Now that we long-suffering GMU Patriots alums are able to say our boys made the Final Four I only have one or two comments:

• I hope this is only the beginning of non-elite schools making big noise in the tourney.  Conferences like the CAA and the Missouri Valley are putting out some quality teams and have been for years.  I think the selection committee has recognized this for at least the last five years and it’s about time the college hoops cognoscenti also get a clue.  Billy Packer is starting to look like he’s not only a misogynist, but he’s a misogynist who’s also an ACC/SEC/Big-10/Pac-10 (i.e. corporate) hack. He’s been sniffing ACC jocks since his days at Wake and I think it’s caused him to think he’s a lot smarter than he really is.
• Coack K’s comment about wondering how it works that the ACC grew in size this year and yet got fewer bids has caused me to re-consider how smart I think he is.  Did he not watch the games at the ACC tourney this year?  That was some pretty bad basketball that highlighted a lot of athleticism and poor fundamentals.  Even the ACC is going to have down years and this was one of them, but once teams like UNC get some experience under their belts and can mix basketball smarts with raw talent they’ll be back at the top.  Just being the ACC doesn’t give them the right to six or seven bids every year.
• A lot of people thought Hofstra should have gotten in instead of Mason because they beat Mason twice in the last two weeks of the season.  What I hope people learned from this is that mid-major conferences like the CAA need to be considered for more than one at-large in addition to the conference tourney champ if the teams are worthy.  Hofstra and Mason had very similar records and they battled with UNC-Wilmington and ODU in the CAA all year.  I think they probably would have been a better selection than some of the last selections from the majors.  I’m not saying that the CAA will deserve three shots on any given year, but when you have four teams that stack up well with other conferences and have the RPI to support it they should be considered for a third overall bid.

All that said I’m gonna enjoy this next week because it will probably be a while before it happens again.  Lots of upperclassmen on this year’s Mason team, but with a Final Four run you’ve gotta believe that recruiting is going to get easier/better.  Let’s just hope that Larranaga sticks around to do it.

Thanks to the fact that my alma mater, George Mason University, won two significant basketball games this past weekend I now no longer have to answer the question, "Where’s that?" when I tell people where I went to college.  In fact GMU has had a growing reputation in the DC region for years, but it took these two wins to put it on the map outside the DC area.

Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbloch does a good job describing the lack of respect that the university and its namesake have received over the years.  The school boasts an impressive faculty, and if you’re a conservative then the law school is definitely for you. Now if they’d just get an a damn 1-AA football team all would be right in the universe.

The place to be to watch the Patriots’ Sweet-16 game against Wichita State is Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, across Rt-123 from the campus.  The first couple of years I was at Mason the space that Brion’s occupies was a nasty little dance dive called Jorges, but for the last 15+ years Brion’s, which was established by a couple of Mason alums, has been the de facto campus joint.  The food’s pretty good and it holds a special place for me because that’s where, as a recent graduate and budding entrepreneur, I met my wife in ’90 for lunch to hire her to do some clerical work for me since I was too chicken to ask her out on a date.  Thankfully she was desperate enough for money that she overlooked my obvious geekiness and took the gig. If you’re in DC on Friday I can almost guarantee that Brion’s will be the best place to catch the game.

When I was growing up in the late 70s the tennis craze was going hot and heavy and the greatest player at the time was Bjorn Borg.  I loved the stoic Swede and I will never forget his matches against John McEnroe.  I still believe that if Borg hadn’t retired at 26 then McEnroe would be considered an even greater player by tennis historians because he would have been pushed by the Swede and their intense rivalry and that probably would have prevented McEnroe from taking a hiatus during his prime.  For those who don’t remember McEnroe was so dominant in the early 80s that it took over 20 years for someone to have a season comparable to one his (Roger Federer last year).  The man got bored and burned out, and love him or hate him, he was a genius with the racket.

Well the bad news today is that Borg is auctioning off his trophies due to financial problems stemming from some failed businesses.  I hate it when reality intrudes on my childhood memories. 

Here’s a thought: maybe McEnroe will buy the trophies and put them in the Hall of Fame or maybe even let Borg keep them until he can buy them back. 

Always dreaming.

I’ve always been a sports junky, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve begun to lose interest.  It isn’t that I find the sports themselves less interesting it’s that I find the athletes less compelling and quite frankly I think ESPN has killed the sports star.

But just when I think I’m ready to throw in the towel I read stories like this one that ran in the Washington Post and was posted by bookofjoe. It is nice to know that even in the over-hyped and completely crass events like the Winter Olympics a flicker of that which can make sport majestic still appears. Here’s a sample:

Sara Renner was skiing the cross-country race of her life when she looked down at her pole and saw it had snapped.

She flailed and struggled uphill as the field passed her in seconds.

And then something happened, maybe the most serendipitous, skin-tingling moment of the 20th Winter Games.

Another pole.

Out of nowhere.

Given to her by a person she would call "my mystery man."

Renner was back in the team sprint relay final, trying for her first medal in three Olympics, thanks to a stranger.

The stranger turned out not to be Canadian.

Bjornar Hakensmoen is the Norwegian cross-country coach.

His skier had just passed Renner and was now in medal contention.

He didn’t think twice about helping a competitor.

"Winning is not everything in sport," Hakensmoen said.

"What win is that, if you achieve your goal but don’t help somebody when you should have helped them?"

Hakensmoen is genuinely surprised people even want to talk to him about his deed.

"I was just helping a girl who was in big trouble. If you saw her, you would do the same."

Sadly I can’t picture Bonds, Sosa, Iverson, Jordan, Kobe, Gretzky, Lemieux, Manning, Gruden, Coach K, Larry Brown, Roy Williams, Gibbs, McEnroe, etc. doing the same.  Can you?