Hoop Dreams - The Victors
In the Fall of 1997, I was a freshman at the University of Michigan and the valiant Wolverines were truly the leaders and best, winning the national championships in Division I-A football and, the following spring, men's Division I hockey. It was the hockey team's second national title in three seasons. Why am I starting a post titled "Hoop Dreams" by talking about the football and hockey teams? For two reasons. {a} The hockey team plays its home games in the magnificent barn that is Yost Ice Arena. The basketball team, such as it is, plays in Crisler Arena (not Chrysler Arena as many assume). At Michigan, football is so prominent that even the hockey and basketball teams play in facilities named after football coaches, legendary Michigan men Fielding Yost and Fritz Crisler.

{b} The point can be argued that the University might have fielded a better basketball team by picking the best intramural team from the general student population and giving them uniforms than by the pathetic sad sacks we had on scholarship. The dastardly Spartans had a seemingly endless supply of "Flintstones." Did we even have a team in those years?

I know very little about this John Beilein fellow, at present the head men's basketball coach for the craggy West Virginia University Mountaineers and rumored to the the new head mean's basketball coach for the valiant University of Michigan Wolverines. All I do know is that in a place where the hockey and basketball arenas are named after football coaches, nobody really seemed to mind that our basketball team was an embarrassment. (And I'd like to smack Mike Wilbon across the face the next time he blames Tomy Amaker's ediocre coaching on Michigan's "facilities.") For the first time in too long, people are once again talking about basketball and the University of Michigan in the same sentence without snickering. That can't be a bad thing. Curses, if only Tubby Smith hadn't just entered the Big Ten....

Go Blue!

Hoop Dreams - BCS Redux
Sadly, I do not believe the hated Ohio State University Buckeyes have a snowball's chance in hell against the filthy University of Florida Gators. As I told The Buckeye yesterday, I will be rooting for the filthy Gators to lose, the hated Buckeyes winning is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. Alas, I cannot see how that could happen. The overrated Georgetown University Hoyas live up to their epithet, and having watched Saturday's game against the hated Buckeyes I do not understand how the final score ended up being so close.

I have only seen two Ohio State basketball games this year, the tournament victories over the overrated Hoyas and the chumpish Xavier University Musketeers. Praytell, why is Greg "The World's Oldest Man" Oden high regarded? In both contests I have seen, the hated Buckeyes have only had success when the World's Oldest Man has been on the bench. What is all the fuss about? The "kid" cannot play basketball at all well. In the parlance of the 1990s, he has no game.

However, I am firm believer in the axiom that any team can be any other team on any given day. That, after all, is the beauty and majesty of sport and the very reason we play the games. I will not cheer for the hated Buckeyes, but I will certainly and venomously cheer against the filthy Gators. Go to hell, Gators!