Jennings: Highs, Lows and Oh Nos! of the Final Four

OK, so I'm sitting here in the middle of a three-hour layover in the generic Nashville airport hating myself for a late night on the San Antonio River Walk. My iPod battery died, I'm tried of reading about the Canes' late-season demise and the television is inexplicably broadcasting an ESPN "special" with Dick Vitale and Dan Schulman sitting on a contrived barbershop set.

You know what that means?

Blog time!

(Let it be known that "blog time" ranks slightly above "tax time" and way below "nap time" on my personal rankings of times with a title. Others receiving votes: Daylight Saving Time, Tournament Time and Hammer Time.)

It's only appropriate to cap off a week long of Final Four coverage by documenting the highs and lows of the event. My totem pole status prevents me from witnessing much basketball in person on these trips, so this blog will NOT delve deep into a breakdown of Kansas' perimeter defense or Derrick Rose's ball-handling skillz (spelled correctly) stripped straight from an AND 1 Mix Tape. Ever wonder what his AND 1 stage name would be? All nominations welcome ("OHHH, BAAAABYYY!").

No, instead, I choose to discuss the week that was off the court in my debut trip to both a Final Four and the city of San Antonio.

How do I categorize these events? Good/Bad? Pro/Con? Thumbs up/Thumbs down? Dunks/Fouls? These are the decisions that take an average of 72.3 minutes to figure out in a 10-person closed door meeting at work. But since I'm a) writing this myself and b) lazy, let's just go with Highs and Lows.

1) The UCLA Dance Team/Cheerleaders

All apologies to my girlfriend, but this is a landslide winner. As famed basketball writer John Feinstein (name drop!) told us, he was at the Final Four in 1980 talking to Dean Smith (second-hand name drop!). Well, Dean sees the UCLA cheerleaders, leans over to Feinstein and says something like, "We need to have the UCLA cheerleaders at the Final Four every year, whether the team makes it or not." So if you're reading this, and you are a current or recently former member of said UCLA dance team, don't hesitate to respond to jbjennings@wral.com. We can discuss ... I don't know, quantum physics or politics or something. Just respond!

2) Bill Raftery

The always affable and energetic basketball analyst offered his wisdom and catch phrases during the Final Four games on Westwood One Radio. CBS deprives us of his charm after the second weekend (One year, we'll have my dream of a title game called by Raftery and Gus Johnson. It'll be 97 percent excitable screams, 3 percent laughter, 100 percent fun.)

But when I think of this Final Four, it will have to begin and end with the contagiously quotable Raftery. If we, the members of the WRAL Sports department, spouted out one of his 17 catchphrases once, we said each of them about a baker's dozen amount of times. Any moment of excitement was punctuated by a New Jersey accented "Send it in!", "Onions!" or "...with the kiss!"

Then there's the breakdown of the different ways Raftery makes the same call. Take "Send it in" for example, which is Raftery's line after a slam dunk. There's the more common usage of this phrase, when someone whom you would expect to dunk throws one down ("SEND IT IN, Tyler Hansbrough!! The big fella!"). But for WRAL.com's Ryan Craig and myself, our personal fave has to be the surprised "Send it in" said very quicky when someone unexpected rattles the rim with a feisty dunk ("Oh, send it IN, Brian Zoubek!").

Jeff Gravley culminated the week by getting an interview with Raftery on Sunday, just to meet him.

3) Random celebrity appearances.

Let me emphasize that it's the "random" part of this category that holds a closer place in my heart than the actual "celebrity,” which is an overrused buzzword that has nearly lost all meaning. If you're struggling for a laugh, and you have digital cable, search for all the shows that include the words "Real" or "Celebrity." Prepare for both laughs and disgust.

But I prefer the randomness. Like when seeing Tim Robbins purchasing a UCLA shirt at a downtown merchandise stand, my first thought isn't, "Wow, it's Tim Robbins! Quick, say something from 'Shawshank' now!" No, it's, "What's Tim Robbins doing at the Final Four? What's more big-money corporation than the NCAA and its billion dollar sponsorships? Is he here to picket? Is there a cause that I missed?"

On a side note, back in '91, Jeff Gravley did a series of stories where he was dressed out for the Durham Bulls, threw some BP, and traveled with the team on the road. So I was slightly upset he didn't approach Robbins and say, "Hey, Timmy. You know, we were both kinda sorta not really Durham Bulls once." Oh well, maybe next time.

Anyway, the Final Four is a bit like the Super Bowl on a smaller scale with celebrity appearances. I wouldn't call it the Super Bowl of college basketball. It's a trite expression to call an organization's most hyped event the Super Bowl of anything (Seriously, if you choose to watch that July 4th Nathan's Hot Dog eating thing, you will hear the announcers refer to it as "the Super Bowl of professional eating" in the first, oh ... 12 seconds.).

I also won't call the Final Four a "Super Bowl Fun Size," like how Kit Kat or Snickers refers to its candy bars that are smaller than normal as "Fun Size". Because that's just stupid. You know what's fun? A Kit Kat bigger than the size of your head. Now, THAT'S fun!

But back to my point (and I think I had one), the Final Four is the epicenter of all things college basketball. So a who's who of that community is always there. And on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, you don't know who you'll run into. The thing is, many of these people are only famous to college basketball fans. And for the nerdier followers of college basketball (i.e. me), the more random the better. Like, "Hey, is that Phil Martelli? Well, I guess so because a guy is standing up behind him doing the deliberate and never-ending St. Joe's Hawk mascot wing flap."

I could name more names here. And I'm sure your interest was slightly piqued when seeing the word "celebrity," but I take pride in writing a seven-paragraph entry promising celebrity name-drops and only citing Tim Robbins and Phil Martelli. Frankly, those two should be paired together in conversation more frequently.

1) Kansas

All I'll say is I'm a proud Missouri graduate. If you didn't know, those schools kind of hate each other. And it's well-documented that this football season, Missouri got jobbed in the BCS bowl bids after winning its division after only losing to one team all year (which happened to be the Big 12 champ), being ranked No. 1 less than 24 hours before the bids were handed out, and oh yeah ... BEATING KANSAS!

Well, our Riverwalk live shots were broadcast from a place called Rita's. It happened to be the Kansas fan Final Four headquarters. Every Orange Bowl shirt I saw was just like twisting the knife into me even deeper. Kansas: A football school since ... September.

So yeah, kind of tired of the school, its fans, their cult-like "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" chant, etc.

2) "Remember the Alamo"

Look, we don't need this phrase in every Final Four story.

We've heard it before. We'll hear it again. Let's think of something else.

3) San Antonio downtown street navigation

Hey, I love the town. But when you're driving around, it feels like there are only three roads, and they all lead to nowhere.

There was so much banging on the steering wheel after getting lost, I'm shocked the airbags didn't deploy.

4) The NCAA

I've said most of what I have to say about the NCAA here .... http://wral.com/sports/blogpost/2610712/

What baffles me this time is how hundreds of media members line up to get their pictures taken for the press pass at the Alamodome, and the NCAA only has one computer working with a poor connection (another problem throughout the week) to process the passes. We spent at least an hour and a half waiting to get them.

Yes, I'm sure you don't care about more petty complaints. But when you spend such a long time in line that you leave the dome weaving through traffic and cheating death to make your interview with Gene Hansbrough, it sticks with you.

Oh, and then we got kicked out of the team hotel lobby where we tried to interview Mr. Hansbrough.

NCAA policy.

Well, it looks like my plane is boarding. The sports season went from 60 to zero in one night when the Heels and Canes seasons ended.