The Big Ten needs some new ideas.
There are 13 games at the Big Ten Tournament, which means 13 different groups of fans need to be entertained every halftime. Now that Red Panda has retired and the halftime show market is shallow, that means the Big Ten kind of has to grasp at straws for what counts as "entertainment" every halftime.
Here are the halftime shows I have seen so far — one is omitted, as I made the wise choice to not attend Penn State-Nebraska — ranked.
7-9. Random basketball-centric games ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is where the number of games really plays a role. Eventually you run out of ideas and things you want to pay for, so you just have random college kids do things with the basketball on the court. We have had three such halftime shows so far: a game of knockout, a shooting game that involved two students shooting from random parts of the floor to win Amtrak tickets and free throw tic-tac-toe.
Each had a twist and was equally boring:
- Knockout is knockout. It was literally just two big games of knockout.
- The Amtrak one was confusing. They assigned two college kids random spots on the floor to shoot from, and then the winner got to shoot a layup to win a trip to St. Louis, a free throw to win a trip to New Orleans and a three-pointer to win a trip to anywhere within 30 seconds. Clearly familiar with the Amtrak experience, he shot as slow as possible and won the trip to New Orleans.
- Tic-tac-toe involved teams of two, with one person able to put an X or O down for every free throw his partner made. One group got tic-tac-toe before the other made a free throw.
Stop letting random people play basketball for entertainment, Big Ten. It does not go well.
6. Trampoline dunking
Maybe it's just a product of getting older, because I would have loved this when I was 10, but is trampoline dunking really that impressive? The biggest challenge appears to be making sure you don't get your head cut off by the rim. That did not happen in this show, so perhaps the dunkers did their jobs. Still, it seemed relatively run-of-the-mill.
5. Simon Says
Every year, this guy comes to the Big Ten Tournament and does a big game of Simon Says with a bunch of college students. To me, it is not exciting. But to the vast majority of the Big Ten fans — particularly the older ones — it's just the most hilarious thing you'll see all day.
The guy talks fast and mocks participants when they lose, and the old Midwestern folks at the game just get a hoot out of this delightful entertainment. It is the B1Gest of halftime shows.
4. Quick Change
I am a noted Quick Change hater, and I will be mocked relentlessly if I put them any lower than this, but if you have never seen Quick Change — meaning you've never been to a college basketball game — the premise is this: A couple changes clothes rather quickly.
That's it. There's nothing more to it.
3. Chicago Boyz
I'm sure some people would rather see people doing acrobatic things on trampolines with basketballs than acrobatic things with minimal help from props. I thought that too, until I realized what these guys do. They backflip and spin entirely down the court and do jump rope tricks within jump rope tricks. I could jump on a trampoline, but I could not do that.
2. PUPPIIIIIIEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Puppies always have the best halftime shows, especially if they are puppies that can catch frisbees while soaring through the air. The crow was LITERALLY ON ITS FEET THE ENTIRE TIME. In fact, they probably spent more time on their feet for the halftime show than for the rest of the game.
Nothing will ever beat a puppy halftime show. Except ...
1. BABY RACES
Big Ten baby race! Sparty baby is crying his eyes out. http://ift.tt/19kYB0r
— Chris Emma (@CEmma670) March 12, 2015
I will admit, I was not actually at the United Center for this one. However, I have a dispatch from a reliable source on what happened, and I'm pretty sure this has never been tried before.
The idea was that you would put a baby whose parents are fans of different teams on the court and hope they crawl from one parent to the other. There are a couple problems with that plan:
- The baby has no idea that's the goal and the parents were apparently too far apart for them to realize what was going on.
- Babies do not like loud things or bright lights — both of which are present at once on the court at the United Center.
Subsequently the babies cried and only one (the Nebraska baby) raced. Bring this back every year, Big Ten. It sounds fantastic.
Source SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/19kYyS4
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