Because TV is your life. Don't know if anyone has suggested Shrinking on Apple TV. Great writing and acting from Jason Segal and Harrison Ford. Checkitout. I binged it on Friday after watching some bad romcoms.
The Four Seasons. 1981 Alan Alda, Carol Burnett. It's a fun time capsule. A look at middle age relationships/friendships, coming to terms with diminishing sexual value, divorce, parenting, etc. It felt strange watching graying adults having so much fun simply for the sake of fun.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World on TCM. No commercials cutting it up. It's a supernova of comedy talent, and it never gets old. If you put a gun to my head and made me answer who had the best performance, I would say Terry-Thomas.
After that ended TCM showed a classic old comedy, best picture at the 1938 Oscars, You Can't Take it With You. It was fascinating for so many reasons, and you can tell it was well received by a country coming out of the great depression. Today it would be considered subversive. If you ever wondered why we had McCarthyism, watch this movie and ask yourself how capital felt about it.
Growing up in the golden age of the Madness really was our generation’s version of our fathers sneaking transistor radios into class to listen to the daytime-only World Series games. (Lookitup, kids)
One of my favorite things was walking into a “cool” teachers classroom (you knew the ones already) one of the two afternoons immediately prior to spring break and seeing the TV cart sitting there. You knew then an “independent study” day of watching ‘ball lay ahead.
I didn't pay much attention to the tournament until 1990, as a seventh-grader. That was the magical first run to the Sweet 16 by the Musketeers of Tyrone Hill, Derek Strong, Jamal Walker and company. That was likely because it was the first tournament success I'd seen a local team have since my inception in 1977. I obviously became more engrossed by the '92 UC run to the Final Four, the '93 UC run to the Elite 8, and subsequent runs by both UC and X.
Come Tournament Thursday, I'll likely reinstall my Barstool Sports betting app, and put down a $25 10-team parlay. Will I expect anything to come of said parlay? Nah ... but it at least makes it a little more fun and interesting than just taking a lighter to my $25 worth of bills and watching them burn.
After that, I'll watch to see what X does -- and heck, even IU and Purdue -- but, if all three of those find themselves going home, unless there's a Cinderella (i.e. Wichita State, Virginia Commonwealth, George Mason, et. al.) making a run, I'll probably tune out until the Final Four.
And if that Final Four has Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Gonzaga or Michigan State, or some combination thereof, I'll go watch paint dry instead.
I do the same thing. Watch as much of the first week as I can, cuz it's the craziest week. A lot of games are mad scrambles at the end, as upsets loom. I'll watch the underdogs the second week, and any locals still in. After that, it's gets kinda boring, unless a local is still going. It's pretty dull watching the same faces over and over. Like you, I'd rather watch paint dry than the usual collection of same ol, same ol.
I used to enjoy watching March Madness just for the basketball, but I don't know if it is the quality of play, or the NIL madness (kids should get paid something, but come on), greedy Power conferences, or the predominance of sports betting...maybe even life itself intervening, but I really couldn't care less about the tournament this year. I haven't watched any sports since the Super Bowl, and I've not watched with interest since the AFC championship.
I laid down a couple dollars in The Post's '88 contest – and won $46. (I was a security guard in the lobby that year.) What haunts me a little: K-State (Class of '82) losing to KU in the Elite Eight that year because Scooter #$&(@$! Barry had the game of his life.
After K-State took down Kentucky in the 2018 Sweet 16, for about six months, every time I saw a UK fan I smiled and said, "61-58." It's the college memories I have that makes the "toonamint" special.
In the minority here, but the thrill of the tourney exceeds the thrill of bracketing. I will do one bracket - one, because a) I'm not a coward, but more importantly b) Gambling, sports betting, has a negative expected value (EV), and so I care nothing for it. As a middle-aged male, I am inundated with gambling solicitations from DraftKings, and all the other "daily fantasy," sites aiming for more reoccuring revenue - not from me. My friends can't wait to deposit more money so they can watch some Horizon League game CBB, womens tennis or NASCAR in hopes of hitting some 8-leg parlay or something stupid. Negative EV means the more you play, the more your chances of losing increase. So I know all my friends are loser gamblers, though they'll never admit it. Successful sports bettors - and they're out there, but they're rare - they have to use other peoples' accounts to place bets. Bookies will literally turn repeated winners away, legally, because they can. So if any site still accepts your money, it's because you're a loser. Not as a person,of course, but as a gambler. But for me, the NCAA tourney needs no help for being arguably the most entertaining time in sports.
