We thought they’d give a hoot, but apparently not.

    The Final Four men’s Basketball tournament program was supposed to contain a full page Hooters ad from the Hooters restaurant chain but it was nixed by the NCAA, nixed because it featured a picture of one of their employees, Sara Beth Hoots.  

    Now, I’m not that big of a Hooters Restaurant fan (my healthy brother raves about it) but it is connected to sports, and when you start thinking about basketballs, something about Hooters pulls you in. Basketballs are bouncy, you guessed it.

    NCAA didn’t want the picture of the waitress, Miss Sara Hoots, who in the ad is standing next to Dick Vitale. Mike McNeil of Hooters responded by saying “Ms Hoots is a beautiful,  intelligent, and hard-working employee” and then they pulled the ad. By the way, she is a Texan and grew up near San Antonio, site of this year’s Final Four.

    Hooters should be commended. Rather than pull her picture and run the ad without her, they stood by their employee, which is what my brother says he also likes to do. My brother is a protein pimper and you can get a lot of meaty things at Hooters, like legs and breasts. I’m describing chicken. Don’t go gutter on me.

    But here’s the thing, the large gorilla in the room, the Hooter’s girl, the tall Texan the NCAA didn’t want in their program, has a real name of Sara Hoots! Now isn’t that a … a … something? Not only does she work at Hooters and is also a famous bikini model, her name is Hoots. Yes, she has an owl figurine collection. Yes, her best girl friends last name is Boobs. Yes, she was born to work for a tacky, testosterone food factory. Yes, when Dick Vitale posed with her, his one good eye (as opposed to his glass eye) was understandably cast in a particular direction. Yes, we tried to find out but we don’t how many times they re-took the picture. Yes, we have no idea how many times the photographer said “Mr. Vitale, one more time. This time, please watch the birdie.” Yes, we know Dick Vitale is an old guy but we’re pretty sure he knows what birdie means. Yes, we’re talking Dick Vitale and not Marv Albert.

    We said Hooters has a connection with sports. They helped Dick Vitale raise money for the V Foundation. They promote NASCAR. There is a Hooters Pro Golf Tour. The restaurant is essentially a sports bar with lots of televisions to watch games. And just like in basketball where the players wear shorts, so do the Hooters waitresses, except now days you’d hardly call the shorts basketball players wear – shorts. The pants on basketball players are longer than the pants on football players. I think that’s why nostalgic basketball fans like Hooters so much. They miss the really short… shorts.

    We wish Sara Hoots luck. We know she would have liked to have been full page in the Final Four program. She can’t help it one of Vitale’s eyes was wondering. She could have tried to be less pretty. Good luck with that, we guess. We’ll keep our eyes on this story. If a suit against the NCAA comes up, we’ll keep you abreast.
    Hey… hey… cut me some slack. We were very restrained.