Why must TYMat B so cruel?

GoMeanGreen.com owner, operator, evil genius, and home wrecker Harry Miers plots to steal our Sun Belt expert away

Back in January, TY Sports unleashed the first public phase of the Tina Yothers Media Awareness Takeover: The Sun Belt Basketball Report.

The internet had something to offer to almost any bizarre, twisted obsession imaginable. Looking for crude erotic drawings of the pink haired cartoon spokeswoman for Esurance? The internet was there for you. Searching for a good way to cook vermin in a popcorn popper? Cyberspace was teeming with recipes. But for anyone seeking a clearinghouse of analysis, predictions, and inappropriate jokes about Sun Belt Basketball... There was nothing.

TY Sports saw a tiny niche that the seemingly infinite expanse of the internet hadn't covered, and we jumped at the opportunity. TY and I tracked down an emotionally fragile shut-in from New England who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Sun Belt and a desperate yearning for a pulpit from which to spread his dangerous, paranoid worldview. All we had to do was take his weekly manifestos, edit out the Communist propaganda and death threats against various heads of state, and post whatever was left on our website.

Thus was born TYMat B, the premiere Sun Belt Basketball expert in all the land. And for 6 months or so, things couldn't have been better. Tina and TYMat combined to bring the world a weekly analysis of the conference, and later, Radio Free Sun Belt: an unsanctioned perspective on the sexy fun world of SBC Tournament Basketball (arguably this website's one greatest sustained contribution to the world). With a new SBC Basketball season just around the corner, the future seemed bright for TY Sports and TYMat B.

Tragically, we now know that TYMat B is a dirty, lying, cheating, filthy, two-timing whore.

Posting under the ridiculous internet pseudonym Jesse... something-or-other, TYMat recently started writing content for GoMeanGreen.com's front page. We're not sure what they used to lure him away. Perhaps it was a reputable outlet for his work, perhaps it was the possibility of actual media accreditation, or perhaps it was something as simple as a promise not to whip him with a leather strap on an hourly basis.

Whatever the bait may have been, Harry and the gang at GoMeanGreen obviously had something to offer that we just couldn't match. Before we realized he was even considering leaving us... There was an empty space in TYMat's habitat at the TY Sports Institute of Internet Jackassery. And, more importantly, there was an empty space in our hearts.

Tears were shed and tantrums were thrown. But eventually, we regained our composure and started planning for the post-TYMat B era. Because the Tina Yothers Media Awareness Takeover program didn't start with TYMat B. And we aren't willing to let it end with his savage betrayal, either.

Robots... Our past plan for conquering the future.

When we first conceived of the Tina Yothers Media Awareness Takeover plan, we expected our Sun Belt Basketball expert to be a specially programmed robot. TY Sports contributor(?) Alex P. Keaton was going through a phase where he was obsessed with the film Bicentennial Man, and for weeks he wouldn't stop talking about how we should buy and program a robot to write an SBC column (and tidy up around the Dick Joke Development Lab at the Institute).

We looked into buying one of the crazy dancing Honda robots to serve as the Tina Yothers Media Awareness Takeover Android (a.k.a.: TYMat A), but those things are insanely expensive. To shut Alex up, the rest of us pooled our money, bought a ventriloquist dummy, and just told him it was a wooden robot that would only analyze the Sun Belt when it was on Nappy's lap.

TYMat A (left) and TY Sports contributor(?) Nappy Headed Ho, shortly before Nappy broke into one of many shrieking fits of terror.

We quickly learned that Nappy has a deeply rooted childhood trauma related to ventriloquism. Whenever he came into direct contact with the puppet, he would scream and recoil in horror, usually spending the rest of the day whimpering on the floor, curled in the fetal position. We were forced to declare the TYMat A experiment a failure. Luckily for the rest of us, Alex had forgotten about Bicentennial Man and robots, and was instead fascinated by Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. While Alex was trying to teach himself to dance and Nappy was crying and wetting himself as he struggled to return to normal function, TY and I were free to move on to the next stage of the TYMat plan...

The TYMat habitat, shown publicly for the first time.

A human TYMat: TYMat B, with the "B" standing for "Bastard who would one day break our hearts and abandon us for our online competitors".

We shackled TYMat, held him prisoner at the Institute, and the rest is history. But we let him out to go to Mobile for the SBC Tournament, and apparently spending the rest of his life chained up in a tiny cage and beaten daily with a leather strap (sometimes hourly, when deadlines loomed) couldn't compete with the big world outside his habitat.

Lesson learned, we've decided to move forward with a new TYMat that we hope to keep under better control. But this one is a non-human ape.

Meet the Tina Yothers Media Awareness Takeover Chimpanzee. You can call him TYMat C for short.

Chimps are naturally smart animals, but we went the extra mile and paid a shadowy branch of the U.S. Government to genetically and socially engineer the perfect new TYMat for us. They subjected him to all available archive footage of past SBC Basketball games to give him the expertise we needed. They taught him sign language, so that he could communicate his columns to us. And most importantly, they implanted an explosive device in his skull that will cause him to blow up if he ever tries to set foot beyond the Institute grounds.

I'll be damned if we're getting our hearts broken by another SBC expert. If this one doesn't want to stay put, NOBODY gets to have him.

We picked up the new TYMat late last week in anticipation of a SBC Preview column that would trounce the one on GoMeanGreen.com. Unfortunately, we forgot that none of the members of Team Tina understand sign language, so at the moment we have no way of translating TYMat C's undoubtedly genius musings on the year to come.

Our planning may be poor, but our spirits are indomitable. Loyal readers deserve some sort of Sun Belt predictions, so we held up two posters covered with team logos and jabbed TYMat C with a meterstick until he threw feces at one team from each division.

Using this scientific method, the TY Sports expert projection is that the Western Division champion will be North Texas. In the Eastern Division, there was some poo splatter and the prediction isn't totally clear... Based on the results, we offer 96% odds on Florida International, 4% odds on Florida Atlantic.

While we're on the subject, if anyone in the reading audience understands sign language and loves animals, please email us through the addresses provided in the menu on the right of your screen.

In conclusion, if you're mourning the loss of TYMat B, get over it. Because we sure did. TYMat B is dead to us now; deader than Pat Benetar. We've replaced him with a poop-throwing Government-programmed superchimp, and we think the accuracy and quality of our SBC analysis will not suffer at all.

But just so he knows... If things don't work out in the internet big leagues between TYMat B and the GoMeanGreen honchos... We're keeping his cage just the way he left it.

Just in case he ever wants to visit for old times' sake.