Fantasy Baseball - Year 11 of a league I've run since college. 12 teams, H2H format, a comically large heavyweight championship belt and all. Fantasy Baseball, especially leagues where rosters don't lock weekly, enables that lovely daily maintenance for MONTHS (if you like, but most times you don't have to do anything). But I keep a super thin roster size, meaning the waiver wire is electric all year - championships are won and lost on the wire sometimes. Leagues suck when you get a ton of bench spots, allowing people to just hoard players and avoid tough decisions. And yes, there's money involved, but the winnings pale in comparison to the glory of holding the belt.
My first year playing basketball was the Magic-Bird final in 1979, so I was glued. I was in high school when it changed to the perfection that is a 64-team bracket. In college, we had what was known as The Dollar Bandwagon - every sheet was a buck and the pool paid out five places. Half to the winner, quarter to runner up, 10 percent to third, etc. Last place got their buck back. Some guys would use their wings/beer money and filled out many multiples - which was good for the pot - and we had people all over the neighborhood coming by with money and sheets. Purse got close to $1,000 one year, but was usually in $500-600 range. The day of the THE UK-Duke game (which was in Philly), I was in Rupp covering the OSU-(Fab Five)Michigan regional final. Was in a bar in Richmond afterward trying to watch the Reds-Indians Ohio Cup game with my photographer, but got a little distracted by Laettner stepping on Timberlake and all that followed. Still play in a pool or two with some friends and family, but never won one with more than five people. Never cared. It's just too fun.
I was just looking into that first 64 team joint's 'perfect game' championship contest in which 8 or 9 seed Villanova upset invincible #1 Georgetown here @Rupp Arena on April Fool's Day shooting in the 8o% range. Reason being I seemed to recall PG Gary McLain claiming to have pulled a Dock Ellis and played the game on acid, but this article I found suggests it was one of the few games he didn't play routinely coked up but that also nearly the entire squad were regular users and otherwise may have been likewise enhanced that day with the tacit approval of the coach. I still think I've read somewhere a McLain confessional that he was on something while fashioning his otherworldly performance
I recall the coke confessional in SI well after the fact. I don't remember Rollie having any knowledge. That they beat Ewing & Co was remarkable enough; that they did it on drugs is hard to fathom.
Meantime, am I the only one out here looking at Houston and thinking 40 years is a nice round number to finally erase the ignominy of losing to Jimmy V and his band of upseteers? Phi Slamma Jamma has to be the single best team never to win (though those Ralph Sampson Virginia teams are probably in the conversation.)
That seemed to happen quite a bit during that era. Duke's PG Bobby Hurley playing completely out his ass taking down Tark the Shark's UNLV team sticks out to me for the injustice of it all ... looking further that's not even a championship game, which the scurrilicious dookies went on to capture from that semifinal stunner
But UNLV DID win a title in '90. Puke took it away in '91 and defended it in '92, the last repeat champs. Houston was twice a runner up in that era and never got a title 'til Hakeem was with the Rockets in the NBA under Rudy T. But the Cougars... never. (They had two other Final Fours before I was born, but Elvin Hayes lost to Lew Alcindor - later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - and the UCLA juggernaut in back-to-back semifinals in '67 & '68. And lost a third semifinal to Baylor just a couple years ago.)
My love with March Madness began in grade school when X beat Gtown and we watched it during class. Senior year in college I got to attend the ACC tourney as a guest of the Maryland boosters. For as cool as it is to be at bars, etc. on those first days, it's really cool to be at the actual games. Never forget walking into Rupp at noon on that Thursday and being struck with the sights, sounds, and crowd--realizing that I had a feast of hoops as my appetizer before watching XU take the court in 9+ hours. Of course, the brackets are a major part of it (it is the only form of gambling that my mother practices religiously every year), but the event itself is amazing on its own. By the time we're watching the One Shining Moment montage on or about Opening Day, those highlights from early in the tourney will seem like they happened last year. Sports are ultimately stories filled with heroes, villains and drama. The tourney is so sprawling that it allows for plenty of all of it.
I've played roto ball for about 20 years. I've won the league once but typically don't cash. It is fun but it is tough for me to stay engaged enough to fill a competent roster. Just like following an actual team, fantasy baseball is great if you're competitive.
FYC was a solid group. No need to marginalize them at all.
