Fred Samford, the face of what used to be college basketball.
*
TML declares it a FreeForAll Monday, in celebration of the Madness. Because we’re all mad in some ways. Enjoy. Next time, pay up. Please.
Not feelin’ it quite yet, Mobsters.
I’m confident it’ll be there by 12:15 Thursday afternoon — the jingle!! — when the lights come up and we hear that crowd and we remember why we came. People stay, just a little bit longer. . .
You OK, Doc?
Duh-duh-duh-duh-DAH-duh-duh!
Surely, I’ll be back in love with the NCAA tournament by Thursday at 4:45 or so, after 16th-seeded Jeff Wagner polishes off No. 1 North Carolina and its legendary coach Dean Smith, just as I predicted in my bracket. Which, I must say, is better than your bracket. Wanna see my bracket?
I will be dancing by 7:10 pm Thursday, certainly, when Oakland begins dismantling UK on its way to a national championship, which will be heartwarming given what the A’s have endured these past several seasons.
Bert Campaneris will lead the victory parade. It’ll be incredible.
Get me my dancin’ shoes, my golden slippers for the Road to Phoenix. The Road doesn’t really go on forever. It stops at the In-N-Out in Mesa. I’m goin’ dancin’ at the Madness in Bracketville with my bracketologist who is different from my proctologist, in that he makes a Deep Run only some of the time.
Doc, um. . .
The truth is, my zest for this most zesty of events has never been lower. UC is missing, XU is missing, Big Teams with Big Names are largely absent. Players are too busy making money and job-hopping to care about something as quaint as loyalty, quite possibly because their education in college has taught them that loyalty is for suckers.
Truth is, I couldn’t tell you where McNeese State was if I were an alumnus.
But these days, truth is fungible and subject to alternative forms. Let’s pretend it’s the early 80s, when giants really did walk the hardwood (Ralph Sampson was damned big, so was Patrick Ewing) Michael Jordan played with his tongue out and Jim Valvano made us cry. Quasi-am basketball was in a better place, its Madness secure.
Let me tell you everything that you didn’t know you needed to know about the 2024 Jerry Tarkanian Pro Am, sponsored by FanDuel and Thickwallet Phil of your Friendly Neighborhood NIL Collective.
You’re fired! Oh, wait. . . (LA Daily News)
Dan Monson will be our host. Long Beach State fired him last week, but he’s still coaching because his team unexpectedly won its conference tournament. No one sums up the State of the Game better.
I like Samford (13) to beat Kansas (4). Named for noted garbologist Fred Samford, whose work in the highly specialized field of Junk Arts earned him national praise. Samford was also known for his ability to exaggerate his own death via heart attack, aka The Big One. Frequently, Samford threatened to join his late wife Elizabeth, a vow he never fulfilled. This year, The Big One wins the big one.
Vermont’s two residents. (NPR)
It’s Sanford, Doc.
What is?
Fred Sanford. The junkman.
So what?
I like Vermont (13) to beat Duke (4). Vermont is “no stranger’’ to what we like to call the Big Dance. The Catamounts have played in three Big Dances in a row and 10 overall. They have the savvy. Plus Duke is a bunch of preppie frat boys and no one likes them.
Only two people live in Vermont. One’s named Ben, the other Jerry.
Who wrote this headline at USA Today and were they laughing when they did?
Best first-round matchup: Washington State vs. Drake
I and Fabulous Flournoy like McNeese State (12) to beat Gonzaga (5). The Cowboys won 30 games and their school paper is called The Contraband, which is the coolest name ever for a newspaper.
From Wikipedia, the official encylopedia of the Fungible Truth Madness:
McNeese State University's speech and debate team is recognized as a national powerhouse and boasts numerous national championships over the last 40 years.
OK, Doc, we’ll swallow the bait. Who is Fabulous Flournoy?
He’s a distant cousin of Maverick McNealy and Bilbo Baggins. Either that or he’s a McNeese alum and currently an assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors.
Fabulous
But back to Oakland. . .
