Home Town Ends 20 Year Title Drought

I have a very weird relationship with televised sports.

Mostly, I hate watching sports. This is because I am insanely competitive, yet I can do nothing to influence the outcome of a sporting event.

So watching a favored team play is much like laying on a bed of nails, or at least that is what I imagine. It hurts.

During most high-pressure sporting events, I just keep thinking "I want this to be over. I just want to know who wins." I also yell, scream and occasionally throw things. And I don't drink much, so I cannot even blame the beer.

Really I hate the anguish.

But I watch anyway.

The search function on this blog does not work as well as I like, but I am sure that I have told this story before (one part here). Growing up, I attended Pembroke Country Day School in Kansas City, which later became The Pembroke Hill School. The school is located, literally on State Line Road in Kansas City, Mo. However, I used to park my car in a school parking lot located across the street in Mission Woods, Kan.

Since it's a private school, students come from both sides of the state line. This created an intense rivalry between fans of the Missouri Tigers and the Kansas Jayhawks. If there were any fans of the K-State Wildcats (where I would subsequently earn a master's degree), I was not aware of it at the time.

Parsing my allegiance is no easy task. I was born in Missouri, but I came home from the hospital to Kansas. My first driver's license was in Kansas, as was my first job. I earned my first college credit in Kansas, and if not for a complete lack of talent, I once intended to walk on to the KU football team.

So, mostly I am a Kansan. And I grew up a Jayhawk hoops fan.

The blossomed, not surprisingly, in 1988 when KU won the national title at home at Kansas City's Kemper Arena.

This national title came fewer than three years after the Royals won the world series.

It was a good time to be a teen-age sports fan in Kansas City.

Little did I know that it would begin a drought of two decades.

By my account, the Chiefs have suffered early playoff defeats after three 13-3 seasons. The Royals have won about 12 games since 1985, and Kansas State found a way to will themselves out of the national title game in 1998.

Derrick Thomas died following a stupid no-seatbelt automobile accident.

The NCAA left town.

Buck O'Neill got shafted by the baseball hall of fame.

And Roy. Oh, Roy.

Roy's a whole separate chapter of therapy.

Roy found new ways to break hearts in Kansas. He cried every March. And despite conference titles, Final Four appearances, and an embarrassment of McDonald's All-Americans, the NCAA title evaded Roy.

I was living in Manhattan, Kan., in 2000. That was the first time the University of North Carolina came calling. For what seemed like an eternity, I was glued to the Internet. Would Roy stay or would Roy go?

He stayed. And he said he'd retire a Jayhawk. Retire. His word. Not mine.

Three years later, he bolted after another of his Kansas teams choked to Syracuse in the 2003 title game.

If you're not from Kansas City, you'll never understand. Or maybe you will. Maybe you're from someplace you love that other people make fun of. Maybe you've explained 100 times that, yes, the streets are paved.

Kansas City is not No. 1 in a lot of things. Barbecue, yes. But we have Kansas Basketball. The first coach was the guy who invented the game. Invented! James Naismith if you're scoring at home. He was followed by Phog Allen. Dean Smith played there. Many others.

So when Roy jilted Kansas, I cannot quite explain the emotion. I felt the ultimate betrayal.

Follow the logic.

Dean Smith was a Kansas boy. He played at Kansas. He got a job coaching at North Carolina. He built his own program. When Kansas called, he said "no."

Roy Williams was a North Carolina boy. He played at North Carolina. He got a job coaching Kansas. He built his own program. When North Carolina called, he should have said "no."

But he didn't.

And it would have hurt if he had left in 2000, but he said he was going to "retire" at Kansas. No one forced him to say that. And one thing about how I was raised in Kansas City: I was taught that my word meant something.

Even worse was watching Williams win the title at UNC in 2005. I even watched in person when Roy came to town and beat my Indiana Hoosiers.

Some of that pain was exorcised when Kansas punished North Carolina in the 2008 national semifinals. For a long time against Memphis, I thought that revenge against Williams was going to have to be good enough. The Jayhawks seemed content to have exorcised a few demons.

