March madness.  The tourney is here.  College Basketball’s Sweet Sixteen is as sweet as it can be.  I get a kick out of telling folks I have seen at least 68 of the FBS college football teams play in person and then tell them I have never seen a college basketball game.

Here’s the thing.  By the time football season is over I am tired.  My eyes are tired.  I have to give them a break.  A month and a half after the Super Bowl is played, March Madness, the college basketball tourney comes around and I enjoy a few weeks of basketball.

It wasn’t always like this.  Once upon a time I used to watch Indiana games on TV and I would watch the Louisville Cardinals on TV and I would watch the Kentucky Wildcats on TV.  The Hoosiers were on Channel 4, then Channel 41 when we moved to Harrison County.  Chuck Marlowe called the games. The Louisville Cardinals were on Channel 11 and Dave Conrad called the games.  The Wildcats were on Channel 3.  I think Tom Hammond and Joe Dean called many of those games.  Probably Cawood Ledford was doing them before Tom Hammond.  Local teams played on local stations with local announcers.  It was all very simple.  It was all very nice.  I miss those games.   That is what we watched.  We didn’t have 100 stations to choose from.

Not long ago I was rattling off names of old Kentucky Wildcat players to a friend I have not know that long…he is a Wildcat fan.  He was amazed that I knew who Charles Hurt and Fred Cowan were.  Cards I miss are Roger Burkman and Darrell Griffith.  They were fun to watch.  My favorite Indiana Hoosiers were Kent Benson, Scott May, Ted Kitchell, and Steve Alford.  I sure hope Alford is the Hoosiers new coach.  I would finally go to a game if he was the head coach.  Well, maybe not.

I don’t dislike basketball.  I was never very good at playing it.  When I played in a summer league in my early teens I once scored 8 points in one game against South Central.  I hit a shot at Springs Valley and was fouled.  I made my free shot.  I scored at Salem too.  I don’t think I scored in any of the games at home.  I didn’t play much in those home games.  Parents came to home games…not road games.  Had the coach, our high school varsity coach at the time, played me at home there would have surely been parents wondering what on earth the coach was doing.  I have no beef there.

Basketball was also tough for me to play.  I have asthma.  Stuffy, hot gyms…there were no air conditioned gyms in those days….were not kind to my pipes.  I didn’t get to play football my 7th grade year because I could not breathe well enough to do it.   It was awful.

I hate that I won’t be able to stay awake to watch the Purdue Boilermakers play tonight.  The start at 9:40ish.  That is too late for this old boy.

I truly enjoy watching this tourney.  I have a bracket.  It stinks this year.  Some years I have done quite well for a guy that never watches many if any games before the madness starts.  I do read though.  I read newspapers.  I keep up that way.  It is easier than watching the games and giving my eyes more work.

Go UCLA…Go Steve Alford!  Go straight to Bloomington after your last game at Westwood.  Leave that traffic…say goodbye to Route 210 and come back to highway 46.   There is a difference.  This is Indiana.  I hope that still means something.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson