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Noah floats my boat with kiss to cheerleaders
04/17/06
by Clay
I don't hate Joakim Noah anymore.
This revelation came as a complete shock to me because in February, I had this to say about him: "Is Noah the biggest pansy who acts tough in the SEC? Dude, your dad was a professional tennis player, your mom was a supermodel and you have a ponytail. No one believes you are tough."
The old Joakim Noah, thinking he's tough while popping his jersey.
Now I don't even believe Noah thinks he's tough, I just think he doesn't care what anyone else thinks about him. Frankly, we here at Deadly Hippos respect athletes who don't care what other people think about them because it means they are more likely to do and say entertaining things.
Perhaps Noah developed this indifference at an early age after becoming the ugliest offspring of a supermodel in world history. I just can't get the image of his mother taking him to a children's modeling audition out of my mind. There were probably shrieks of pure horror. Noah as a child model would be the rough equivalent of me showing up to audition to be Under Armour's new spokesperson.
Yet somewhere in the midst of Noah's NCAA Tournament run, I found myself not hating him, then just not really caring about him, and finally in some way, sort of liking him. At this rate, by the end of next season I may be founder and president of joakimrocks.com.
The tipping point for me was when Noah blew a kiss to the UCLA cheerleaders with about eight minutes remaining in the NCAA championship game. At first, I supported this as an outlandish taunting maneuver, even without any provocation. It's been my opinion for a long time that basketball cheerleaders get way too much of a free ride. If you're going to consistently occupy those courtside seats, occasionally you should have to suffer the slings and arrows of derision -- especially in this postseason when cheerleaders didn't even have to build three-level pyramids.
Who wouldn't want to kiss these lips?
I mean, really, if you aren't one of the fat cheerleaders that sub-par schools have, no one ever really says anything bad about you. But then it turns out UCLA's cheerleaders had been taunting Noah all game by telling him he was ugly. Is this even allowed? These are cheerleaders after all, and UCLA cheerleaders on top of everything else.
In a recent column, I said UCLA deserved to advance to the championship game on the strength of its cheerleaders alone. These girls are so attractive they should be above having to make fun of anyone for being ugly. Do you think Jessica Alba or Keira Knightly roll down the window and yell taunts when they drive by ugly people? Does the brilliant Steven Hawking spend hours motoring around England, ridiculing people for being dumb? I mean, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd isn't writing e-mail to Deadly Hippos about how horrible my columns are. You get my drift. And besides, if Noah played for UCLA, he'd probably be dating one of the cheerleaders.
I guarantee if Noah ended up playing for the Clippers or Lakers next year, the same cheerleaders would be doing everything they could to get into whatever trendy, one-word named club (Envy, Liquid, Rain, HPV, Slick) Noah was hanging out at, just for the mere hope of rubbing up against him on the dance floor. So the blown kiss almost sealed the deal for me.
Then, immediately after the game, Noah took the time to tell everyone in the country and his professors, "Please don't be mad at us if we don't do a little homework the next couple of weeks." I think the NCAA is already planning on using this quote on their next student athlete television campaign. Noah then spent the remainder of the interview with CBS winking and giving the gun to the camera.
Later, he said winning a national championship was "better than sex," and said he was sure he was doing sex right because he was French. Now that he has a national championship, is there anything this guy won't be capable of saying? We here at Deadly Hippos respectfully request that next season, after every dunk, Noah should flash the shocker hand signal. We'll even give him a good cover for all the older Florida fans when he gets asked about the hand signal. With a straight face, he should say, "It's an alligator's open mouth."
Noah's choice in lovers appeals to Clay
But the final thing in Noah's favor? This is a guy who really seems to love college and living with his three roommates and fellow Florida stars: Corey Brewer, Taurean Green and Al Horford. Anyone who truly loved college has to respect that Noah would rather keep living with his friends and having fun than move on to the millions of dollars in the NBA. Besides, the money isn't going anywhere with the insurance contract. Just to prove that more young people have this opinion than one would think, I polled several of my buddies who are lawyers and asked them if they would go back to college for another year if their job would still be available. Everyone said they would.
Now the only real question we here at Deadly Hippos have is how will championship success change the roommates' living situation? As much as Noah might like for everything to remain the same, there are certain necessities that must be added to the apartment of the four national champion Gators.
1. On-deck circles for every bedroom. Deadly Hippos trivia question: If single stars George Clooney, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx and Nick Lachey all roomed together, would they get more girls than the four Florida guys? I'm interested in your opinion.
2. An air-mattress for Dick Vitale. The over/under on the number of Florida games Dick Vitale does next year is 432.
3. A sniper's nest to pick off angry Kentucky fans who still can't fathom that another SEC school could win a basketball championship. Just so the sniper knows, they'll be the ones wearing the Jeff Shepherd jerseys.
4. A beret-hanging stand for Al Horford's dad, Tito, when he comes to visit.
5. A disco ball for '80s dance parties. Somehow I feel like Joakim Noah knows all the words and often sings Barbie Girl.
6. Slabs of raw meat hanging from the ceiling on tenterhooks for Al Horford to rip off and consume at his leisure. (Note: This was the suggestion of my friend Neville, a Florida alum who has been arguing since the first time Horford stepped on the court that he defines the word "man.")
7. Calculators, to figure out two things: The least amount of school work possible to remain eligible to play basketball and how much the monthly payment is on a Bentley with 40-inch rims.
8. Live-in tattoo artist. He should specialize in Asian symbols that don't really mean what they're supposed to mean. Next season, every time he dunks, Brewer is going to flex his biceps, which will feature an Asian symbol that's supposed to mean "Gator bait" and translates in Chinese as, "Defecating cow brains."
9. Bullet-proof vests. I'd give even odds that at some point Noah will show up for an interview wearing one of these without a shirt underneath. When asked why, he will say something like, "I'm a soldier, yo," and three days later he will have to apologize to the real soldiers.
10. A copy of Understanding Insurance Contracts for Dummies. I'm a lawyer and I still think I'd have to read this book twice.
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