Every call seemed to go against Kansas until Joey Dorsey fouled out. Then Mario Chalmers hit the 3 that no Jayhawk will ever forget to send the game into overtime after being down 9 with just more than 2 minutes remaining.

Overtime had its drama after KU built a small lead. There was failure to block out after a free throw (Lou Henson was surely thinking of 1989 if he was in attendance). Then a slip out-of-bounds. Really? An elite collegiate athlete, and all you have to do is remain vertical, but no?!?!?!?

In the end, the 20 year drought ends. Kansas wins its 3rd national title, and my home town's drought is over.

This might even be worse, however. I went into Monday's game assured that there was no way a Kansas City area team could win. They never did.

Now my hopes are up.

The Royals are off to a fast start. How soon until they end my sure-to-be-short-lived optimism?

Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk: On to Title Game

I won't go into the details of my history as a Kansas basketball fan tonight.

But it is sweet to see traitor Roy Williams suffer defeat!

Thanks for the Memories, General

Coach Knight, you will be missed.

Scenes from Indiana: Hoosier Hysteria

Photo copyright 2007 by the Indianapolis Star.

Ah, I miss those 5 championship banners in Assembly Hall.

Coach Donovan, I Understand Leaving Angst

When I am at work, decisions come easily. Working on deadline at the New Mexico State student newspaper, someone would shout a question. The answers always came easily. The same was true running the sports department at the Las Cruces Sun-News. And to a large extent, it's true in the lab today.

Personal decisions, however, are another matter.

Plenty of people are vilifying University of Florida/Orlando Magic/? coach Billy Donovan because of his waffling on the NBA job.

To quickly catch you up, Donovan turned down powerhouse Kentucky to stay with the Gators earlier in 2007. That alone won Donovan a place in my heart. But less than two months later, the winner of the last two NCAA championships bolted for the NBA and a $5 million+ annual salary.

He seemed excited.

Then it came time to say goodbye. Not so easy.

Donovan changed his mind. He wanted to stay at Florida. However, he actually inked the Magic deal (unlike his Florida contract upgrade). So now Donovan dances for a release.

I've heard some pretty harsh words for Donovan. You won't hear them from me. Such decisions tear me apart.

Just about a year ago, I left Ohio State for Texas Tech (read here). In many ways, this was an easy decision driven by family considerations. However, in many other ways, this was a gut wrenching decision.

My kids had to move schools ... but they'd be closer to their grandparents. There was one Ph.D. student willing to move to Tech, but there was another very talented incoming Ph.D. student staying behind. Here we have the opportunity to build a Ph.D. program, but building is hard work.

It's been about 56 weeks since I was offered the job here. And I'm pretty sure that there has not been a single week go by where I did not wonder -- at least for a moment -- whether I made the correct decision. More often than not, the answer has been "yes." But the vote has been far from unanimous.

And that's not a property of Ohio State or Texas Tech. Instead, it's about the fact that there are many great things about each place. Choosing either place meant leaving a lot of great things on the table. And as I am sure is the case with the Orlando Magic and the Florida Gators, the great things are not the same at each place.

Thus one is left to decide which great things matter the most.

My decision was a difficult one. And I had spent only a year at Ohio State. Although I made some great relationships -- which were very difficult to leave behind -- I had hardly won two national championships with another finals appearance over the past 11 years.

Leaving "home" always should be difficult. It's still easy for me to recall how I felt when my dad and I drove the moving truck out of Las Cruces on the way to Albuquerque in November 1998. Sure, my career was expanding. But I left a lot of good things behind in Las Cruces.

And I have not forgotten those good things almost nine years later.

My guess is that Donovan realized that he never would have forgotten those good things in Gainesville.

And I, for one, get it.

NBA's David Stern Is an Idiot

Update: 7:46 a.m., May 17: In what I find to be a bit of hilarity, keyword analysis shows lots of traffic coming to this blog off the search terms "David Stern idiot." Hilarious. Mr. Stern, you have lost this public relations battle. Poorly played.

