Archive For The “SEC” Category
I love the NCAA tournament, usually.
I play in the office pool, but more than just that, I emotionally get involved with the games. Yes, that’s not an exaggeration. Emotionally involved. I stand up and yell at the TV set for teams located in places I’ve never visited, becoming hoarse for schools I didn’t attend, cheering for Cinderellas I didn’t know existed a month before.
Like most of America, I have fallen in love with the underdog narrative – the plucky, underdog story we’ve all seen in Hoosiers and Little Giants and countless good, bad, and terrible sports movies over the last fifty years.
And as a fan of my alma mater, Lehigh, I guess I live this underdog story on a near-daily basis. Lehigh is almost always the “smaller school” in all their NCAA athletics contests, whether it’s wrestlers going against the semi-pros of Penn State and Iowa, or the football team going against the 100+ scholarshipped players of Yale or Princeton.
That has to be why, after standing up through two overtimes, yelling at my TV and imploring a bunch of college athletes I do not know to somehow take down one of the richest schools of the country, I felt sick.
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You didn’t ask me, Alexis De Tocqueville wannabes, but to understand the American people you need to experience three things.
First, you need to spend a day at Walt Disney World. Not Disneyland, out in California, but Disneyworld in Orlando. There you will see all walks of life, all shapes, all colors, all sizes, walking through an orgy of consumerism and fantasy. Don’t look or think too much about the park itself, which is simply giving the people what they want in the most capitalistic way possible, but observe the people walking around, the folks in the Ron Jon T-shirts, the low-cut tops showing off tattoos that shouldn’t be there, the Florida Gator fans.
You also need to spend a weekend at Las Vegas. Not spending the time at the blackjack tables or poker dens trying to make it rich, understand, but watching the people, the paysan who acts like he’s in control when the ace and the jack come out for him, the crying woman running after the man who obviously bet more money than the couple could afford. Las Vegas shows extremes of emotion – highs that shouldn’t happen, lows that are tragic, all in the pursuit of being the lucky one tonight.
You also need to attend a college football game. Not watching it on TV, understand, but being physically at the game, smelling the food, seeing the pageantry, feeling the intensity of the crowd, seeing two sets of emotions on hand, with only one set of emotions winning on the day.
The talk around collegiate athletics is “Division 4”, after “Big 5” commissioners Mike Silve, John Swofford and Bob Bowlsby floated the idea of a new subdivision over the past few weeks.
Normally the talk of the big conferences breaking off from the rest of FBS would elicit so much yawning from the likes of Patriot League schools.
Unless, of course, you’re on the table for Division 4 membership.
No, this isn’t a typo, or a crazy theory. Sportswriters are contemplating what Division 4 might look like, and the Patriot League is being contemplated as a possible league to be a part of that subdivision.
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