Get ready to start using the next two words: Point Guard.
Fly On The Wall has dug up some interesting dirt about Professor Seaman’s College days. Well before he became the Table Tennis Terror of the GSBM, Professor Seaman was Florida’s Beast of the Backcourt.
“Oh, I remember him well,” began former Stetson University head basketball coach, Frank Newman. “I knew he was going to be a handful when I read his bio. Borderline student, hanging out with the wrong crowd, only got in on the athletic scholarship. Some scout saw him playing in a pickup game and signed him.”“The first few weeks he didn’t even come to practice. He was out at the beach surfing every day. Well, trying to surf. Mostly he was just floating around.”
“I’ll never forget the day he finally showed up to practice. He rolls in like a total hard case: leather jacket and sunglasses. It’s 95 degrees, I’m trying to coach a team, and this clown is doing Marlon Brando in flip flops!”
“He didn’t even play that day. In fact, no one did. He just stole the basketball and went home.”
“It took a while, but eventually he started to come out of his shell. He was a little rough around the edges at first. It took a few weeks before he started talking, and a few more before I could convince him to ditch the flip flops and wear sneakers.”
“But once he put on the sneakers and dumped the jacket, whoa boy, did his game ever take off! He became a force on the court. Put the ball in his hands and you could see his mind calculating: figuring the odds, weighing probabilities, and always going for the high percentage shot.”
“Some kids, you’re happy if they can just do a pick and roll. But Sammy was playing on a different level…way higher than everyone else. He totally played above his height. Whenever I’d start to diagram a play on the chalkboard, he’d whip out his laptop and start running solver equations. Next thing I know, he’s suggesting different plays that he *swore* would have better outcomes.”
“Amazingly, he was right.”
“I put him in charge of team strategy and he totally went to town, drawing all these diagrams and decision trees. Then he started talking about multinomial regression theory. I still have no idea what that means, but it worked. The team started winning and winning big.”
“But there were still some bumps in the road. He still had that feral edge to him. Whenever he gave up a few points he’d start snarling and smashing things. Sometimes he’d get this look in his eye and totally lose it.”
“This could be good during a game, but not so good during team practice. Like the time he ripped down the backboard…or the time he attacked the team bus. Good thing we had comprehensive on that.”
“And on top of all that, there was the whole academic thing. We had to hire eight of the best tutors and pay them big bucks to take all of his classes.”
“But it was worth it. We were tearing through the competition and “Shootin’ Sammy” was the talk of the conference. I was looking like a genius and Stetson was looking at an invite to March Madness. Life was good.”
“But then the unthinkable happened: Sammy actually went to a class…a statistics class.”
“After that, the wheels fell off. I still can’t believe how it ended. I mean, I don’t think he even *knew* where the classrooms were! He musta gotten lost and wandered in by mistake.”
“Anyways, once he found that stats class, forget about it! He was hooked. We never saw him on the court again.”
“We tried everything to lure him back: pieces of raw meat, cubes of sugar, stun guns--everything--but it was no use. A month later I’m out of coaching and two weeks after that I’m back to selling Buicks. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.”
When he’s not floating around at Surfrider Beach, Professor Seaman can occasionaly be seen in room 324.
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