Coach who Belongs in The Paleontology Wing. That’d be Oakland’s Greg Kampe. He’s been at the helm of the Bay Area school for 40 years, longer than Joe Rudi, Joe Morgan, Joe Barry Carroll and Joe Raider Fan Dressed Like Gene Simmons. It also means Kampe never got the memo about job-hopping and being mercenary. Or maybe he never mastered the skill and finesse required for speaking from both sides of one’s mouth.
Kampe started his coaching career in the Halocene epoch.
(For the record, Oakland is a school in Michigan, not a city in California. Though for our purposes here today, it doesn’t seem to matter, now does it?)
W is for Whicker, Mark, who writes a delightful Substack called The Morning After, to which you should subscribe immediately. Unlike some greedy thinwallets, Mark doesn’t yet charge for his work. Not only that, Whicker actually works at this job.
He opines on national sports. It’s always smart, always well researched, often amusing. TML sez ckitout and subscribe.
Today, Mark covers the toonamint from A to Z. Here’s G:
G is for Grambling coach Donte’ Jackson, who led the Tigers to their first Division I tournament spot. Jackson once coached at Central State in Ohio, but needed to moonlight in order to pay bills. He worked at Lowe’s, “slinging mulch and bricks in the lawn and garden department.”
Jackson also worked for Fred Samford, after Samford’s son LaMont mysteriously died in an avalanche of empty paint cans.
BUT SERIOUSLY. . .
Here’s who won’t win it all:
Houston. The Coogs play wonderful defense. Defense doesn’t win championships, not in this event. Offense rules. Plus Houston has no NBA 1st-round draft picks. You need at least one now to find the footlights Monday night three weeks hence.
Purdue. Zach Edey might be the best player in the tournament. He’s also a center. When was the last time a team with a dominant center won it all? When was the last time a team needed a dominant center to win it all?
I date it back to Joakim Noah, the center at Florida in 2006 and 2007, when the Gators won consecutive titles. The game has long since moved away from tall people who can’t run.
Clemson. If I were a betting man. . .
Yahoo:
No. 11 seed New Mexico over No. 6 seed Clemson. New Mexico opened as a 1.5-point favorite at BetMGM and quickly moved to a 2.5-point favorite. That's rare. Since 2007 there have been only seven instances in which a No. 11 seed is favored over a No. 6 seed, according to Matt Eisenberg's annual tournament binder. Being an underdog isn't good news for Clemson; In the seven previous instances the No. 11 seed has won and covered six times.
A couple I’ll root for, don’t ask me why:
Washington & Lee. The Fightin’ Generals are back in The Dance after a 155-year absence. Led by their subtly racist field marshal Bobby Lee and his floor general George Washington (aka, Grandmaster G-dub) the Generals rely on their staunch D and their cavalry of fleet horses and brave riders.
Don’t count on them changing their name when they win it all.
And yes, I am an alum.
Doc, you made that up. W&L is in D-3. And Grandmaster G-Dub is into K-Pop now.
I like Creighton, which actually has a team made up of — I’m not making this up — “veteran upperclassmen’’ and a “long-time head coach.’’ The Creightons have also beaten UConn.
I like Marquette because I always like Marquette. The Golden Eagles often overachieve.
AND SAMFORD is “a private Baptist university in Homewood, Alabama,’’ according to our information services department at Wikipedia. And it’s Fred Sanford.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Jaw-dropping guitar work from the underrated Alvin Lee. This tune sorta explains where I am now, with the state of college basketball, a sport I’m trying hard to love as much as I always have. Tough ask, that. And with just about everything else, honestly.
Catching up a couple of days late. Your column hit the nail on the head, I have almost no interest in the tournament this year. First time that I can recall feeling this way, just realized that I've only watched a couple of games this year-can't remember that ever being the case before. Not sure that I am the demographic that the NCAA is looking for, but losing long time fans like me can't be good.
Great tune of the day from my favorite band!
BTW, nice selection for "Song of the Day" yesterday. I finally clicked on the link this morning. The next song on this morning's playlist after "I'd Love to Change the World" was "I Started a Joke" by the Bee Gees... a Muzak version of "I Started a Joke." I need to make some life changes!