UVa Cavalier Jeff Lamp's sidekick Lee Raker's big sister was kind of everybody's big sister to my freshman dorm crowd at UK's venerable (decrepit) Boyd Hall (Hell, we called it) back in the day, as she dated the head RA there while herself being the head RA at neighboring Patterson Hall. Also of that same resident ilk as i were Gregg Fields, whom I believe was a featured columnist for the Post, Jim McNair, the Q's former business reporter and frequent City Beat contributor and Terry Meiners, the drivetime DJ for WHAS in Louisville. Meiners began his career in radio minding the overnight hours album side feature play on WKQQ FM and becoming semi-famous for falling asleep and letting the end of album skip for hours. 'Leonard', as we knew Gregg, had the day old Enquirer delivered to his door down the hall from mine, which he'd let me read sitting on the floor outside his door each day around 1o when I'd get back from my morning classes and before he ever got up, usually a little past noon. So you would have been covering Sampson & Co while attending that university? 🤔
I got stuck in the UK dorm towers for one semester. Horrible place, weird vibes. Moved off campus as fast as I could after that. 2 towers, 1 all boy, the other, all girl.. Guarded by RA with personalities like German shepherds. 22 or 23 stories. One cold day, coming back from the cafeteria, which sat alone, my pal Gene and I were caught in a snowball fight cross-fire. I picked a hill made of snow to stand on and started firing back. Next thing I knew, a Mack truck type-thing hit me from behind and jammed me and my face into the snow, laughing like an idiot. I was pist, so I jumped up, turned around, and started yelling at the guy. Turns out- I forget his name -he was an all SEC LB, later NFL LB, who decided randomly to blindside me. I told him off rather profanely, and we were about to go at it when his buddy Frank LeMaster came up and told him to settle down. They left. Remember Frank? He played both basketball and football at UK, and also played a long time at LB in the NFL for the Eagles. Good guy. I'd played a little pick-up b-ball with Frank, and we were acquainted. Thing is, I was 6'3", 205 back then, and had been working 80 hours in the factory the entire previous summer. The guy hit me with all he had from behind and surprised me, but I jumped up with ease and barely felt it afterwards. Kinda glad we didn't get any farther; he was probably 6-1" and 240, lifting weights all the time, and likely would have fought like a junkyard dog. Always heard Boyd Hall was a much more fun place to live on campus.
I stayed in one of those towers for a UK basketball camp in the summer of 1988 (right after the Chris Mills scandal) and hurt my knee over at one of the courts nearby playing an unauthorized game of 21! lol. Not that I was going to be anybody they were looking at anyway! haha
I played some great 2 on 2 games on those courts. My buddy went to St X (Cincy) and could shoot, and I was halfway decent, and we would take on a bunch of those Ky mountain boys who did nothing else but shoot baskets all their lives. They were dead-eye from the perimeter, but we won a lot because we loved to pass the ball and we had city smarts and toughness. When intramurals started, we picked up 3 big NKy guys, 6'3" from CovCath, who were good, but ran into trouble because one team was mostly UK O Linemen, forced by the head coach to play a winter sport, and they were huge. 6'5''-6'6" and 260. Most had played HS, too. It got brutal. Refs would just laugh when they'd knock us 20' into a wall. They were kinda mean, too. No sense of humor. One game I grabbed a guy by the back of his shorts who was holding me and fouling me every play, and the look I got made me decide to guard somebody else the rest of the game. Wisdom is sometimes the better part of valor.
Training for rugby I used to take off running from Linden Walk at night pumping a set of 2o lb dumbells all around campus and a couple of times a week seeing how many circuits up & down the Complex tower stairwells I could accomplish continuously, usually 5 or 6, before heading back down the hill to the house
That was a workout. There was a rec room on the top floor/roof, and we would run up there to watch UK road games. Hardly anybody could afford a room TV back then. They were expensive and scarce.
I had friends that lived at the KB Complex and played tons of basketball at the Seaton Center. I lived 2 years in Boyd Hall and they came around after the all freshman dorm first year trying to recruit guys to stay over, seemingly offering incentive that it would remain the carte blanche drug and sin infested paradise it had become. The LB you recall may have been Dean Pisicano or the one who played for New Orleans (Jim Kovach) I'll think of his name, both of whom sort of had reputations among Curci's criminals for being goody 2 shoes. Boyd Hall was good training for my becoming the Pinto of the Rugby (Animal) House over on Linden Walk circa my year 3
LeMaster was drafted in '74 so I can absolve those other guys there as I don't recognize any other LBs from the '73 'Cats. You're a little ahead of me on campus there as I didn't come in until fall of '75, the same bb class as Givens, Robey, Phillips and Lee
It was good, ol' Joe Federspiel who blindsided me. Year was fall'71-spring '72. He played 10 years at middle LB in the NFL. One of those guys who ate nails for breakfast and small pets for lunch. I was superhot when I got up and was ready to face him off, but as I said, probably better cooler heads prevailed. LeMaster was put at RB that year as a soph, which explains why UK went 3-8. Dumb coaches. The forgettable Johnny Ray. LeMaster was a great BBAll player, did well on the freshman team at UK. I think he walked on for Joe B. after football as a senior. Adolph recruited him just for basketball back in 1970, out of Bryan Station. Not many guys have played both sports at UK over the years.
