Rankled by Rankings

Around this time of year, there's very little that's more annoying than seeing butthurt students catch feelings about the latest school rankings. I mean, there's people talking about spring training baseball, but really, anything to do with baseball is pretty much a given as the worst thing to have to read about. And you are reading my blog, so you managed to find at least one thing that's more annoying than both.

Baseball is a lot like pregnancy. It's 9 months of an overly long process that everybody gets really excited about for the first few weeks because of all the unknowns—Will the winner of the NL Central be Red or Blue? Boy or Girl?—which then becomes a non-stop fake, forced interest during the next 8 months because, well, you have to pretend like you care about baseball/your friend's future child all year long, even though the Cubs were mathematically eliminated before All-Star break and the parents are either going to name their kid Mark if it's a boy or Grace if it's a girl to honor 1B Mark Grace, who has almost as many DUIs as Gold Gloves. And finally, after 9 months of hard work, weight gain caused by little bundles of joy (A Child or PEDs), and more water breaking than a Brian Wilson dugout tantrum, the culmination of the season ends with only two parties actually caring about what happens in the end.

Honestly, as a male, I would choose 3 trimesters of child bearing over 3 innings of watching Clayton Kershaw struggle to control the location of his four-seam fastball, resulting in a 30 pitch 2nd.

But enough about people who have little baby testicles. I too, am very butthurt right now. Does that qualify me to write about school rankings? Yes, because I am Matt Pellegrini, which means I'm way better than pretty much everybody at everything and consistently more interesting than all of you. But I don't wanna write about school rankings, because I'm not a butthurt Student. I'm a butthurt Bachelor.

Season 17 of The Bachelor just wrapped up Monday night, with super hunk Sean Lowe giving the Final Rose to Catherine. If that elephant ride didn't just melt your heart.... But now that Sean and Catherine will pretend to stay together for a few months before having a tabloid breakup because Sean cheated on her with his Dancing with the Stars partner, there's a vacancy and longing deep in the loins of lonely women everywhere for a strapping and handsome new Bachelor. Cue my theme song.

Many people that I have randomly overheard have said (not necessarily "to" me), "You would make a great 'The Bachelor.'" Of course I would. And I figured I would pretty much at least be ensured finalist type consideration. That is, until US News and Scamports' "Best Eligible Bachelor States" Rankings came out the other night.

The state of Illinois dropped from its 8th place rank all the way to 19th in State with the Best Eligible Bachelors. Once again, Illinois has screwed me. And all they had to offer was excuses, excuses.

Oh, the criteria and scoring changed for this year, they said. They put more weight on States that produced Bachelors that became married and stayed married. What the fuck is that about? These are Bachelor rankings, who's trying to get married here?

I knew when I chose the state of Illinois to be born in that I wasn't going to be one of the top tier Bachelors that are steeped in old money, tradition, cotillion balls, and fruit trees of the hyper-romantic Postbellum South. Those guys are pretty much guaranteed the best Bachelor spots on those factors alone, even if they are Quasimodo's, I get that. But being from a small town in rural Illinois, I was told I might not be able to get the best single women pretending to look for love so they can actually advance their modeling and acting careers, but I would pretty much at least be guaranteed some of the better gold-digging fame whores.

And what does Illinois do? They go and kill my dreams by not playing the numbers right. And instead of solutions, just give excuses and justifications. Personally, I blame Chicago.

I mean, I look in the mirror and see a handsome small-town boy from Illinois, who has tight, lean muscles from all the years of pitchin' hay bales and ropin' dogies, with dimples the size of canyons and eyelashes like gorgeous butterfly wings, and who has an amazing blog for God's sake. And all that is going to be undone because Illinois can't keep a decent Bachelor rank. Because of this shitty ranking, nobody's going to look at me anymore and see a charming and virile Renaissance man with a devilishly tantalizing smirk...they're just going to see my big, crooked, Cyrano de Bergerac-esque nose and that I'm from Illinois...only the 19th best state at producing Bachelors.

Look, I've never actually auditioned or applied or tried to get on The Bachelor. But they're supposed to just come find me. My fame and fortune is just supposed to happen through no work of my own, but based solely on random factors that are given a good score. Like the millions of other men that are Bachelors around the world, I should be able to get by solely on my Midwestern heritage and status as a single, eligible, very heterosexual male. Why is it so hard for them to see that I'm such a unique, one of a kind person?

It just sucks that everybody that's supposed to make this work for me can only give me excuses when they blow it. When will they stand up and take some responsibility for their failures and lack of success? They only have themselves to blame for my failures. Dick heads.

Clearly you people complaining about your school rankings are bitching over spilled milk. You don't have to deal with Bachelor Rankings like me. At least going to school will get you a good job. I mean, just check out those employment numbers of graduates. You guys have it easy. Going to school eventually turns into a paying career, but being a Bachelor that gets married doesn't pay...unless you're a woman.

And a lot of people have said, well, just go for your backup plan. Now's as good a time as ever to try to become the next Pope. Then I saw where the United States was in US News' Best Catholic Countries Rankings. 126th. I didn't even know there were that many countries. African countries are apparently better Catholic places. Hhmm...how about give a little more credit for being the colonial rapacious conquistadors who forced those people to become good Catholics. I mean, where would those people be without my ancestors? Not at the conclave right now, that's for damn sure.

So I guess I'm just stuck wondering when something good will happen for me. Because I'm getting really bored just waiting around for that day to come.