Meet Bubba, the fellow you see at right. In high school, Bubba was awarded a scholarship from the American Academy of Achievement, and at the ceremony, he shared a table with no less a personage than coachbot Mike Krzyzewski.
I'll let Bubba take it from here:
At our table at one of the luncheons, it was me, two other students that won similar scholarships, Tom Selleck and his wife (both very nice and personable), Coach K and his wife (bursting from the seams with personality), and another woman.
The other two students hardly spoke a word so I felt responsible for carrying the conversation and breaking the ice.
In pursuit of that awkwardness mitigator, I let Coach K know I had sent in my basketball tape and eagerly awaited the determination of my status as the new power forward for Duke. I was about 5'6" at the time and even more nerdy looking than I am now.
I'll interrupt to clarify: Bubba was making a joke. Not a great joke, mind you, but one readily identified as a joke by those of us who do not process information as a series of ones and zeroes. Here is how Coach K responded to the joke, per Bubba:
I am sure we are evaluating and will get back to you.
And that was that. No wry chuckle. No courtesy laugh. Just ... that.
Bubba takes care to add that the joke may have bombed on account of poor delivery, and that Coach K was otherwise "very friendly." Nonetheless, Bubba reports that, after he explained he was only kidding, an awkward pause ensued, and "the rest of the meal was filled with me enjoying my time talking to Tom and his gregarious wife and avoiding the phlegmatic icy stare of Coach K and his subservient wife."
If there is a man in college basketball more sorely in need of an enema than Mike Krzyzewski, I have not met him. He makes Jay Bilas look like Lenny Bruce.
H/t reader Austin
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