Timely Syracuse Basketball Sweatshirt Fails To Make Loser Cool

Wayland, MA – According to sources at Phillips Elementary School, a Syracuse Orangemen sweatshirt worn on Tuesday April 8 by unpopular sixth grader Evan Blatnick failed to increase the boy’s coolness rating.

Blatnick – co-founder of the Phillips Junior Debate Squad and a budding entomologist – used Syracuse’s 81-78 victory over the Kansas Jayhawks the previous evening as an opportunity to break free of his usual plain slacks/Velcro sneaker/short-sleeved dress shirt ensemble and, instead, wear a grey Syracuse Orangemen basketball sweatshirt stolen from his older brother, Matt.

Within minutes of the sweatshirt’s public unveiling, however, the surefire plan to free himself from the suffocating binds of social leprosy and improve his lowly status as an introspective, skinny, pale, unattractive bookworm backfired terribly.

"He comes on the bus in this Syracuse sweatshirt and I yelled, ‘Hey everyone, check out Bug Boy!,’" said classmate Andy McCabe. "Yeah, like all of sudden he’s a huge 'Cuse hoops fan? Whatever. Like Blatnick even knows who Carmelo Anthony is and doesn’t totally suck ass at gym."

Laughing, McCabe added: "And the thing was ten sizes too big. What a freakin’ turd. We all just started throwing shit at him. I got him right in the head with a fruit roll-up."

The skeptical reception from Blatnick’s classmates on the morning bus was an ominous sign that the sweatshirt would not have the chrysalis-like effect – transforming him from the ugly, gawky, unpopular moth to the beautiful, popular, sports-crazed butterfly – that he had hoped for.

At one point, while administering Blatnick's daily 10:30 a.m. post-recess beating behind the cafeteria dumpster, school bully Brent Pickett echoed McCabe’s sentiments regarding the suddenly revised wardrobe.

"So I’m totally whaling on him and he’s all like ‘Brent, please stop, my brother will kill me if I get his basket sports sweatshirt dirty," Pickett said. "And I’m like 'First, you girl, it’s basketball, not basket sports, and second, maybe you should’ve stuck to your normal gaywad clothes instead of trying to pretend you’re a big basketball fan all of a sudden.’"

"And then I mashed some old tartar sauce containers into his hair," Pickett added.

While Blatnick himself was busy tattling on Pickett to Principal Woodruff and could not be reached for comment, older brother, Matt, 15, expressed concern about his younger brother’s botched sports-sweatshirt-wearing attempt.

"So that’s where my ‘Cuse sweatshirt is," Matt said while finishing a set of one-armed free-weight curls in the Blatnick basement. "I was looking all over for that thing. If he thinks that Pickett kid beat him today, just wait until that little insect-humping tool gets home."

Upon learning of Blatnick’s wardrobe-related misfortune, Champion® Athletic, makers of the sweatshirt, expressed regret, but said that this is an isolated incident and they do not plan a manufacturer’s recall at this time.