Hart Surgery: At Long Last…

By: Tom Alexander

Every year growing up, I went to New Orleans to celebrate the New Year. Frolicking on Bourbon Street, seeing my friends, vomiting - all became annual staples. Another staple was walking through the French Quarter and watching all the fans there for the Sugar Bowl moseying around, intermittently screaming cheers, slapping fives, and of course - vomiting.I was always jealous of those fans. They had such a good time, wandering the streets and shouting repeater cheers (invariably, something about the other team doing bad things to farm animals) and just reveling in the fact that, for at least those few nights, their team was better than all the others. And you didn’t even have to know anyone! If there is one thing I will always love about sports, it’s that it brings people together like almost nothing else. You can go to New Orleans friendless, ticketless, and homeless, and just because you root for the same team, end up drinking champagne toasts in a VIP suite with your new best friends, Chuck from El Paso and the guy whose car horn blares the “Eyes of Texas.” Except until now, it was never Texas that got to live this experience. Or at least, not while I was there.

Quickly, I must recount my sports life at Texas. My freshman year, we stunk at everything, posting losing records in all major sports. We had, arguably, the two worst coaches in the country in basketball and football with Tom Penders and John Mackovic, respectively. I could write an entire column about how bad Penders was, but I will save that for another time. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. When making my college choice, it had come down to Texas and Michigan. I figured both schools were good at sports, so why not go where it’s warm. Then, my freshman year, while we were losing in football to a team whose own coach called them the worst team in the country (Baylor), Michigan won national titles in both football and hockey. I nearly transferred. The only silver lining was we were so bad both Penders and Mackovic got canned.

Sophomore year we were a little better, and Ricky Williams did win the Heisman. Still no sniff of a title though. Things were looking up, but then we signed Chris Simms, and you all know how that turned out. Junior and senior years were much of the same - inching towards progress, but not much else. Then I graduated, left Texas, and all of a sudden we started competing. Which brings us to the present.

Texas is going to the Final Four, and I could not be more excited. Well, maybe a little. Why? Because God has a sick sense of humor, and he decided to place in their path the Syracuse Orangemen, which just so happens to be the school I am currently enrolled in. I like Syracuse. The people are nice; the program is excellent. So I feel somewhat pained when I say they can rot in eternal hell! For the next few days they are the enemy. Think I’m kidding? I spent the last few days walking around campus with as much Texas apparel as I can find in my closet, just to piss those bastards off.

Students here don’t understand how I can root for Texas, to which I respond with a very simple question: “What are you, a f#$*in’ moron?” If you grew up in Boston as a Red Sox fan, then took a job in New York, you wouldn’t buy a Derek Jeter jersey would you? Well, maybe today you would (HA!). You don’t forget the team you grew up on just because you pick up and move. And if you do, you are just a horrible, horrible person.

So this weekend, I finally get to go to New Orleans and participate in the revelry and debauchery (and the vomiting) I witnessed as an outsider for all those years. I never thought it would be for basketball reasons, but I’ll take it any way I can get it. And speaking of which, all the recent winning done by other teams at Texas has got to be making Mack Brown’s seat just a little hotter. A national title for the baseball team, Final Four appearances by both men and women’s basketball, and still nothing to show for football other than an annual appearance in the Cotton Bowl (one more and Mack gets a new set of steak knives). Ok, that’s not fair. They also play in the Holiday Bowl. Mack’s got to be feeling the pressure just a little more these days, if that’s possible.

As for the games themselves? I want to believe Texas is going to win this thing. Truthfully, they have just as good a shot as any team left. They have the tournament’s most dominant player (with apologies to Dwyane Wade) in T.J. Ford. Also, they should have an easier time than Oklahoma with Syracuse’s 2-3 zone because Rick Barnes is familiar with it from his days at Providence. I see Texas winning a close game in the semis, and then playing Kansas for the title. And while I think it will make for one of the all-time great championship games, I have to say I think recent trends hold and Kansas cuts down the nets.

Much like Maryland and Michigan State before them, Kansas nearly reached the top last year (losing to Maryland in the semis). Now they’ve paid their dues, and led by their seniors Collison and Hinrich, they should prevail. Meanwhile, Texas will learn what it takes, come back next year, and take it to the house. Mark it down.

All I know is, Texas better win on Saturday, if for no other reason than I am ridiculously outnumbered up here, and let’s just say the natives are getting restless with my pro-UT antics. But Texas fans, look for me on Bourbon this weekend. I’ll be the guy standing still, looking around with a satisfied grin on his face. That is, until I realize the guy next to me just vomited on my shoes.

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Tom Alexander founded the Chicago Sports Review in 2003, and currently serves the publication as its co-publisher. Alexander's media career has spanned a variety of interests, including newspaper reporting with the Times of Northwest Indiana, online reporting with ePrairie.com, and a two-plus year stint as a professor in Columbia College Chicago's journalism department. Outside of journalism, Alexander works to redevelop communities that have been struck by natural disasters. Alexander, a 2000 graduate of the University of Chicago, currently lives with his wife Tiffany and their black lab mix, Johnny Cash, in Arlington, Va.

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