After four years (or five in some rare exceptions) at Virginia, graduates of the Class of 2005 now certainly see a very different athletic department than when they arrived on Grounds in August of 2001.
I swore when I took over as a columnist there was no way I'd write a narcissistic, sentimental fourth-year column. But, since all I can think of is the Green Bay Packers' frustrating NFL draft and my history term paper, I'm left with a slightly sentimental fourth-year column.
The NFL Draft's first pick will be made sometime before 12:30 p.m. Saturday, and two days of the most uneventful television in sports will commence. There always seems to be something happening during ESPN's draft coverage, but really, it's just a glorified version of that quintessential playground moment where the captains pick teams.
Be it the Black Sox in 1919 or integration in 1947, major stories in baseball have a way of captivating not just the sports world but America at large.
Just so you know ahead of time, this column is about golf, and more specifically, the Masters. Proceed, if you wish, to the Jumble, where the answer is most likely not golf related. I'm convinced that there aren't a ton of people who are lukewarm on watching golf on television.
I've seen several columnists put together lists of failed column ideas when the going gets tough and there's nothing to write about.
If this column seems at all disjointed, let's just pretend I'm recovering from a blindside pick by Janel McCarville. Like many other sports fans, I watched a sick amount of college basketball this weekend, and several things stuck out to me besides McCarville's pick on Latonya Blue -- which I'll discuss last, in an attempt to give my column some chronological structure, as it occurred Thursday night. The first major shocker of the week had to be Vermont's win over Syracuse Friday night, particularly for those of us who had the Orange in their Final Four.
I should feel compelled to write about Pete Gillen this week. As a friend of mine put it, "You've got to be hoping Gillen gets fired because that's like, four free columns." I should be chomping at the bit to jump on the bandwagon and rip Pete Gillen on his way out of University Hall -- Or, if I felt so inclined, bemoan the firing of a man who cared about this community as much as any other coach could and yet was the scapegoat for a program problems that transcended its head coach. I won't write about Gillen though, mainly because every other sportswriter in the greater Virginia area wrote about it either yesterday today -- or will in the near future.
I'm confident there are only a select few people left in the United States who don't at least attempt to fill out an NCAA tournament bracket.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. In Virginia's 90-68 loss to Wake Forest Sunday, three classic movie story lines played out on the hardwood. First, there was the traditional samurai movie motif of a student returning to defeat his master. As almost everyone knows by now, Wake coach Skip Prosser served as an assistant to Pete Gillen for eight years at Xavier before replacing Gillen as head coach in 1994. Now Prosser is piloting one of the nation's top programs, a team that is currently ranked No.6 in the country and was picked by many pundits to win the ACC at the beginning of the year.