Yeah Jared Lorenzen comes to mind and Art Still I think they tried him but neither played much. I know the name Federspiel and he was probably all 'roided up. The old Stoll Field across from Memorial Colusseum was a grass field when I came in and the basketball courts were already where the protestors had burned down the NG Armory
Steroids weren't big in the early 70s. WW2 dads tended to be pretty hard on sons. Made for some angry football players. UK Football team ate in Kirwan cafeteria back then, with the rest of us. They got the good stuff, we commoners got the low level stuff. We had to walk by their food to get ours. Stark contrast. Never try to convince me an athletic scholarship didn't have great perks before the new endorsement deals. Athletes eat like kings for free.
Ah, I see from an accidental (subconscious) trip to your FB profile Washington & Lee U was the scene of your matriculation ... and also the rec of only 3 there for RL Burnside, a pleasant surprise
I play fantasy baseball but in a Vietnam-era creation called Statball. Our League - and another just like it that uses the same format - has existed for 37 years (I've only been it in for 21) and for many years was headquartered out of a local tavern owned by one of our players. He retired a few years ago so we don't have as convenient a gathering spot any longer but the beat goes on. We use month long line-ups ... young guys we've tried to recruit don't like it because they can't fiddle with their roster every day. Legend has it the format was started in Vietnam by soldiers who used box scores from "Stars and Stripes" every day to calculate the points, so the League basically ran two weeks behind due to the newspapers having to be mailed overseas. I'll be 60 in August and am one of the younger players. It's been a great source of fun for a long, long time.
I'm also a college hoops junkie so I watch all season, but you are correct that the "Tooornimint" (as the east coasters call it) produces all makes and models of basketball fans. I like hearing everyone crow about the one upset they picked while neglecting to mention the five they missed ... but that's just the tournament and it's fun. But you're right that office productivity grinds to a halt on the first Thursday/Friday of action - but there are plenty of three hour "business" lunches on those days. :-)
I like to imagine Aminu Timberlake will be charged with torturing Laetner in Hell for eternity. The egregious phantom fouls the zebras called on John Pelphrey and Mashburn in that game will also live forever in the Alma mater Hall of Infamy
I was also a big English Beat fan, the precursor to FYC. And the singer Roland Gift's apparent gift, as amply demonstrated by this track, was the odd effect of both appearing and sounding as if he was ghostly crooning somewhere off site like some ventriloquist's dummy
Mirror in the Bathroom is the most resonant Beat effort for me, for multifarious reasons, not the least of which being the Sax tones. Saw them live in the UK student center ballroom I think it was '8o-81
I worked with statistics my whole career so I seldom gamble. The probabilities are always in favor of the house or more knowledgeable sports people. I'm also a thin wallet and hate wasting money. The only time I bet is a small wager against a team that I want to win. That lessens the pain of losing perhaps contributes to my team winning.
Guys who can play baseball-well, they play baseball. Guys who can't- they play fantasy baseball.
Reality baseball? Yes. Fantasy baseball? No. Nada. Negatory. Nyet. Unh-unhh. I hope I have managed to express myself clearly on the matter.
The only place fantasy works for me in life is when privately dreaming about vacations, golf courses, and/or certain members of the opposite sex.
Because TV is your life. Don't know if anyone has suggested Shrinking on Apple TV. Great writing and acting from Jason Segal and Harrison Ford. Checkitout. I binged it on Friday after watching some bad romcoms.
I saw 3 strong movies this weekend.
The Four Seasons. 1981 Alan Alda, Carol Burnett. It's a fun time capsule. A look at middle age relationships/friendships, coming to terms with diminishing sexual value, divorce, parenting, etc. It felt strange watching graying adults having so much fun simply for the sake of fun.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World on TCM. No commercials cutting it up. It's a supernova of comedy talent, and it never gets old. If you put a gun to my head and made me answer who had the best performance, I would say Terry-Thomas.
