The Moment

It's the Final Four. The teams line up for the opening tap. The ball goes up and tens of thousands of glittering lights dazzle the eyes as the players vie for the first advantage of the game. The lights are flash bulbs, as everyone snaps a picture simultaneously. Words cannot adequately describe how cool this is. It's the seminal moment of the college basketball season and after 19 Final Fours it doesn't get old.

Except this year I missed it because the six Kansas fans in front of me chose that exact moment to stand up and re-arrange their seating.

Another Final Four tradition that still cracks me up after 19 years is the amazing vision of the fans in the "distant view" seats -- yes, by the way, they really call them that; you'd think if the NCAA was going to bilk you for hundreds of dollars for a seat near the New Mexico border, they'd come up with a more palatable name, wouldn't you? Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, it's an optometric marvel the way fans two football fields away can see the court so much better than the refs can. They usually complain (at the top of their lungs, mind you) about block/charge calls, because that's not a call you have to be close up to tell what happened. This year's award goes to several Kansas fans in my vicinity, who when their team was up 40-12 were still screaming at the injustice of Tyler Hansbrough getting every call. Well, come to think of it, maybe they had a point; you could have been sitting in a dark room in Somalia and still known that Tyler Hansbrough was getting every call.

UCLA had the best band and the best cheerleaders, although for some reason that didn't help them on the court. And I have to mention that the Memphis cheerleaders are apparently the defending National champions (bet you didn't know they had a National championship for cheerleaders, did you?), at least according to the woman sitting next to me whose husband was a cheerleader back in 1985, the last time Memphis made the Final Four.

Memphis and Kansas had the most enthusiastic fans, even before the games started. Maybe the UCLA and UNC fans could sense what was coming. Memphis gets the slight edge here, though, thanks to the two Elvises (in full hair and costume) sitting in the row in front of me.

Kansas had the best souvenir shirts -- I saw at least ten different clever quotes on different shirts. The biggest laugh was "Why play with Roy when we can play with our Self."

I'm not sure if it's alphabetically significant, but my highly scientific scouting assessment is that Derrick Rose and Brandon Rush are good. Tywon Lawson and Kevin Love? Not so impressive.

The 30 second timeouts were taking around three and a half minutes by the end of the evening. And I don't even want to talk about the full timeouts.

The primary color for all four teams in this year's Final Four is blue. The highway between Austin and San Antonio has a different speed limit during the daytime (70) than it does at night (65).

Tune in later for more wisdom.