This could be the end

By Bill Foley of The Montana Standard - 01/13/2009

Bill Foley, Tap 'Er Light sports commentary

Time's up.

All those things you were waiting for will never happen.

The Cubs will never win their first World Series title since 1908. The BCS will never go away, and the Utah Youths will never get the respect they deserve.

The Yankees will never break the Curse of A-Rod, and Mark Teixeira will never hit a cheap home run to right field in The House That King George Built.

Bobby Hauck will never get any of those coaching jobs you swear he interviewed for because your sister has a friend whose brother works in the University of Montana athletic department, and she told you that she heard Bobby was talking to Florida about replacing Urban Meyer when he goes to Notre Dame.

Bobcats fans who really seem to think their Montana State football program is in better shape than Montana's because they're 3-0 in national championship games — with the last coming sometime in the late 1870s — will never understand why they are so, so silly.

Montana Tech's football team will never get over the hump and beat Carroll College, and we've seen the last of Tony Romo fumbling in a big game.

The Butte High-Butte Central football game will never come back, and you'll never lose those 20 pounds.

Why? Because Yellowstone is gonna blow. We're all goners.

Oh sure, it might not happen today or even tomorrow. But in the next two or three weeks, we're history.

The 1,000 or so earthquakes since Christmas has Yellowstone National Park jiggling like Charlie Weis' belly. That's bad because the park is a super volcano that has erupted 1,000 times more powerfully than the Mount St. Helens explosion in 1980, and it is ready for an apocalyptic boom so big that Robbie Knievel wouldn't even fake a jump over it.

If you don't believe me, you just aren't watching Mega Disasters on the History Channel nearly enough.

Plus, there can't be a bigger sign that the world is about to end than the Arizona Cardinals hosting the NFC Championship game on Sunday. That alone should have us all running for the hills.

So, why should we waste our time going through the motions of every-day monotonous life when it's all gonna end in a matter of days?

If you're reading this at work, stand up, tell your boss to take a hike and live the rest of your life on your own terms. If you're still at home, call off sick because nobody wants to be stuck in a cubicle on doomsday.

You might as well give up on that New Year's resolution a couple weeks early and leave the regulars at the YMCA use the treadmill one last time. You should probably do that even if the quakes are a false alarm.

Take your family on a trip, and don't worry about paying that credit card bill you are racking up. If the world is going to end, it might as well end with you up to your armpits in debt. So spend like you're a Steinbrenner in December.

Go to Hawaii or Aruba. Better yet, take a trip to Yellowstone because you might as well be watching the majestic beauty of Old Faithful when it all blows up.

The people in the impact zone will be the lucky ones because the rest of us are going wish we were there when we see what the last days on Earth are like after the eruption.

Sure, we'll have that initial satisfaction of knowing that Bozeman was the first city to go, but that will fade away with the food supply.

So too will the Cubs' World Series hopes. But they weren't too good before Yellowstone.

Bern, baby, Bern I'll take the little time we have left to offer congratulations to my pal Bernie Boyle for his 30-year career in the Butte Fire Department.

Bernie retired a few weeks ago and will never again have to worry about the Monte Bostons of the world. Instead, he'll be making sure the Knights of Columbus will keep the lights on long enough to make sure a few more fistfights erupt in KC League basketball games.

Firefighters like Bernie can never be thanked enough for their hard work in keeping us safe. Putting themselves in harm's way to help save people they don't even know is the very definition of being a hero.

Also, my congratulations go out to recently retired firefighters Ray Berryman and Jim Ryan. Berryman put in nearly 30 years, while Ryan fought fires in Butte for 37.

Berryman and Ryan deserve extra congratulations — and probably some hazard pay — because in addition to arsonists like Boston, they had to put up with Bernie the Packers fan for the last three decades.

From Lynn Dickey to Don Majkowski to that Eagle Scout Brett Favre to goofy-beard-wearing Aaron Rodgers, those 30 years must have seemed like thousands.

Those guys must have been begging for Yellowstone to blow up the whole time.