Bateman: The Moustache Column reflects

Yes, the rumors are true: The Moustache Column of America won’t be in this paper for much longer. Yes, the rumors are true: The Moustache Column of America won’t be in this paper for much longer. We’re taking our talents to Texas, and we can’t imagine there will ever be more where this stuff came from. Where does that leave you, hmm? Well, you’ll no longer have our columns to skim when you’re spacing out in your “cake” and “blow-off” courses, although that’s your own fault for registering for classes that have attendance policies.

But enough with the negatives. It’s already a jungle out there, what with the economy being so terrible and there not being any jobs for college graduates and Rick Santorum winning primary after primary and your beloved Pitt Panthers hoopsters bottom-feeding their way through the College Basketball Invitational and all. Instead, let’s accentuate the positive by reflecting on all the amazing things you’ve learned from us during the three years we’ve been in your life.

To start with, you learned what a terrible injustice it was that Peyton “Overrated” Hillis was elected to front the Madden 2012 box. Since our column first appeared in the paper, we’ve argued that this beer-barrel-shaped running back was who we thought he was: an immobile oaf who should be playing on special teams for the New England Patriots, not occupying a valuable roster slot on the hated Cleveland Browns. His NFL Combine profile puts it best: “Having him carry the ball often would not be beneficial, as he does not have the second gear or speed to make big gains on the ground.” The masterminds who run the Kansas City Chiefs obviously disagree with that assessment, though, and have signed Hillis — who had been thinking about retiring and joining the CIA — to a one-year, $3 million deal. They’ll soon learn the error of their ways.

We also drew attention to the Starbury line of low-cost athletic apparel. Featuring legendary NBA ball-hog and notorious clubhouse cancer Stephon Marbury as its owner and spokesmodel, this company sells high-top “kicks” and billowing white T-shirts at bottom-basement prices. Why Starbury gear hasn’t proved more popular with the bros continues to elude us, given that unlaced, high-top kicks and a billowing white T are the perfect complement to a flat-brimmed baseball cap and a comically oversized wallet chain. After you surf over to starbury.com, buy the entire spring line and rock it at one of those killer “Dirty South” Oakland basement parties where everyone drinks headache-inducing malt liquor out of red Solo cups and a few thirtysomething townies show up around midnight to “run a train” on the beer pong table, they too will learn the error of their ways.

Surely our greatest accomplishment was the investigative reporting we did on the bro lifestyle. Believe us, in the course of filing our dispatches, every single stop was pulled out of wherever it is that the stops are kept (in the medicine cabinet, maybe?). We totally immersed ourselves in their fast-paced, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. lifestyle, which wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. Can you imagine what it feels like to wake up long after the sun has set with a ferocious hangover that is either from last night or is the vestige of an even worse hangover from two weeks ago? Do you know how hard it is to remain upright for more than four hours a day while also remaining 420-friendly and subsisting on a diet of fat-laden, nutrition-free $5 pizza pies? Could you go an entire semester without so much as Febreze-ing your loose sweatpants or dragging your weary carcass to a single event that starts before the crack of midnight? No, absolutely not. But we suffered for you, friends, and you’re all the better for it.

We’ve also walked with you in your oversized, unlaced Starbury high-tops as you navigated your way along the haphazard highway that leads to a BA in the ever-popular “undecided” major. When you needed a thesis statement, we had one at the ready: “Of all the presidents, George Washington was one of them.” When you were considering graduate school, we were there to say, “Why not? Everything else out there is pretty miserable.” When you were trying to drop that $5-pizza-pie-induced freshman 50, we urged you to keep it so that you’d have something (in this case, your once-not-so-terrible body) about which to wax nostalgic when you’re old and decrepit. When you were thinking about whether to keep that goatee, we cautioned you against it, unless you were willing to complete the look with a sweet gold chain (featuring a cross inside a pot leaf, because you’re hella religious but still like to have fun times) and a fitted cap that’s been turned backward. And at your lowest moment, when you couldn’t get that cool new person you just met to acknowledge your existence, we gave you a can’t-miss opener that was certain to bring him or her textual satisfaction: “sup.”

To which we say, dear readers, from the bottom of our hearts and with all the sincerity we can muster: “nm u?”

Oliver Bateman and his friends invented the Moustache Club of America, a website that specializes in hot college humor. You can read all their hilarious stories about keg parties and hipster hoedowns at moustacheclubofamerica.com. If you’ve got a killer suggestion for a column that (hopefully) has something to do with hardgaining, $5 pizza pies or Maddens 2006-2012, send it to oliver.lee1@gmail.com.