Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Snoop Dogg Bowl
Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. was born in 1971, to Beverly Tate and Vernell Varnado. They were not married, and Mr. Varnado left three months after Calvin was born. His mother then married Calvin Broadus Sr., and they remained married until Calvin Jr. was three years old. Calvin’s mother nicknamed him “Snoopy” due to his fascination with the cartoon character, which led to Calvin Jr.’s various names over the years, such as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Snoop Dogg, Snoop Lion, Bigg Snoop Dogg, Dogg Father, Snoop Rock, DJ Snoopadelic, Snoopzilla, FaZe Snoop, and Niggarachi. I suppose we should be thankful that young Calvin Jr. was not fascinated by Tweety Bird or Minnie Mouse. On the other hand, if he had been a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, that would have saved some time.
In elementary school, Snoop was known as a dedicated student and enthusiastic churchgoer, singing in a choir at his Baptist Church. In sixth grade, he began rapping. By high school, he was active in the drug trade, gangs (he was a member of the Crips), and other criminal activities. He was arrested multiple times for drug-related offenses, and spent time in jail on and off. He was later accused of the murder of a rival gang member but was acquitted. He has often said that his religion has remained important to him. His Baptist upbringing led him to release a gospel album. He has also claimed to be a member of the Rastafari religion, as well as The Nation of Islam.
He has often spoken of the importance of living the lifestyle that he raps about. He worked as a pimp in the early 2000s, saying, “That s*** was my natural calling and once I got involved with it, it became fun. It was like shootin’ layups for me. I was makin’ ‘em every time.” He founded a record label called “Death Row Records,” and his artistic projects include “Murder was the Case,” “Gangsta Walk,” “F*** the Police,” and so on. To get a feel for Snoop’s music, consider the lyrics to his most famous hit, “Gin and Juice”:
ha-ha-ha, I’m serious, nigga
One of y’all niggas got some bad mother***in’ breath
(Uh, ayy, [REDACTED]) ayy baby, ayy baby
Ayy baby, get some bubblegum in this muhf***er or somethin’
Ayy, nigga, get somethin’ to eat, dog
Study long, study wrong, niggaWith so much drama in the L-B-C
It’s kinda hard bein’ Snoop D-O-double-G
But I, somehow, some way
Keep comin’ up with funky a** s*** like every single day
May I kick a little something for the G’s (yeah)
And make a few ends as I breeze through (yeah)
Two in the mornin’ and the party’s still jumpin’ ’cause my mama ain’t home
I got b****es in the livin’ room gettin’ it on
And they ain’t leavin’ ’til six in the mornin’ (six in the mornin’)
So what you wanna do? S***
I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too
So turn off the lights and close the doors
But (but what?) We don’t love them hoes, yeah
So we gon’ smoke a ounce to this
Gs up, hoes down, while you mother***ers bounce to thisRollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)Now that I got me some Seagram’s gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain’t chipped in
Now this types of s*** happens all the time
You gotta get yours, but fool, I gotta get mine
Everything is fine when you listenin’ to the D-O-G
I got the cultivatin’ music that be captivating he
Who listens to the words that I speak
As I take me a drink to the middle of the street
And get to mackin’ to this b**** named Sadie (Sadie?)
She used to be the homeboy’s lady (oh, that b****?)
Eighty degrees when I tell that b**** please
Raise up off these N-U-T’s, ’cause you gets none of these
At ease, as I mob with the Dogg Pound, feel the breeze
Beyotch, I’m justRollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)Later on that day
My homie Dr. Dre came through with a gang of Tanqueray
And a fat a** J of some bubonic chronic that made me choke
S***, this ain’t no joke
I had to back up off of it and sit my cup down
Tanqueray and chronic, yeah, I’m f***ed up now
But it ain’t no stoppin’, I’m still poppin’
Dre got some b****es from the city of Compton
To serve me, not with a cherry on top
‘Cause when I bust my nut, I’m raisin’ up off the cot
Don’t get upset girl, that’s just how it goes
I don’t love you hoes, I’m out the door
And I’ll beRollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Laid back (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Beyotch (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice
Beyotch (with my mind on my money and my money on my mind)
Snoop is widely praised for his artistry in the hip-hop space:
How to Rap also notes that Snoop is known to use syncopation in his flow to give it a laidback quality,[158] as well as ‘linking with rhythm’ in his compound rhymes,[159] using alliteration,[160] and employing a “sparse” flow with good use of pauses.
