To the Visor:

As an avid reader of the Visor, I am continually disappointed by Jack McLaughlin's columns. Jack, all year you have consistently chosen horrible topics and made points that are misinformed, because you are not at all familiar with the subject. When was the last time you watched Sportscenter or even the sports segment of the nightly news?

Your ignorance culminated in your last column, where you made bold statements about Hoban athletics that were unmistakably wrong.

For starters, Jack, did you even attend the final girls basketball game? West Branch went on to win the state championship and was one of the top-ranked teams in the state all season. To say that our girls were expected to defeat them is ridiculous. In fact, most people outside the Hoban community thought they were going to get blown out. In the game, though, they completely outplayed West Branch, and lost because of a questionable call at the end of the game. It is extremely disrespectful to imply that the girls team choked.

Another offensive part in the article was singling out my friend Dominic Spitalieri. I find it highly inappropriate to remind him of something that is already a sensitive topic. The way you belittle a Hoban student to support your god-awful argument disgusts me.

As for boys basketball, to say we "proved the skeptics wrong" with "two stellar performances" is absurd. How could we prove the skeptics wrong when we weren't even the underdog in those games? We were ranked higher than both Highland and Firelands. Calling us "the little team that could" implied we are a bad team that overachieved. In fact, we had two bad games with good fourth-quarter comebacks. If you had even taken the time to read the Beacon Journal, there Coach Griffith said, "this [the Firelands game] was an ugly game for us," and in the Visor, Steve Beiting said, "Our first half against Firelands was probably the worst basketball we've played all year." I'm sorry, but a head coach and a player know a little more about basketball than you, an uninformed fan who didn't even take the time to ask their opinion.

Then to say it was "such a great ending" is flat-out offensive. We didn't head into the game expecting to lose. I wasn't exactly thrilled losing my last basketball game ever to our biggest rival.

Despite this, I decided to listen to your great advice and "never count anyone out of the running." Florida A&M, Texas-SA, Alabama State and Liberty are my Final Four teams. So what if they're all 16 seeds? Thanks for the tip! Seriously, it's ridiculous to make a broad, overreaching statement about an NCAA tournament you frankly know nothing about. While upsets happen and the final outcome is almost impossible to predict, picking teams should be done with sound research and not be governed by your lofty ideas.

In addition, your advice was a week late. Brackets had to be completed a full five days before your column was published.

To repay you for the money you won me with your excellent advice, I wanted to give you some in return. You should change the name of your column from "You Don't Know Jack" to "I Don't Know Jack About Sports."

--Brandon Kurtz '04