Wednesday, November 14, 2007

One Blazing Moment

There is no greater three to four minutes in my year than the montage of One Shining Moment. It's fair to say that no matter what team wins the 64-game romp that is the NCAA tournament - God willing in my lifetime it'll be Purdue - I'm going to be knocking down orphans and nuns to make sure I'm able to watch those beautiful clips.

One could imagine my glee when the NCAA moved their offices to my home town of Indianapolis and installed a permanent exhibit in their Hall of Champions dedicated to One Shining Moment. If you're ever trapsing along the downtown canal within the confines of White River State Park, you too can stop by the television kiosk playing all One Shining Moments on a continuous loop...well you could until the damn thing caught fire.

Turns out an electrical snafu led to a serious fire at the NCAA Hall of Champions today and the subsequent fire fighting inundated the exhibits and caused "extensive damage."

I'm not one to jump the proverbial gun, but something tells me the gods have cried "havoc" and let slip the dogs of discord in the the college basketball universe. Take a look at the evidence
  • Kentucky falls to Gardner-Webb
  • Mercer knocks off USC
  • Michigan St. loses to Grand Valley State
  • Columbia gives Ohio State a run for their money in the Columbus hosted first round of the NIT
  • My 85-year-old grandfather had to sign up for Direct TV in order to circumvent the cumbersome cable powers that be and finally have the phantom Big Ten Network and the majority of its conference games piped into his house.
  • The NCAA Hall of Champions suffers a devastating fire at the hands of Teddy Pendergrass

These may not be sure signs of the apocolypse but they do put the avid college basketball fan on guard.

Wait a minute.

Lots of early upsets. Dramatic finishes and close calls. These are the hallmarks of my favorite time of year...but it's only November. Oh dear Lord, if this be thy way, let me and my Purdue Boilermakers abide in your graces and somehow garner a 3 or 4 seed. Thy will be done.

Amen.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I went a couple of years ago, and I have to say that it was the most disappointing "museum" ever. You could see literally everything in about half an hour. Hopefully now that it's burned down, they'll build something worth paying six bucks for.

Anonymous said...

I went a couple of years ago, and I have to say that it was the most disappointing "museum" ever. You could see literally everything in about half an hour. Hopefully now that it's burned down, they'll build something worth paying six bucks for.