Beyond his obvious affection for alcohol, prostitutes, cocaine, and the “gangsta” lifestyle, Snoop is well known for his love of marijuana. In 2013, he claimed to be smoking around 80 joints per day. He has also funded many business ventures in this space, including one that promises to deliver “medical marijuana” to clients’ doorsteps in less than ten minutes.
His many business ventures, combined with his successful music career, have led Snoop to become quite wealthy. He is now worth around $160 million. And he has sought more mainstream attention, in many different ways.
Which leads me to the point of this article: In NCAA Division I football postseason, there is now an annual “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Presented by Gin & Juice.” This is remarkable. In many different ways.
For decades, the NCAA has required that bowl game sponsorships reflect “the collegiate model,” banning any sponsorships that involved alcoholic beverages or other negative influences. They even banned “pool halls” with billiards, and even nutritional supplements with ginseng or creatinine. They refused a sponsorship with “5 Hour Energy Drink” because it was laden with caffeine and amino acids. The NCAA refused to even consider bowl sponsorships that had associations with anything remotely illegal or unethical.
But now they have a bowl game named after a serial criminal, gang member, pimp, drug dealer, and rapper who promotes marijuana, blatant misogyny, and anti-police sentiments in his art. Despite their previous strict limitations, the NCAA has accepted this sponsorship.
Why is that, I wonder?
It can’t be for the money. This is a small bowl, with teams from two small conferences (the MAC and the Mountain West conferences). The total revenue is likely to be less than a few million dollars, total. To the NCAA, this is chump change.
So why?
I really don’t know. Perhaps there are certain social blights that the NCAA has decided are virtuous? That seems unlikely. I really don’t know. But this sudden about-face seems really, really bizarre. Why on earth?
Are there any theories out there? What do you think?
Published in General
“So why?”
Perhaps they ran out of morally responsible sponsors for meaningless bowl games.
He could run for President, and be more able to afford to defend himself against lawfare than Ron DeSantis.
The Arizona Bowl is in my hometown, Tucson Arizona. I had not heard about the name change. How embarrassing, for our city and for the University of Arizona, my law school alma mater.
I take it as just another sign of our wholesale social decay. You all did see the Olympics opening, right? It does seem as if our whole country, and much of Western Europe, has become Sodom & Gomorrah.
This one hurts, though. With apologies for the expletive from Mel Brooks:
. . .aving cream.
I have one question…
Given the rest of the quoted work, what on earth was the redacted part?
Snoop has definitely hit the mainstream….gang affiliation (reputedly a head of a faction of the Long Beach Crips – the Rollin’ 20’s) , drugs, misogyny, and violence be damned. He hosted NBC’s Olympics coverage. He carried the Olympic torch through Paris, opining “it looks like a blunt.” He’s on The Voice. He was a central character in a recent Super Bowl halftime show … attired head to foot in Crip blue-bandana attire. He’s a spokesman for Corona and famously buddies with Martha Stewart.
Never bet against current culture catering to the least common denominator.
Fellow pothead and admitted wife-beater Mike Tyson seems to be celebrated almost universally as well. I’m not gonna say it’s because society expects less of certain people, but…
To be fair, according to Snoop, the only person to ever out-smoke Snoop was Willie Nelson.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=snoop+willie+nelson+smoke&t=brave&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Di8T3g5248L8
When the pimp’s in the crib ma, you drop it like it’s hot.
the black bolded [Redacted] comes from Ricochet’s autoredaction feature. As usual with such things the redaction is keyed to certain words, and for example misspelling the n-word gets around it. Without going and looking the lyrics up myself I’m guessing it’s an s-word the guy who originally typed it forgot to asterisk out.
