the poster so you get attention. That’s just not me. Even if I have gold (see above), I still just can’t do it.
So the Greatest Sign Ever at a Sporting Event was, basically, a disappointment. No one got it, not even my friends. They say they got it, but if they did, they would have laughed- and no one laughed. They only laughed at my misfortune of never getting another chance with that saucy Red Head. Who knows where she is now or what she’s doing, my only solace is that the sign lived on after her. Long enough for me to decide to bring it 3,000 miles West with me and get it custom framed.
So now you, the Sports at Random Reader (AKA My Roommate and a Retard from Compton) can own this piece of Sports History- for I am moving out of my Bachelor Pad, where signs like these are encouraged, to a one-bedroom with a non-Red Head, where paintings of ballerinas and fruit are more encouraged.
secondly don’t say “where signs like this are encouraged”.
they aren’t encouraged. they’re tolerated.
it’s like saying you’re leaving your bachelor pad “where two guys shitting in each other’s toilets and shaving their balls in each others’ sinks without cleaning up after ourselves is encouraged”.
it’s one sided. one of perpetrates these sins. we know who is responsible for framing a sign like that. i’ll let the retard from compton figure out who commits that second sin.
That was pubic hair? Jesus Christ…
oops.
what i meant to say was,
and dan wonders why i always laugh harder at bobs material…
and the espn sign IS funny, dan. in context. not hanging on your bedroom wall years later.
Well played. I was a freshman at Syracuse in 1992-93. To give you an idea of just how long ago that was, our football team was ranked #6 in the nation. We were hosting Miami (ranked #1 at the time) for a huge game. My friend Ted and I decided that we had to make a sign. So we spray painted on a white sheet:
American
Broadcasting
Company
Our sign never made it on tv either.
lame
nice sign, but talk about an oversell.
what a huge waste of time, not funny at all
you need to go completely overboard, like this guy:
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/7086/soxsignqa1.jpg
the sign is 6 feet long, 4 feet high. and he was at a road game with it. i believe he survived.
Glad to see more people hate Mel Brooks than I thought.
It’s funny because no one knows that was the official name. But it takes someone with a special sense of humor to laugh like I did. (By the way, I think it’s just ESPN Inc. now. The letters mean nothing.)
I lived in Lawernson that year, I am more concerned with who this “saucy red-head” actually was.
And that $100 asking price is pretty good insurance that it will be making the move with you(or mysteriously “disappearing” at some point).
I loved it
I must be missing something, because this seems to be the lamest sign ever.
Can someone fill me in? Is there some secret dirty word on that sign, or did I just waste five minutes reading this blog?
IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS! IDIOTS! HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF IRONY!?
Some people just don’t get it.
ESPN means Excellence in Sports Performance Nightly. thus, this sign has neither irony nor anything even REMOTELY funny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN
The sign is great because you are making fun of those losers who spend all this time thinking of what they would consider a clever acronym and then trying to get it on TV. The simplicity of your sign mocks their intelligence (as indicated by your post) ONLY if you would have gotten your sign on TV; thus accomplishing the same feat as those idiots.
I think Lilly is right that the sign is much more funny in context.
the best sign ever was seen during the nets celtics conference championship a few years ago, it read WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE STAB PAUL PEIRCE. he was stabbed during the pre season that year. Classic
Best.Sign.Ever.
As an SU alum who also lived in Sadler Hall I enjoyed game days. I really enjoyed the game in 1999 when one plucky young fan held up a sign that said “Mike Jarvis Beats His Wife.”
Not only did the sign never make TV, Dome security confiscated the sign and destroyed it.
The best sign ever was when a Mets fan had a sign that said
“Rocker is Ingorant!”
Yes, they spelled ignorant wrong.
u r dum
Worst story ever. and I got it, it just wasn’t funny.
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