I have a little something to admit…
I'll tell you I have been wanting to get this off my chest for basically the entire tournament. My contributor page only tells part of the story. I grew up in Tampa and I went to the University of South Florida for my undergraduate studies. Currently, I am enrolled in post-graduate program at….. the Michigan State University.
AND IT FEELS SO GOOD.
To a large extent, I've tried to avoid any sort of in depth analysis or discussion of State. While I can usually be relatively unbiased, I just did not know how to assess this team. As you saw from my bracket, I had them losing in the Elite 8. I would not have been particularly surprised to see them lose in the Round of 32, or to see them push all the way through to the Final Four. It's not that i doubted my boys, it's that I just sorta did not know where my own personal cynicism ended and my true analysis started.
So, as much as I would love to scream from the rooftops about how excited I am that they made it to the Championship collision, I just cannot and will not subject you to that. I just NEEDED to get that off my chest. I felt like I was being, you know, deceptive or whatever.
Instead, I'm going to talk about something that struck me last night…. in a good way.
When I was a young pup, I ran into Dereck Jeter at a tournament game in Tampa. This was very early in his career and before he was the supermega star he is now. Even so, I was shocked no one seemed to recognize him. I waited until I saw him when no one else was around and I approached him for an autograph. I was very polite, "Mr. Jeter, may I have your autograph", I said. He pretended that he had not heard me and chose to continue walking. I followed him until he snatched the ticket out of my hand, signed it quickly, and kept walking. I've heard over the years that he's actually a very pleasant and nice person. Perhaps he was having a bad day, I really have no way of knowing. Either way, this is my memory of Dereck Jeter and I cannot shake it. I will always not like him. He could try and become my bffl and I'd hit him with a forarm shiver and be gone.
There's a lot of pressure on persons in a position of fame (or recognizability in the case of Jeter at the time) to be on their "best behavior" in public all the time. I don't just mean not making fools of themselves (a la Lindsey Lohan), I mean to be in a friendly mood. Affable and Approachable. We hold them to a standard that none of us hope to achieve, honestly. There are plenty of times that I'm in a bad mood and if someone were to walk up to me and ask for my autograph would receive a less than pleasant response. Not that I'd tell them to go have relations of a sexual nature with themselves, but I would certainly not have a huge smile on my face. If I'm being honest, since I started writing this about 20 minutes ago, I've been approached 4 times for an autograph and definitely shot glaring looks at 2/3rds of the people who came up to me.
On Saturday night I was at the Final Four…. on my own dime (thanks for nothing Creative Loafing) (see also). I woke up in the morning put my Izzone t-shirt over a USF long sleeve shirt (I have to rep my alma mater at the Final Four, too). My seats were not good, but very expensive. Instead of sitting there, my friends and I decided to post up (both proverbially and literally) in the concourse area behind one of the sections. It happened to be the VIP section, apparently.
While I was standing there, I saw a couple of high profile names in the Ryan Schreiber world. Before the first game I ran into Mark Dantonio, Michigan State University Football Coach, and Tom Crean, former Spartan Basketball assistant coach, former Marquette head basketball coach (he recruited and coached D-Wade) and current Indiana Basketball coach. Part of it might have been that I was just so hyped to be there, but I, uncharacteristically, got a little excited. I asked Coach Dantonio for a picture, and he obliged. I saw Coach Crean walking with some serious purpose so I did not want to bother him, I tried to snap a shot as he walked past. He stopped, asked if I was trying to get a picture of him and when I replied in the affirmative, put his arm around me for a photo opp.
After the Spartan Basketball victory (which, by the way, almost brings tears to eyes just thinking about), my friends and I slipped past the ticket checker and into the section. We worked our way down almost court side. From there, I saw Stan Heath. Coach Heath is also a former Spartan Basketball assistant under Izzo and is the current University of South Florida Men's Basketball coach. I was insanely excited when he was hired because of his ties to Izzo and because he was (and is) a successful coach. His son also goes to my high school, which I thought was neat. I KNEW I'd put on my USF shirt on for a reason, I was so pumped. I walked up to him, told him I was extremely happy to see him there, told him I went to USF and asked for a picture to which he happily obliged. He could not have been nicer to me. (I was, however, pissed at myself for forgetting to mention the HS connection… not that he would have really cared).
Too often the run comes when things are bad, like a few years ago when Kenny Rogers shoved a photographer. Recently, when Ryan Moats kept his cool as he was detained by a police officer while his mother-in-law died, most of the press was about how awful the officer was. There was talk about how Moats did the right thing, just not enough. People are quick to point out when athletes act like spoiled and entitled brats but Moats, in a situation when most non-famous, even-headed people would have lost their minds, stayed calm and I heard almost no talk about it.
I was struck by the Moats situation when it happened, but it was reinforced Saturday night. The coaches I saw had much more important things to do. The Final Four is an opportunity for coaches to network extensively. They did not have to go as far as Jeter did to avoid me. They could have declined my engagement politely. Coach Dantonio could have declined my picture request. Coach Crean could have kept walking. Coach Heath could have simply not engaged me in the conversation that he did (joking with me that it was okay that we were USF fans and Spartan fans because we could still wear green).
I didn't try and take too much of their time, and they obliged me. I think it's easy to forget these people are people. Jeter might have just been having a really bad day I have just never seen him again. Maybe Coaches Dantonio, Crean, and Heath were on their best behavior because it was the Final Four. Or maybe, they're all just human and they do their best to be nice to people all the time, but just aren't great at it.
GO GREEN! GO WHITE! GO STATE!!!!
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2009.