What you’re looking at is two different value scales. The folks that put that restriction in place were from an older generation that worried about things like delinquency in the youth. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone complain about pool halls since I last saw The Music Man in high school. The people running the show now are not the people who put that code into place. If they were, they would have rejected the rapper.
Now comes along a new Pharaoh who remembers not Joseph. These new managers signed on to the code when they took over the joint, at least implicitly by leaving it in place. But they’ve interpreted it as “we only allow good things to advertise, not bad things”. What they consider to be good and bad is different than the previous generation. If you ask them about an alcohol sponsorship, for example, they might default to the old understanding and deny it, but if they were setting up the same sort of code today I doubt it’d even cross their minds.
No, they’re judging on a different good and bad axis. The Snoop D-O-Double G is part of urban black culture, and hence a moral good in their view, without quibbling about little things like pimping. It does not even occur to them that swallowing the gangsta lifestyle wholesale might in some way not be ‘collegiate’. But try and sponsor one of these things with Remington or Winchester Arms and watch them draw back in terror.
Two different value scales. Two different ideas of what constitutes good and evil. They’ve gone woke; I recommend making them go broke.
You’re right. I must’ve missed one.
I wasn’t sure what to do with Mr. Dogg’s repeated use of the n-word. I think, in that context, it’s acceptable. But I really don’t know.
Bowl Sponsor Diversity?
I love Willie, but he really has become a self-parody with the weed worship. I hope that’s not what people remember him for.
It might very well be, for younger people. Such as those who wonder if Paul McCartney was in a band before “Wings.”
This is an excellent interview with Armen Kiteyan on how they have let everything get out of control in college athletics. No planning. No foresight. Who owns this stuff? The government should have stepped in over 20 years ago.
I’ve told this story before. One weekend I was listening to Fox Sports on the radio. The two guys running the show played the Alabama coach whining about what is happening to college football. Basically he’s whining about how it’s turning into a two tiered system. He makes all of this money and then he’s crying about something when it’s too late to do anything. Real noble. Boy, you are just a great man. Then they went into an excellent analysis about why the playoff system doesn’t make any sense for college football.
This all started when they rigged that computer analysis thing 20 years ago. It took the propeller heads about two months to figure out it was a scam. Nobody did anything.
The conferences don’t make any sense, now. They could have preserved that. Schools are dropping football. Minor sports are being dropped all over the place. Men are playing girls sports. Now we have the Snoop Dogg bowl.
So this is a public good?
No, but the question is ***who owns it***? As far as I can tell, it’s people with fat salaries just commandeer the thing to make it into whatever they want so they can steal more money from it. Then it gets sorted into big winners and losers without much in the way of market forces or, alternatively, government arbitration. It’s theft, destruction, and chaos.
I think Uncommon Knowledge also did a really good interview with I can’t think of her name now, but the secretary of state under the Bush administration that is a really big football expert. She nailed everything as well. College football is nuts.
*Condoleezza Rice
Just to be clear, I’m not the big expert. I just hate the playoff system, and I hate the fact that they are getting rid of so many minor sports all over the place. I just want to see good games every week, and I want them to be fair to the players. The bowls have always been corrupt, but this is really bad.
In retrospect, it’s probably not ideal that this all got tied into higher education.
NBC had the guy as part of their Olympic coverage.
When I questioned this choice in my outside voice, my better half answered with, “He’s popular.”
I pray we still have “a lot of ruin” left.
I think they paid him $500,000 for that.
That joke is pretty stale, because most “young people” probably never heard of Wings.
I absolutely agree that it is a corrupt clown-car dumpster fire. Growing up, I had a friend in a position to testify as to the underpinnings of the late Lefty Driesell’s Maryland University basketball program and “athlete privilege” as it played out at Maryland. It was a seamy underbelly, indeed. Much later, as a manager, I was able to help a star athlete transition back into society. He was a devout Catholic, so I had a good core to work with. Set boundaries, cite principles, enforce application, we are still great friends.
