Laughable Pride in the Desert: ASU and Marketing and Full Bladders

On Saturday I was fighting a nice hangover.  That morning I would also make a less-than-shocking realization.  To combat said hangover, I had consumed a multi-vitamin and a medium coffee.  Black.  Overall it was shaping up to be a nice morning: laundry, homemade egg sandwich, that coffee, lazy wake up, some good college hoop.  Indeed, Saturday morning was glorious.

And, per most mornings, I had to urinate at some point.

Now, let’s briefly recap: hangover, multi-vitamin, coffee.  Such a consumption combination and subsequent urination is what led to my less-than-shocking realization.

What I realized Saturday morning as I urinated was how little Arizona State has to be excited about.  It’s a miserable athletic program with little going for it.  They are the worst basketball team in the Pac-10 and they had to apply for bowl status (denied).  They’re ranked below NAU in the Director’s Cup rankings and their primary color is the same as my hungover/multi-vitamin/coffee piss.

This is their current marketing slogan: You Are Proud.  You Are Bold.  You Are ASU.  You Are Our Home Court Advantage.  So, ASU fans are not proud or bold?  They don’t constitute the fan base?  What sort of advantage might they provide?  The athletic department, so averagely run by Lisa Love, is literally reminding their fans to be fans; how to feel and what to be.

Their position of mediocrity neither angers nor saddens me.  It feels about right.  The chants of “U of A” echoing through the emptying Wells Fargo Arena felt about right, too.   Ultimately, Arizona State’s athletic deficiencies are irrelevant to the things I care about, like conference and national championships; so Bear Down.

Allow me to spell out the beginning of what I started here: ASU gold looks like piss.  And piss is bodily waste.  Let’s take that logic and add one more line to ASU’s marketing slogan:

YOU ARE PISS POOR.