College basketball is full of fun preseason traditions. Midnight Madness. Message board trash talk. Irrational hype. The expectation that teams with lots of returning juniors and seniors will magically get better. And did I mention Midnight Madness?
But I think I have a new favorite.
Every year around this time, members of the Marquette Golden Eagles men's basketball outfit stand in front of a green screen. They put on headphones. They sing. The results -- which are used in the Bradley Center's entertaining "Name That Song" interstitial, which runs throughout the season -- are predictably disastrous.
With the latest edition featuring the 2012-13 Marquette hoopsters now available, you don't have to take my word for it. Why, just see for yourself:
It actually starts off all right! Chris Otule's version of "Thinkin Bout You" (one of my favorite songs by my favorite new artist of the year) is perfectly credible, at least until that famous falsetto chorus kicks in. But Otule doesn't have headphones on, at least not yet. When the Beats by Dre come out, the guys can hear the songs in their ears but not themselves -- and man, should they consider themselves lucky.
Because everyone's in on the joke, I feel comfortable in saying it to Otule, Junior Cadougan, Jamil Wilson, Steve Taylor, Juan Anderson, and everybody else involved: Fellas, you are all terrible singers.
Then again, this is not the Orchestra of Collegium Vocale. This is the Marquette Golden Eagles men's basketball team. What did you expect?
Oh, and one has to feel for Cadougan; Otule seems like the kind of guy who happily sings in enclosed spaces whether his roommate likes it or not. We all know that guy. That said, after what Cadougan did to "Always Be My Baby" last September, I'm not sure he has any reason to complain.
(Big thanks to Marquette associate athletic director Scott Kuykendall for setting us up with the video.)