After that ended TCM showed a classic old comedy, best picture at the 1938 Oscars, You Can't Take it With You. It was fascinating for so many reasons, and you can tell it was well received by a country coming out of the great depression. Today it would be considered subversive. If you ever wondered why we had McCarthyism, watch this movie and ask yourself how capital felt about it.
Loved Mad!
Growing up in the golden age of the Madness really was our generation’s version of our fathers sneaking transistor radios into class to listen to the daytime-only World Series games. (Lookitup, kids)
One of my favorite things was walking into a “cool” teachers classroom (you knew the ones already) one of the two afternoons immediately prior to spring break and seeing the TV cart sitting there. You knew then an “independent study” day of watching ‘ball lay ahead.
Dave Shondell, Purdue’s women’s volleyball coach was on that every year.
I didn't pay much attention to the tournament until 1990, as a seventh-grader. That was the magical first run to the Sweet 16 by the Musketeers of Tyrone Hill, Derek Strong, Jamal Walker and company. That was likely because it was the first tournament success I'd seen a local team have since my inception in 1977. I obviously became more engrossed by the '92 UC run to the Final Four, the '93 UC run to the Elite 8, and subsequent runs by both UC and X.
Come Tournament Thursday, I'll likely reinstall my Barstool Sports betting app, and put down a $25 10-team parlay. Will I expect anything to come of said parlay? Nah ... but it at least makes it a little more fun and interesting than just taking a lighter to my $25 worth of bills and watching them burn.
After that, I'll watch to see what X does -- and heck, even IU and Purdue -- but, if all three of those find themselves going home, unless there's a Cinderella (i.e. Wichita State, Virginia Commonwealth, George Mason, et. al.) making a run, I'll probably tune out until the Final Four.
And if that Final Four has Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Gonzaga or Michigan State, or some combination thereof, I'll go watch paint dry instead.
I do the same thing. Watch as much of the first week as I can, cuz it's the craziest week. A lot of games are mad scrambles at the end, as upsets loom. I'll watch the underdogs the second week, and any locals still in. After that, it's gets kinda boring, unless a local is still going. It's pretty dull watching the same faces over and over. Like you, I'd rather watch paint dry than the usual collection of same ol, same ol.
I used to enjoy watching March Madness just for the basketball, but I don't know if it is the quality of play, or the NIL madness (kids should get paid something, but come on), greedy Power conferences, or the predominance of sports betting...maybe even life itself intervening, but I really couldn't care less about the tournament this year. I haven't watched any sports since the Super Bowl, and I've not watched with interest since the AFC championship.
I laid down a couple dollars in The Post's '88 contest – and won $46. (I was a security guard in the lobby that year.) What haunts me a little: K-State (Class of '82) losing to KU in the Elite Eight that year because Scooter #$&(@$! Barry had the game of his life.
After K-State took down Kentucky in the 2018 Sweet 16, for about six months, every time I saw a UK fan I smiled and said, "61-58." It's the college memories I have that makes the "toonamint" special.
In the minority here, but the thrill of the tourney exceeds the thrill of bracketing. I will do one bracket - one, because a) I'm not a coward, but more importantly b) Gambling, sports betting, has a negative expected value (EV), and so I care nothing for it. As a middle-aged male, I am inundated with gambling solicitations from DraftKings, and all the other "daily fantasy," sites aiming for more reoccuring revenue - not from me. My friends can't wait to deposit more money so they can watch some Horizon League game CBB, womens tennis or NASCAR in hopes of hitting some 8-leg parlay or something stupid. Negative EV means the more you play, the more your chances of losing increase. So I know all my friends are loser gamblers, though they'll never admit it. Successful sports bettors - and they're out there, but they're rare - they have to use other peoples' accounts to place bets. Bookies will literally turn repeated winners away, legally, because they can. So if any site still accepts your money, it's because you're a loser. Not as a person,of course, but as a gambler. But for me, the NCAA tourney needs no help for being arguably the most entertaining time in sports.
Fantasy Baseball - Year 11 of a league I've run since college. 12 teams, H2H format, a comically large heavyweight championship belt and all. Fantasy Baseball, especially leagues where rosters don't lock weekly, enables that lovely daily maintenance for MONTHS (if you like, but most times you don't have to do anything). But I keep a super thin roster size, meaning the waiver wire is electric all year - championships are won and lost on the wire sometimes. Leagues suck when you get a ton of bench spots, allowing people to just hoard players and avoid tough decisions. And yes, there's money involved, but the winnings pale in comparison to the glory of holding the belt.
