"Brokeback" Reference Backfires

Last night was boys BB district championship night here in the Boise area. My oldest son's school lost badly, but still advances to State [actually 4 or 5 teams from this district make the eight team 5A (biggest school) state tournament -- outside of the Boise area, there aren't that many big schools in Idaho], but the more interesting game was in 4A, the next biggest class.

The crowd for the home team underdogs, Kuna High, decided that their best chance to win was to insult the best player of the visitors, Matt Ballenger. It doesn't talk about it specifically in this article, but on TV last night they showed lots of pictures of some Kuna fans holding up a big sign that said "Brokeback Ballenger". The Skyview junior answered the allusion of homosexuality by throwing down 35 points, including 27(!) in the 2nd quarter alone, to lead his team to a 62-43 victory.

I'm kinda surprised that high school administrators would allow a sign like that at a school event; even colleges have been trying to get their students to tone down on the "Brokeback" chants. Of course, Ballenger showed the best way to respond to such juvenile taunting... by giving the taunters a figurative spanking.

Speaking of "Brokeback" spin-offs, I forgot to post a couple of weeks ago when Midshipman Greuning over at Synonym (who just requested subs for his 2nd class cruise) posted the infamous "Brokeback Midshipman" video a couple of weeks ago. As you might guess, it was put together by a West Point cadet.