Oh. My. God. It's #TheJanice!

Phoebe: Janice? You called Janice?

Chandler: Yes, Janice. Why is that so difficult for you to comprehend?

Ross: You remember Janice, right?

--Friends, “The One Where Mr. Heckles Dies,” Season 2

Let’s be clear about one thing: The CBI sucks. I mean, really, really sucks.

It’s not just that the Flying Dutchmen are 0-2 all-time in the CBI. Hofstra is winless in the NCAA Tournament, too, and has a losing record in the NIT, but I’d do cartwheels if we ever get back to one of those tourneys.

It’s that the CBI is Calvinball, on the floor and behind the scenes. This is a tournament that is bracketed for the first two rounds but then shuffled for the semifinals before the last two teams play a best-of-three championship series. What’s next? Games declared ties if teams are tied at the end of regulation? Or overtime consisting of duck-duck-goose?

The CBI is run by the Gazelle Group, which, ahem, has made no friends with the equal parts ruthlessness and incompetence with which it operates the CBI as well as its preseason tournaments. I thought Hofstra learned this when the Flying Dutchmen traveled to the Evansville on less than 24 hours notice to play a game in a Division II gym in the 2011 CBI, or when the Dutchmen were sent to Purdue instead of Villanova to open a Gazelle Group tournament bleak in November 2012, but I guess not.

The CBI is a joke, and something we should laugh at, even as Hofstra inexplicably participates in it for a third time tonight, when the Dutchmen host former North Atlantic Conference/America East foe Vermont at 7. I’m just an unfrozen caveman blogger, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that the CIT was interested in Hofstra and awarded bids to CAA foes James Madison and UNC Wilmington.

But whatever. The CBI is here, and the logo I imagine Hofstra is footing the bill for is on the court as I type, so we must make the best of this hate-watching experience.

We must call the CBI by its new name, The Janice. As in Janice Litman Goralnik, who was one of only three non-core characters to appear on every season of Friends. (thank you Wikipedia)

She was loud, shrill, annoying and generally awful. Nobody liked her and everybody made fun of her. You know, kind of like the CBI.

Yet Chandler kept hooking up with Janice, and Ross even bedded her once.  We are now Chandler and Ross, going back to play in a tournament we’re embarrassed to be a part of because, well, we all get lonely and maybe we panicked while CBI and CIT bids were being bandied about last week.

Regardless of how we got here, we are here, ashamed to be in the CBI, certain we’ll be making fun of it later. So why wait? Let’s make fun of it in real time. Beginning right now, please refer to the CBI not as the CBI but as #TheJanice.

Now that we’re treating #TheJanice with the reverence it deserve, there’s only two things left to do.

And after winning the whole (TV edit) thing, let the Flying Dutchmen find their Monica or Rachel, and let us never speak of or partake in #TheJanice ever again.