Listening to David Stern try to defend the suspension of the Phoenix Suns' Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw made me lose any respect that I had for the man.

The Spurs have played a cheap series, and their cheap shot led to Stoudemire and Diaw walking toward injured teammate Steve Nash.

No punches were thrown.

San Antonio loses a bit player for two games.

Phoenix loses an all-NBA star and his backup for a pivotal game 5 tonight.

This is insanity.

The criminal is rewarded, and the victim is punished.

It's wrong, and a real leader would have made it right.

Help Your Company: Hire a Spokesperson

Buckeyes 27, Hoyas 23. Halftime.

I love sports. I especially love college sports. So I watch them on television.

And I see a lot of awards presented. At halftime, I just watched Chevrolet General Manager Ed Peper present Texas freshman Kevin Durant with the player of the year award.

Good for Chevrolet. Good for the Longhorns. Bad for Ed Peper.

I'm sure Ed Peper could smoke me in a board room. He's probably a business whiz. But he looks like some bowling alley reject on camera. He's awful.

Get him out of there. Hire a spokesperson. We and other mass communications programs across the country are turning out public relations graduates. Hire one. They come across as professionals on camera. Not schlubs.

Buckeyes 29, Hoyas 29. Gotta go!

NCAA Tourney Provides Highs, Lows

Media dependency is in full force here, as I spent the evening glued to the television watching the NCAA and NIT selection shows.

Last night I was celebrating that my New Mexico State Aggies (B.A., 1997) won the Western Athletic Conference tournament and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Tonight I am mourning that my Kansas State Wildcats (M.S., 2001) are snubbed and headed to the NIT. The Cats are the first team in the history of the 64-team field from a power conference that won 20 games, won 10 conference games, and finished in the top 4 of the conference and not make it to the Big Dance.

The Indiana Hoosiers (Ph.D., 2005) have a difficult draw, playing Gonzaga in Sacramento.

The Texas Tech Red Raiders (current employer) are also in, and Bob Knight will have his hands full with Boston College.

Let's hope coach Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks (childhood favorite) will finally win in the first round. Since the name of their opponent does not begin with the letter "B," odds are good.

Finally, the Ohio State Buckeyes (former employer) receive the almost automatic bid to the round of 32, as no No. 1 seed has ever lost to a No. 16 seed.

Let the games begin.

Huggins: If Only Everyone Worked with Passion

Update (April 6, 2007): Bob Huggins is a traitor coward, and I hope he burns in the hell that is West Virginia.

My favorite quotation of the week came from Kansas State University men's basketball coach Bob Huggins:

“Wouldn’t this be a better world if everyone came to work with as much passion as I put into my job?” he asked during an interview with Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski.

Well said, coach.

In Sports, Life We Cannot Be Impartial

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I am fascinated by ESPN.com's SportsNation polls.

I seldom voted in online polls until I realized that you can see a state-by-state breakdown after you vote.

Now I vote in every single poll. And the results are always the same: Voters cannot be objective about their sports teams.

Even if you know nothing about college sports, I bet you can identify the states with schools in the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-10.

The correlation is not perfect. Iowa has both a Big Ten and a Big 12 school. The Big Ten school is bigger, and the state tipped that way.

The neutral states of the Mountain Time Zone sided with the ACC, as did Southeasten Conference and Big East Conference states.

Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Hawaii stayed "regional" in the west with the Pac-10.

Colorado -- whose Buffaloes are in last place in the Big 12 -- defected and sided with the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Pennsylvania -- whose population base is on the east coast and whose Nittany Lions are in last place -- shunned the Big Ten in favor of the ACC.

Best is a subjective thing in sports. We always see the bad calls made against our teams and minimize those that go our way. More often than not, the better team wins. But not always ... and especially not in sports such as football and college basketball where you are one-and-done in the post-season.

