Go Zags

I just watched Oregon lose by one point to North Carolina in the NCAA semi-finals.  As I've remarked before, sounding maybe suspiciously defensive, I usually have little interest in basketball.  But Gonzaga won earlier in the evening, and -- as an enthusiast of all things Northwest Corner -- I was naturally happy about the idea of an all-Pacific Northwest NCAA finals game.

Of course, as soon as such a line-up had become apparent, the entire nation outside the Northwest would have turned its back on the telecast of the final game, and gone off skateboarding, or Netflix browsing, or playing Parcheesi, or whatever Americans do nowadays when not watching sports.

I know this to be true, because of my experience the last time I paid much attention to basketball.  That would have been some time ago, back when Seattle played the Washington Bullets for the NBA title.  That would have been back when Seattle actually had an NBA team -- the SuperSonics -- a team that was later bought by an irascible and greedy owner who hauled the team -- lock, stock, barrel, and trophy case -- off to Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City!

At any rate, after the Sonics whomped the Bullets, I tactfully brought up the subject of Seattle's shiny new championship with an old law school friend who was then residing in Philadelphia.  "Oh," he said, with a bored expression, "no one's interested in the NBA anymore."  Yeah, right, you idiot.  No one's interested because Seattle -- not a "real basketball city" -- had won the title.  But they were interested last year and they'll be interested again next year.

Despite his having offended me, I stayed on friendly terms with him for a number of years, watching as he became Philly's City Attorney, and ever more embroiled in East Coast affairs and, I presume, locked into East Coast provincialism and prejudices.  The same East Coast which, in its entirety -- I extrapolated from his casual comment -- had scorned the stupid Seattleites and their silly NBA title.

Which is why I now realize that, for the good of college basketball, the TV networks, and the many fine advertisers, it's best that the nation not be confronted with a Gonzaga-Oregon matchup on Monday.  No one would have watched, and advertisers would have lost a lot of money.  It'll be bad enough if Gonzaga wins -- as the Sonics once did -- but at least the nation outside Washington and Oregon will have tuned in under the automatic impression that the Tarheels were about to send the kids from Spokane packing back to Indian country.

As the fox said in Aesop's little story, the grapes will be probably sour, anyway.  But I'm cheering for Gonzaga.