I have not followed college sports closely since, but from what I have seen it is clearly a market. Students are paid in kind, including heightened access to and preparation for the professional leagues, with a potential for receiving an education (the gold ring), in addition to a credential, if the athlete is so inclined. The problem of developing a privileged class whose utility will usually not survive their twenties is an interesting one, the university system out-competed minor leagues, in part, by selling that potential education that would serve the twenty-something athletic alumni when the show was over.
I have noticed, even at my distant remove, the hilarious destabilization of the conference system driven by tactical market conditions. The dignified facade of responsible academic institutions prudently administering programs for the virtuous maturation of our beloved youth has crumbled to dust. That facade was always seen as part of the deal, but never to the extent that the seamy underside was really curbed. It is not a world I would encourage a child of mine to become a part of. The utility of that facade has value, but not enough to outweigh the raw greed in the market. And once that greed is rampant, the question of fair player remuneration to allow the players whose value is a significant multiple of the considerations they receive to benefit. Value is most reliably determined in a market transaction. Which brings my wanderings a bit closer to Dr. Rice’s reflections. She also keys on the human costs of the current system.
But you doubtless understand the market side of the equation better than I do. When I try to game this market structure the solutions tend to decouple the education/credential from the development of the athlete, driving back toward sports clubs/minor leagues. The clown car instability will not stop of its own until its effects are so ruinous, in reputation and gate receipts and television contracts, that the absurd energies driving it are dissipated.
I keep saying in other contexts that our institutions no longer serve us. In this case, the respect for prudence and principle has been driven out, in classic American fashion, by pursuit of the almighty dollar.
To Dr. Bastiat’s query about a Snoop Dogg Bowl, I think it is of a part with the lionization of the criminal and bully George Floyd. A misguided appropriation of famous people as idols and role models despite their horrific, destructive examples. In trying to build a bridge to lost souls they build a bridge for the vulnerable to cross to become lost. That way lies feral cities.
Really excellent comment Sisyphus. You are pointing to the fact that they should have gotten on top of this 30 years ago.
Here are some of my limited observations.
This absolutely makes me sick to my stomach. Nobody got on top of this. It’s sick. It’s unnatural.
I know, they pretend about all of this utility and then everybody just drops them.
The Big Ten makes absolutely no sense, except for the money. They don’t need Maryland and they don’t need Rutgers and they don’t need the California schools. it’s weird. If they had to wipe out the big 12 they could have taken Kansas and Kansas State.
Nauseating.
Congress just sat there and did nothing.
Exactly. Well done. I just can’t articulate like this.
lIbERtaRiAns dOn’t lIVe iN tHe rEAl woRld
George Floyd had a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. He had other drugs in his system. He fought with the police for 45 minutes. He was big. I can’t understand why cops aren’t cut a ton of slack in this situation.
People don’t talk about this, but he was sent out of Houston by a Christian organization. The problem is, this is literally one of the worst towns for black people. (Meaning the differential in the life success between whites and blacks)
Why? Do the blacks and whites live differently in Houston or does Houston have poor police practices or something? I am always fascinated by extreme statistics.
The big one is we set the record for blacks versus whites every single year in this state in education. We are always 49th or 50th. It never changes.
I think the other measurement is net worth. The difference between black and white is really high in Minnesota. I’m not sure what that’s a function of. `
We just live with these statistics. It’s sickening.
Just to be really super clear, I don’t know what the statistics are for blacks in Houston. I just know that we are really bad on that one differential. Since it’s a differential, they may be better off here anyway. I don’t know.
I think Snoop must have had Martha Stewart present his sponsorship and vouch for his decency (despite her criminal street cred). And look at that Olympics gig!!!What a deal.
I believe the term is “defining deviancy down.”
It could be worse. Congress could have done something.