The laudable Sheet of Integrity. Me, too.
I love you, Paul, but that Song Of The Day is terrible. :-) (Said in the spirit of different musical tastes but we can still be friends.)
That's not their best effort imo. You might enjoy them stepping into a more familiar genre cover here:
https://youtu.be/13iMsGNUHFo
My first year playing basketball was the Magic-Bird final in 1979, so I was glued. I was in high school when it changed to the perfection that is a 64-team bracket. In college, we had what was known as The Dollar Bandwagon - every sheet was a buck and the pool paid out five places. Half to the winner, quarter to runner up, 10 percent to third, etc. Last place got their buck back. Some guys would use their wings/beer money and filled out many multiples - which was good for the pot - and we had people all over the neighborhood coming by with money and sheets. Purse got close to $1,000 one year, but was usually in $500-600 range. The day of the THE UK-Duke game (which was in Philly), I was in Rupp covering the OSU-(Fab Five)Michigan regional final. Was in a bar in Richmond afterward trying to watch the Reds-Indians Ohio Cup game with my photographer, but got a little distracted by Laettner stepping on Timberlake and all that followed. Still play in a pool or two with some friends and family, but never won one with more than five people. Never cared. It's just too fun.
I was just looking into that first 64 team joint's 'perfect game' championship contest in which 8 or 9 seed Villanova upset invincible #1 Georgetown here @Rupp Arena on April Fool's Day shooting in the 8o% range. Reason being I seemed to recall PG Gary McLain claiming to have pulled a Dock Ellis and played the game on acid, but this article I found suggests it was one of the few games he didn't play routinely coked up but that also nearly the entire squad were regular users and otherwise may have been likewise enhanced that day with the tacit approval of the coach. I still think I've read somewhere a McLain confessional that he was on something while fashioning his otherworldly performance
https://www.complex.com/sports/2013/11/athletes-using-recreational-drugs/
I recall the coke confessional in SI well after the fact. I don't remember Rollie having any knowledge. That they beat Ewing & Co was remarkable enough; that they did it on drugs is hard to fathom.
Meantime, am I the only one out here looking at Houston and thinking 40 years is a nice round number to finally erase the ignominy of losing to Jimmy V and his band of upseteers? Phi Slamma Jamma has to be the single best team never to win (though those Ralph Sampson Virginia teams are probably in the conversation.)
That seemed to happen quite a bit during that era. Duke's PG Bobby Hurley playing completely out his ass taking down Tark the Shark's UNLV team sticks out to me for the injustice of it all ... looking further that's not even a championship game, which the scurrilicious dookies went on to capture from that semifinal stunner
But UNLV DID win a title in '90. Puke took it away in '91 and defended it in '92, the last repeat champs. Houston was twice a runner up in that era and never got a title 'til Hakeem was with the Rockets in the NBA under Rudy T. But the Cougars... never. (They had two other Final Fours before I was born, but Elvin Hayes lost to Lew Alcindor - later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - and the UCLA juggernaut in back-to-back semifinals in '67 & '68. And lost a third semifinal to Baylor just a couple years ago.)
Given Kelvin Sampson's prior history, I hope they don't have to vacate anything they win this year.
My love with March Madness began in grade school when X beat Gtown and we watched it during class. Senior year in college I got to attend the ACC tourney as a guest of the Maryland boosters. For as cool as it is to be at bars, etc. on those first days, it's really cool to be at the actual games. Never forget walking into Rupp at noon on that Thursday and being struck with the sights, sounds, and crowd--realizing that I had a feast of hoops as my appetizer before watching XU take the court in 9+ hours. Of course, the brackets are a major part of it (it is the only form of gambling that my mother practices religiously every year), but the event itself is amazing on its own. By the time we're watching the One Shining Moment montage on or about Opening Day, those highlights from early in the tourney will seem like they happened last year. Sports are ultimately stories filled with heroes, villains and drama. The tourney is so sprawling that it allows for plenty of all of it.
I've played roto ball for about 20 years. I've won the league once but typically don't cash. It is fun but it is tough for me to stay engaged enough to fill a competent roster. Just like following an actual team, fantasy baseball is great if you're competitive.
FYC was a solid group. No need to marginalize them at all.
