Big Red to Pac-10: "Weak."

For the second week in a row, the Cornell Big Red men's basketball team (20-3, 6-0) is ranked in the USA Today/ESPN poll, while nary a Pac-10 team garnered a single vote in either poll. After entering the rankings last week for the first time since Harry Truman was in office, Ithaca's Finest check in this week at #22 in the ESPN poll and just outside the AP Top 25 at #27.

I'm not sure what's more impressive: Cornell coach Steve Donahue's Coach K-like ability to take an (almost) all-white guy team and make them awesome, or the Pac-10's overall crappiness this year. Let us not forget that, as a member of the Ivy League, Cornell does not award athletic scholarships, which makes the accomplishments of Donahue's boys even MORE remarkable. (Take that, unnamed Pac-10 players driving around in "donated" SUVs!)

Anyhow, in honor of Cornell's achievement and the Pac-10's collective ineptitude, I decided to do the only thing a man could do in such a situation: find a way to make fun of it!

Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of Cornell, I think "School of Hotel Administration." (If some guy named Hilton once called your hotel school "the greatest hotel school in the world," you're probably doing something right, right?)

So what better way to commemorate this occasion than compare the Pac-10 teams to places of lodging???

I'll start today with the two Oregon schools. Here we go:

Oregon (12-10, 4-6, 8th): Wynn, Las Vegas.

We all know about the goofy football uniforms.

Just an FYI: Nike founder/Oregon alum Phil Knight doesn't skimp on the basketball unis either.

So why the Wynn?

Well, I had the privilege of lodging there a few years ago (cramming 8 people into a room in which there were officially 2 people staying, yes!), and while it feels quite comfortable - I mean, really, nothing says "luxury" like a plasma screen TV in the bathroom - there's still something a liiiittle tacky about the place.

Maybe it was the virtual smorgasbord of colors splashed everywhere with no regard for the possibility that some color combinations can cause human blindness.

Or maybe it was the random fluorescent fake animals (not sure if they still have those).

Whatever it was, the Wynn seemed to capture perfectly the decadence of a cushy American vacation combined with a decor that was just a little off.

Compare this with the Ducks, who have just about every luxury known to sports-mankind provided to them by Mr. Nike himself, and yet the things they choose to wear on TV are juuuuust a little off.

Voila, we have ourselves a Wynn-ar!

Oregon State (10-12, 4-6, 9th): Blair House, Washington, DC.

Also known as the President's Guest House, this one was too easy, since OSU coach Craig Robinson, aka First Lady Michelle (Robinson) Obama's brother, has actually stayed here.

Upon further thought though, OSU's "struggles" through the Pac-10 may parallel Craig's slightly more famous bro-in-law's "struggle" to push the healthcare bill through.

Now I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I'm some kind of political expert, but I do know that trying to earn a road win in the rugged Pac-10 can be just as difficult, if not MORE so, than convincing a bunch of people who hate you to agree with you. Yeah???

Tune in (some time later) for the next pair of schools!