1981, ACC, Obama

Every year at about this time I swear to myself I'm gonna dedicate myself to college basketball the way I did as a kid; watching late Wednesday nights and then glued to games all weekend. Knowing every player, every coach, every arena. Of course, I never do...these years, I seem to barely care when the tournament comes around. I don't know why, maybe it's old age, whatever. Basically, instead of sitting through this current season, I'd rather have a channel that broadcasted, say, the 1980-1981 season in real time - same games on the same days throughout the winter as they were all those years ago.

Yesterday morning I woke up and found myself watching the Sportscentury episode on Dean Smith, and I got all weepy during the late 70s/80s period; "that's MY ACC!" I whined and moaned. There were even clips of Carolina playing my most beloved and hallowed of all squads, the 1981 UVa team that featured my all-time hero Jeff Lamp along with Lee Raker, Terry Gates, Othell and Ricky and of course Ralph Sampson. I got all misty, picturing myself eating popcorn balls on a Wednesday night as snow fell like crazy and Raycom Sports with Mike Patrick and Dan Bonner had the game coming at me live from U-Hall. Of course, who knows if it was actually like that but that's how I picture it. I spent all day mythologizing my glory days of ACC basketball, til my head hit the pillow. As I was drifting off, I started thinking how absurd it was that Louisiana had gone for McCain. "How could that be possible?" I wondered. If there was one state that had the prerogative to say "fuck you, we're choosing an olive loaf before choosing the party that left our most important city to be flushed away", it woulda been LA, right? But no. They lined up and voted for McCain. I was shaking my head as I drifted off to sleep.

Anyways, I was just reading this article in the Daily News, and my eyes stopped on this paragraph:

Obama won a major victory - beating John McCain by 7.5 million votes - by redrawing the political map to campaign in states considered off-limits to Dems, like Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina. He should expand his legislative and policy map the same way.

Hmm, I thought...why do these three states' names together jump out at me? Why do they mean something when put together? The it hit me - ALL THREE WERE IN THE 1981 FINAL FOUR!!!!!!! My favorite team of all time lost to Al Wood and James Worthy, setting up a UNC/Indiana final of course won Indiana, featuring Isiah Thomas (BEFORE he started single-handedly imploding franchises and entire leagues.) How bout that, I thought, the three most prominent states Obama swung, and they were all at the Spectrum back in 1981. Man.

What does that mean? I have no idea, really. But you know who was the fourth team that weekend? The team that played UVa in the consolation game and lost, therein finishing in LAST place in that weekend's Final Four?

Louisiana State University.

Fuck yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwww!!!!!!!