UVa Cavalier Jeff Lamp's sidekick Lee Raker's big sister was kind of everybody's big sister to my freshman dorm crowd at UK's venerable (decrepit) Boyd Hall (Hell, we called it) back in the day, as she dated the head RA there while herself being the head RA at neighboring Patterson Hall. Also of that same resident ilk as i were Gregg Fields, whom I believe was a featured columnist for the Post, Jim McNair, the Q's former business reporter and frequent City Beat contributor and Terry Meiners, the drivetime DJ for WHAS in Louisville. Meiners began his career in radio minding the overnight hours album side feature play on WKQQ FM and becoming semi-famous for falling asleep and letting the end of album skip for hours. 'Leonard', as we knew Gregg, had the day old Enquirer delivered to his door down the hall from mine, which he'd let me read sitting on the floor outside his door each day around 1o when I'd get back from my morning classes and before he ever got up, usually a little past noon. So you would have been covering Sampson & Co while attending that university? 🤔
I got stuck in the UK dorm towers for one semester. Horrible place, weird vibes. Moved off campus as fast as I could after that. 2 towers, 1 all boy, the other, all girl.. Guarded by RA with personalities like German shepherds. 22 or 23 stories. One cold day, coming back from the cafeteria, which sat alone, my pal Gene and I were caught in a snowball fight cross-fire. I picked a hill made of snow to stand on and started firing back. Next thing I knew, a Mack truck type-thing hit me from behind and jammed me and my face into the snow, laughing like an idiot. I was pist, so I jumped up, turned around, and started yelling at the guy. Turns out- I forget his name -he was an all SEC LB, later NFL LB, who decided randomly to blindside me. I told him off rather profanely, and we were about to go at it when his buddy Frank LeMaster came up and told him to settle down. They left. Remember Frank? He played both basketball and football at UK, and also played a long time at LB in the NFL for the Eagles. Good guy. I'd played a little pick-up b-ball with Frank, and we were acquainted. Thing is, I was 6'3", 205 back then, and had been working 80 hours in the factory the entire previous summer. The guy hit me with all he had from behind and surprised me, but I jumped up with ease and barely felt it afterwards. Kinda glad we didn't get any farther; he was probably 6-1" and 240, lifting weights all the time, and likely would have fought like a junkyard dog. Always heard Boyd Hall was a much more fun place to live on campus.
I stayed in one of those towers for a UK basketball camp in the summer of 1988 (right after the Chris Mills scandal) and hurt my knee over at one of the courts nearby playing an unauthorized game of 21! lol. Not that I was going to be anybody they were looking at anyway! haha
I played some great 2 on 2 games on those courts. My buddy went to St X (Cincy) and could shoot, and I was halfway decent, and we would take on a bunch of those Ky mountain boys who did nothing else but shoot baskets all their lives. They were dead-eye from the perimeter, but we won a lot because we loved to pass the ball and we had city smarts and toughness. When intramurals started, we picked up 3 big NKy guys, 6'3" from CovCath, who were good, but ran into trouble because one team was mostly UK O Linemen, forced by the head coach to play a winter sport, and they were huge. 6'5''-6'6" and 260. Most had played HS, too. It got brutal. Refs would just laugh when they'd knock us 20' into a wall. They were kinda mean, too. No sense of humor. One game I grabbed a guy by the back of his shorts who was holding me and fouling me every play, and the look I got made me decide to guard somebody else the rest of the game. Wisdom is sometimes the better part of valor.
Training for rugby I used to take off running from Linden Walk at night pumping a set of 2o lb dumbells all around campus and a couple of times a week seeing how many circuits up & down the Complex tower stairwells I could accomplish continuously, usually 5 or 6, before heading back down the hill to the house
That was a workout. There was a rec room on the top floor/roof, and we would run up there to watch UK road games. Hardly anybody could afford a room TV back then. They were expensive and scarce.
