The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Greg Ostertag

At 7 Foot 2 and an often disputed 280 pounds from Dallas, Texas our first induction to the Stiff White Guy Hall of Fame is most NBA Fans consensus pick for one of the Stiffest, Clumsiest White Guys of all time, Greg Ostertag! There couldn't be a better first induction than Mr. Ostertag, in fact he may have been born for this role. This induction is akin to Andre the Giant being the first induction in the WWF Hall of Fame(side tangent - suck it World Wildlife Fund! I dare you to sue me and I won't pay you like Al Davis!)

Ostertag as mentioned above, personified the underachieving stiff white guy in the NBA throughout the mid 90's, hell he even managed to create a new breed of Stiff White Guy single handedly. The overweight, super underachieving, lazy Stiff White Guy. Many people felt if Ostertag played his cards right could have been the homeless man's Shaq.... and those people were stupid.

Greg Ostertags career began disappointing before he even got to the NBA. In 1995 Ostertag led a loaded Kansas Jayhawks Team to the NCAA Tourney as a No. 1 seed. This Kansas Team Featured future marginal NBA Talent such as Jacque Vaughn, Jared Haase, Scott Pollard and Raef Lafrentz(both Stiff White Guys I might add). Fate would not have a team with three Stiff White Guys be successful as Kansas was upset by Virginia in the Sweet 16. With great sadness Ostertag's College Career was over but his NBA Career as a Stiff White Guy Legend was just beginning!

Ostertag was then drafted with the 28th picked by the Utah Jazz in the 1995 NBA Draft. I'm pretty sure this was due to the Jazz needing to fill there White Guy Quota and Ostertag made the most of it. Ostertag immedietly started living up to the non hype that he had coming out of the draft. The Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan is the basketball equivelent of a great NFL Coach a la Bill Bellichek, Bill Cower, Art Shell etc. Where he has the ability to make any professional basketball player look like a solid NBA Player. Sloan worked his magic and stuck Ostertag's huge frame into the starting lineup with Future Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone. With Sloan, Malone and Stockton Ostertag quickly established himself as a Stiff White Force of Nature taking up space in the paint like nobody's business, blocking shots, eating up rebounds and easy baskets in the paint. Most importantly he was lethal at getting dunked on and hard fouling(A Utah Jazz Staple).

From 1995 to 2006 Ostertag threw down impressive Stiff White Guy career averages of 4.6 points per game, 5.5 rebounds per game, 1.7 blocks per game while managing a career field goal percentage of .486%. Did you know that Greg Ostertag has the 40th most blocked shots in NBA History? Ahead of Superstars such as Chris Webber and Shawn Kemp! If you thought Ostertag could do anything better than guys like Kemp and Webber you probably would have responded riding a tractor and not total career blocked shots.

In addition to awesome stats, Ostertag provided much unintentional comedy during his career. In 1997 Shaq slapped Ostertag in warmups for "Trash Talking." (I'm sure it had something to do with Greg claiming he could outeat Shaq at Sizzler or outlazy Shaq in the offseason.) Ostertag also disappointed Utah Jazz fans with a vengeance! Karl Malone and Larry Miller(The Late Jazz Owner) were often at loss for words, life, etc. due to Ostertag. In 2004 Ostertag managed to disappoint me personally when he signed with my beloved Sacramento Kings. Where he proceeded to be hurt and sit on the bench. In 2005 The Kings desperate to unload Ostertag somehow managed to trick the Jazz into taking the big guy back. Many NBA Fans have wondered if this was due to Jerry Sloan missing Ostertag the way most of us miss a bad pet or friend once they are out of our lives as conventional logic provided no answers to this mystery.

In 2006 Greg Ostertag retired from the NBA. In his retirement Ostertag lives in Phoenix, Arizona. In his spare time he plays hockey and makes massive wedding cakes like Buddy in Cake Boss. Someone should give him a crappy cable show like NOW! So Stiff White Guy thanks you Mr. Ostertag for providing so much unintentional comedy and uninspired play over the years. And just think Greg Ostertag sadly is better than 99% of the people who play basketball in this world.

A Quick Thought On America's Education System

A new movie is coming out titled Waiting For Superman. The movie is about how America's education system is "failing our children." And once again everyone in America who does not work in education or affiliated with working in education is banging the drum on how broken our education system is. Of course the cliches come out on how we are failing "The children." Once again the blame is being put on not having good enough teachers, teachers unions that have too much power and the old standby of not enough computers being in school. Actually I don't know if this reason is still being used however there was a really don't know if they are saying this however there was a good 15 year period where this reason was used for how much our education system was "failing the children" So everyone became convinced more computers would make smarter kids. Anyway sorry for the that off subject tangent.

So my point is better teachers, schools, computers, dissolving the teachers unions etc. WILL NOT MAKE AMERICAN CHILDREN SMARTER OR BETTER STUDENTS, it will simply be politicians using a pointless rallying cry to get cheap votes, really people that's all that it is.

I worked in public schools for two years. I taught kindergarten through 9th grade and the reason none of the above will work is that most American Kids do not want to learn! Mainly because XBox 360, Facebook, The Internets, Cartoon Network, Toys etc. are all about 10,000 times more exciting and entertaining than academic material to 95% of kids ages 5 to 19. Sorry people but that is the cold, painful truth. Most kids outside of the overachievers and highly motivated are going to prefer punching hookers and running over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto over Long Division, that's human nature and there isn't much we can do to change it without seriously going medieval on everyone 6 to 18 in America.

The only thing that is going to make American Children better student is to have American Parents holding there kids accountable for studying and doing there homework. This may mean you have to be the fun police and take away your kids video games, laptop, cell phone but it is what it is. Outside of hiring School Police that can beat and starve children into learning(this wouldn't go over well) The American School system will continue to fall short. This is just my opinion but I'm pretty sure I'm 99% right on this.