The REAL Name to Drop
From the Cheap Seats
by Chris Hahn
I can’t possibly write my column this week without remembering the greatest sports columnist ever. Unfortunately, the sporting world lost Dick Schapp a couple days before Christmas. If you ask athletes around the country, they’d tell you that Schapp was pretty much the one reporter they’d grant an interview to no-questions-asked. He was knowledgeable about any topic he talked about, and nobody came better prepared into interviews. His columns and reports dealt with not just the sports themselves, but made you think about the usually unreported aspects of sports. He was known to enjoy name-dropping as a result of the hundreds of famous individuals he had met and with which had developed friendships. However, it is those who can drop Dick Schapp’s name from having met him that are better for it. Thanks, Dick, for so many wonderful years and great columns.
Hoosier Hoops Hysteria
It’s the garden of basketball. The state’s love of the sport inspired the movie Hoosiers. Hoosier Hysteria is a phenomenon known across the country. So with so many successful college hoop programs in Indiana, why don’t the state’s colleges take a page from the Philadelphia schools and have a weekend when they battle each other?
As it is now, the schools schedule some of the others by themselves. But these battles occur at various times throughout the fall and winter, with loyalists trekking miles around the state as their school attempts to stake a claim as the state champ. How about having these pilgrims all converge in one place culminating in one huge weekend battle?
So here’s what I propose – Hoosier Hoop Hysteria. One late weekend in December have the state’s top programs— Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame, Ball State, Indiana State, Butler, Valparaiso, and Evansville— descend upon Indianapolis for a couple days of basketball, Hoosier style. The eight teams would be split up into two mini-tournaments of four teams each. Four first-round games on Saturday followed by the four second-round games on Sunday, the last two of which would give two schools’ loyalists bragging rights for a year.
Before shouting out objections, let me address a couple issues that are bound to come up. Since Indiana and Purdue face off in Big Ten play, we’ll keep them in separate brackets for this weekend, so that they can grind their grievances out later in the season. As for the timing, when better than the holiday season? Most of these schools stay close to home for their holiday games, and alumni in the area would be superfluous. Others might object to having two winners come out of the weekend, or suggest having a small-school and large-school tourney. I’m all for the structure being tweaked as the schools and fans desire. After all, this isn’t the BCS. And the fun just might be that it will provide as much talk around Indiana as the football nonsense does already.
Will it happen? Probably not. But after making last-second, championship-winning shots in the backyard while growing up in the middle of the state, this Hoosier has learned how to dream.