I had friends that lived at the KB Complex and played tons of basketball at the Seaton Center. I lived 2 years in Boyd Hall and they came around after the all freshman dorm first year trying to recruit guys to stay over, seemingly offering incentive that it would remain the carte blanche drug and sin infested paradise it had become. The LB you recall may have been Dean Pisicano or the one who played for New Orleans (Jim Kovach) I'll think of his name, both of whom sort of had reputations among Curci's criminals for being goody 2 shoes. Boyd Hall was good training for my becoming the Pinto of the Rugby (Animal) House over on Linden Walk circa my year 3
LeMaster was drafted in '74 so I can absolve those other guys there as I don't recognize any other LBs from the '73 'Cats. You're a little ahead of me on campus there as I didn't come in until fall of '75, the same bb class as Givens, Robey, Phillips and Lee
It was good, ol' Joe Federspiel who blindsided me. Year was fall'71-spring '72. He played 10 years at middle LB in the NFL. One of those guys who ate nails for breakfast and small pets for lunch. I was superhot when I got up and was ready to face him off, but as I said, probably better cooler heads prevailed. LeMaster was put at RB that year as a soph, which explains why UK went 3-8. Dumb coaches. The forgettable Johnny Ray. LeMaster was a great BBAll player, did well on the freshman team at UK. I think he walked on for Joe B. after football as a senior. Adolph recruited him just for basketball back in 1970, out of Bryan Station. Not many guys have played both sports at UK over the years.
Yeah Jared Lorenzen comes to mind and Art Still I think they tried him but neither played much. I know the name Federspiel and he was probably all 'roided up. The old Stoll Field across from Memorial Colusseum was a grass field when I came in and the basketball courts were already where the protestors had burned down the NG Armory
Steroids weren't big in the early 70s. WW2 dads tended to be pretty hard on sons. Made for some angry football players. UK Football team ate in Kirwan cafeteria back then, with the rest of us. They got the good stuff, we commoners got the low level stuff. We had to walk by their food to get ours. Stark contrast. Never try to convince me an athletic scholarship didn't have great perks before the new endorsement deals. Athletes eat like kings for free.
Ah, I see from an accidental (subconscious) trip to your FB profile Washington & Lee U was the scene of your matriculation ... and also the rec of only 3 there for RL Burnside, a pleasant surprise
I play fantasy baseball but in a Vietnam-era creation called Statball. Our League - and another just like it that uses the same format - has existed for 37 years (I've only been it in for 21) and for many years was headquartered out of a local tavern owned by one of our players. He retired a few years ago so we don't have as convenient a gathering spot any longer but the beat goes on. We use month long line-ups ... young guys we've tried to recruit don't like it because they can't fiddle with their roster every day. Legend has it the format was started in Vietnam by soldiers who used box scores from "Stars and Stripes" every day to calculate the points, so the League basically ran two weeks behind due to the newspapers having to be mailed overseas. I'll be 60 in August and am one of the younger players. It's been a great source of fun for a long, long time.
I'm also a college hoops junkie so I watch all season, but you are correct that the "Tooornimint" (as the east coasters call it) produces all makes and models of basketball fans. I like hearing everyone crow about the one upset they picked while neglecting to mention the five they missed ... but that's just the tournament and it's fun. But you're right that office productivity grinds to a halt on the first Thursday/Friday of action - but there are plenty of three hour "business" lunches on those days. :-)
Big Blue fans cringe as March Madness begins ... having to watch endless replays of Christian Laettner’s shot. 😢Meanwhile KY haters shout with glee!
I like to imagine Aminu Timberlake will be charged with torturing Laetner in Hell for eternity. The egregious phantom fouls the zebras called on John Pelphrey and Mashburn in that game will also live forever in the Alma mater Hall of Infamy
What a game it was … gut wrenching (everlasting) loss for this 77 grad!!!
That was such an overachieving team, too. It had a lot of Kentucky flavor, and J Mashburn was brilliant as the floor leader.
Nothing lame about Fine Young Cannibals. Great song made even better in a club scene in "Tin Men."
BTW, cool name, not lame. Named after a 1960 Robert Wagner/Natalie Wood film.
Technically an 80's band.
Tin Men is an all time top 5 movie for me.
Right up Doc's alley...
Saw it. Good but no Diner. Same director
I was also a big English Beat fan, the precursor to FYC. And the singer Roland Gift's apparent gift, as amply demonstrated by this track, was the odd effect of both appearing and sounding as if he was ghostly crooning somewhere off site like some ventriloquist's dummy
https://youtu.be/2yvWl8EcLmo
I am a huge English Beat fan. 'Save It for Later" is an all-time fave. I also enjoyed General Public, the other Beat offshoot.
Mirror in the Bathroom is the most resonant Beat effort for me, for multifarious reasons, not the least of which being the Sax tones. Saw them live in the UK student center ballroom I think it was '8o-81
I worked with statistics my whole career so I seldom gamble. The probabilities are always in favor of the house or more knowledgeable sports people. I'm also a thin wallet and hate wasting money. The only time I bet is a small wager against a team that I want to win. That lessens the pain of losing perhaps contributes to my team winning.