March Madness = anxious cameramen

As Florida coach Billy Donovan gave the order to his team to not foul in the closing moments of a first round loss to BYU, everyone on the court packed it in.

That’s when a CBS cameraman decided to stroll out there to get a better shot of BYU’s Jimmer Fredette.  There’s nothing that controversial about it, but damn, there were 10 seconds left in the game.  He couldn’t wait that long to get his close up?

What if Fredette had decided to swoop in for a celebratory layup and tripped over the cord?  Thousands of Mormons would have let out their biggest collective groan since the premiere of “Big Love.”

Mid-Majority doesn’t seem too interested in mid-majors

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, midmajority.com is a web site that claims to be the champion of mid-major college hoops teams everywhere.  The site is run by some guy named Kyle Welliston, who’s only a little bit less well known than Andy Katz.

Kyle solicits money from supporters so he can travel the country and attend mid-major games.  His site says that this season alone, through the generosity of others, he’s been able to attend 75 games and rack up over 14,000 miles in mileage.  Very special supporters can get perks like these:

I guess membership in the Bally Club is like getting membership in Delta’s Medallion Program.  But while the Medallion Program will at least give you free flights, the Bally Club will only give you the sensation of having been fleeced.

What does Kyle do with all that knowledge gained from his travels? Not a whole lot, because the site doesn’t give much actual insight into mid-majors beyond listing his Game!of!the!Night! (that’s his device, not mine), getting testimonials from mid-major grads about how much they love the directional school they attended (the piece submitted by the Western Michigan fan was especially heartfelt) and long, pointless diatribes relating “Rocky” to his time spent living in Philly.

Oh, wait, I’m leaving out the online chats that he hosts on the site.  With mid-majors participating in four different postseason tournaments this week, it would seem that Kyle would be like a pig in slop with a chance to talk about so many of the schools he purports to love.

Strangely, though, he’s as fixated on the NCAA Tournament as Rece Davis.  Check out the start of today’s Mid-Majority chat session:

The format of the chat has users submitting questions, so that gives Kyle the ability to pick and choose his responses.   That’s why I’m surprised that he let this one through from “fairfield_guy”:

I feel sorry for that dude, he probably wanted to chat up the fact that his Fairfield Stags came from 27 down to beat George Mason in the first round of the CIT last night.

Hey Kyle, you remember George Mason, don’t you? That’s the mid-major program that made the Final Four a few years back.  But I guess you’re not going to acknowledge one of the biggest names in mid-major hoops stubbing its toe in dramatic fashion.  Nah, you’ve got the Iowa coaching change to talk about:

You’ll notice the use of the term “Red Line” popping up in this chat session, and not just from Kyle.   Apparently, this is the term he uses to define the imaginary boundary between the majors and the mid-majors.

I hang out with a lot of people who inhale hoops, and I’ve never heard that term used in those circles.  Heck, here it is again:

C’mon, let’s be honest here, it’s not like Kyle has a legion of followers using the same terminology as he does.  And if you know anything about the online chat world, the questions listed above look awfully clean and awfully well written.  Damn, I’m sounding like a forensic linguist at this point…

The average ‘net user would simply type, “Gonzalez fired at Seton Hall - who we get next?”   With the exception of poor fairfield_guy, I think Kyle was either answering his own questions or having plants submit them.

Hmmmm, Portland and Northern Colorado are locking up in a pretty good mid-major tussle tonight in the CIT, while Wisconsin-Green Bay and Akron will do the same in the CBI.  But Kyle probably won’t care, he’ll be busy writing a snooze piece relating “Good Will Hunting” to the time he lived in Boston.

You really can find anything on eBay

I wonder how much I can get for that Cheetah Club napkin that Tiger autographed for me? The funniest part about this very real auction (other than the ridiculous amount of the winning bid) is that the seller actually sent that menu to Professional Sports Authenticator:

Great resemblances in sports history: George Foster

Call me crazy, but in my eyes, ‘77 NL MVP George Foster (he had 52 friggin’ homers that season) looked a lot like the Predator. Must have been those sideburns:

John and Big V talk NCAA Tourney…

…and he even drops the F-bomb.

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