If we are to believe the 224,076 voters at the time that I took this screen shot, the ACC is best, followed by the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Big 12.

Looking at a more objective measure, the so-called conference RPI (ratings percentage index), the standings look as such:

Conference W/L PCT RPI
1 Atlantic Coast Conference 132-33 .800 .5861
2 Southeastern Conference 127-38 .770 .5851
3 Pac 10 Conference 90-26 .776 .5733
4 Big Ten Conference 116-38 .753 .5730
5 Big East Conference 159-54 .746 .5615
6 Missouri Valley Conference 79-32 .712 .5597
7 Big XII Conference 119-40 .748 .5593

According to the RPI, ESPN.com picked the wrong teams altogether. My beloved Big XII, apparently, deserved to be at the bottom of the pile. But it looks that population of the respective states undeservedly carried the Big Ten above the Pac-10.

This will fuel the fire of SEC fans who claim that an unfair bias in Bristol, Conn., keeps their conference from getting proper respect on ESPN and ABC sports.

Passionate fans. That's one of the reasons that I love sports. I do not make the mistake of talking politics at work, but I can talk sports every day. We can argue about the best teams without the hatred that is now an inseparable part of politics.

Now I've got to get back to celebrating. My childhood team, Kansas; my master's alma mater, Kansas State; my doctoral alma mater, Indiana; and current employer, Texas Tech, all won yesterday! Sadly my New Mexico State Aggies fell short in an upset of Top 10 Nevada.

Tech Basketball Takes Away Blog Time

No time for a "real" post today.

Texas Tech 70, #6 Texas A&M 68

This after Saturday's upset:

Texas Tech 69, #5 Kansas 64

Wreck 'Em Tech!

Why Do I Care About Coaching Searches?

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- It started with Roy Williams. Round 1. You remember, the time he promised to stay at Kansas. And then did. And then left a couple of years later for North Carolina.

I will always hate Dean Smith for that. He was a Kansan. He grew up a Jayhawk. He played at KU. Won a national title after playing in Phog Allen Fieldhouse. But in the end, his loyalty was with his adopted home state. So he guilted Roy Boy into leaving. In doing so, he denied Roy Williams the opportunity to have the legacy at Kansas that Smith enjoyed at Carolina.

Nonetheless, I sat glued to the Internet this morning waiting for Nick Saban to go to Alabama. The wait was killing me. And now I know. Having read the Internet and watched ESPN much of the day, Saban either did the right thing or is the worst thing to come around since the black plague.

Seems trivial now. But I wore out my F5 key this morning.

Ugh. Media dependency.

880

Congratulations Coach Knight.

See all of the photos at: flickr.com

Three-point Clinic Keeps 880 Waiting

We drove back to Lubbock today so that I could watch the Red Raiders take on UNLV.

Instead of elevating coach Knight to sole possession of most NCAA basketball wins, the Runnin' Rebels put on a three point clinic.

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Coach Bob Knight takes the floor before the game in search of win No. 880.

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Big names were on hand. Here Dick Vitale calls the game for ESPN2.

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Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian was on hand. "Tark the Shark" won an NCAA national title in Vegas in 1990.

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The final score was disappointing. However, the night was one not to be forgotten. The sold-out United Spirit Arena was rocking. It was the first time the arena reminded me of Assembly Hall in Bloomington.

We'll try again for win 880 on New Year's Day.

Congrats Coach Knight on Win 879

Coach Knight teaching during a timeout.

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Coach Knight teaching on the court.

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The scoreboard says it all. A win. And it's said it 878 times before.

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LUBBOCK, Texas -- Today coach Robert Montgomery Knight won his 879th NCAA basketball game. The Bradley family was lucky enough to be on hand.

We also were lucky enough to have two friends in town from Bloomington, Indiana. IU professor Phil LeSourd and doctoral candidate James Angelini were here for the win. Since coach Knight won 662 games at IU, it was perfect timing for a visit.

The Red Raiders played well in the second half and finally pulled away from Bucknell.

It made for a great day!