No one is going to read this blog

I am fully aware that I am competing for readers with thousands of other bloggers. The chances of me finding an audience are slim to none. So, lucky for me, my audience isn’t whom I’m really doing this for. I’ve had a lifelong love of basketball, despite the fact that I’m an altogether mediocre player. I was a so-so forward on my middle school team, the Foster Community Flyers. I saw some decent playing time, but our team was epically bad. In high school I wasn’t good enough to make the team. And no, they weren’t very good either.

But that love has followed me to this day. I grew up watching the NBA, and just to get it out of the way, Reggie Miller was my childhood hero. By the time I got to college, I had realized that the college game is the place where the truly fanatical go to tune in. There is nothing quite like the game of college basketball. For all of the corruption, all of the sleaze, for every O.J. Mayo and Guillory, every Fab Five and for every Kelvin Sampson, there is a counter. If you want to see the purest and the best that competition has to offer, I give you:

Tyler Hansbrough’s entire career; Stephon Curry’s steady hand en route to the elite eight; George Mason’s magical carpet ride; the fiery grit and passion of a Mateen Cleaves, born again in Travis Walton; Carmelo Anthony taking the Syracuse Orange on his back in 2003; unheralded coaches who build programs and men, like Bo Ryan does; a Grevias Vasquez holding up the name on the front of the jersey; a five overtime game that takes you deep into the night; a Mario Chalmers 3; Adam Morrison giving everything he had and then giving more.

That’s just the 2000’s. That’s just a relatively young perspective. That’s what makes this game what it is. I will never apologize for catching every contest I can, for screaming myself horse in a packed stadium, for actually following the 24 hours of games that ESPN uses to try and start the season with a bang. For people like you and me, for the truly fanatical, there is never enough to say, read or breath about college ball. Ultimately I’m doing this for me. Because after I have delved into all the college basketball there is, there’s still more.