Three-topic Monday

Topic number one: Those were some of the most intense college basketball games ever this weekend. Four total overtimes in four games? One long, torturous instant review session that made me think of football season? Yeah, and I watched about twenty minutes total of it. College basketball just doesn’t grab me. Maybe it’s because I just finished the John Feinstein book about the Patriot League. There just aren’t too many kids going to the Final Four thinking "Man, I have a biology final that week!" I am pretty sure that North Carolina could take the Atlanta Hawks in a seven-game series.

Topic number two: I am one of perhaps five people in the country who TiVo’d (it will be a verb in the next Webster’s) the U.S./Mexico World Cup qualifier yesterday. I’m not a big soccer follower but I did stay up until the middle of the night to watch the U.S./Mexico World Cup match that started at 3 a.m. That was in the dark BT (Before TiVo) days. In short the U.S. is something like 0-55-2 playing at Mexico. From what I hear, playing in Mexico City is like playing in Colorado except that you have to smoke a pack of cigarettes first. Anyway, the U.S. Is now 0-56-2 after a 2-1 loss. Pundits blame the Americans’ playing only one guy forward, which is like an NFL team sending only one guy out for a pass on 3rd and 10. I’m actually considering going to the next qualifier (versus always-dangerous Guatemala), which is in Birmingham, a tempting two-hour drive from Atlanta. I know it seems crazy but I seriously considered driving to Troy, Alabama last year to see my Missouri Tigers get humiliated on national TV.

Topic number three: I will break my sports-talk-only streak to comment on my parents’ official confirmation with the Catholic church this weekend. At first my parents doing this seemed as unlikely as Eddie George breaking a ten-yard run. Remember Eddie George, Titans fans? There they were, making solemn promises with God while I felt like an outsider to the whole experience. My parents mentioned God perhaps twice while I was growing up. The natural result is I think of God as a pretty interesting concept while everyone else is bowing their heads. Beyond that, it’s amazing that not only have my parents found a place where they belong, they are popular. Almost every other person at the reception after the ceremony introduced themselves and told me how much they loved the blown-up picture of my brother and I wearing Batman and Robin underoos (yes, we were of the appropriate age) that’s hanging up in the living room. It’s not like my parents have changed, at least as far as I can tell. My mom still puts together enormous meals with approximately 17 side dishes and my dad tells me how he’s going to beat me this year in fantasy baseball. Sure, there appears to be Someone Else in the room, but I can handle that.