March Madness / Final Four shit

If words are win­dows to the soul, this blog has become a mas­sive vista onto my sports obses­sions and, specif­i­cal­ly, Kansas bas­ket­ball. Soon enough it'll all be over, the fever dream will end, the sun will rise, and I'll be back to the old stuff. Until then, I want to post one more thing, to com­mem­o­rate the Jay­hawks' run to San Antonio.

I designed a t‑shirt that expressed my feel­ings with regard to the Heels, which — in a real­ly weird coin­ci­dence — echo Ol Roy's sen­ti­ments c. 2003.

For many Kansas fans, Roy's angry words ring true — truer, even — today. Sure, Roy may have claimed to have "giv­en a shit" at that moment, but he changed his tune a week lat­er. Jay­hawk fans prob­a­bly still couldn't give a shit, to say the least. Now, we can declare this to the world. [Buy it now now now from Zaz­zle].

A day that will live in infamy

In case anyone's won­der­ing what the heck the shirt is all about, let's take a quick trip down YouTube lane. The year was 2003; the time was 10 min­utes after KU's nation­al final loss to Syra­cuse; the place was the tun­nel out­side the Kansas lock­er room The "shit" part clear­ly wasn't pre-med­i­tat­ed, yet it was per­fect­ly timed, putting a bit­ter excla­ma­tion point on a ring­ing rebuke. Of course, the most shock­ing part of it all was that it came from the man who had — to that point — cor­nered the mar­ket in "dadgums" and "dog­gones:" Ol Roy, the kind coun­try cousin of col­lege bas­ket­ball. In more ways than one, that inter­view was the end of an era, and in ret­ro­spect, Roy's aw-shucks-ing and dadgum-ing seems a lit­tle sil­ly, but it sure worked well for a while. Now, well. Times have changed.