When I saw that ESPN was going to televise 24 hours of straight live basketball, I thought it might make for a good opportunity to blog. I figured I could work in front of the games, pausing from time to time to make fun of whoever is playing at 2:00 in the morning, tedious overplayed commercials, etc.
I gave it a good go, but hour after hour of games that you don't care about gets pretty old. Also, it happened on a day where I had a lot going on and a lot of work to do. But here's what I did write thoughout the 24-hour period:
November 15, 8:39 PM: There's almost no chance that I catch the first tipoff at midnight. In fact, I probably won't catch halftime of Monday Night Football. I was up at 4:30 this morning for some unfathomable reason, and I plowed through a busy day and even ran for an hour. An Eagles blowout over the Redskins won't keep me up.
November 16, 4;19 AM: Just woke up and turned on the live game. This is really the most interesting time. Who do they get to play at such an awful hour? Unfortunately, my glasses are in the bathroom, so I don't have a clue. It's a team in black and a team in yellow.
4:31AM: Central Michigan at Hawaii. Makes sense, but even there, it's after midnight. I might be the only person in the country watching this game.
5:17AM: Hawaii by three, and we go to Stony Brook and Monmouth in progress. Really? They couldn't have waited for us? ESPN producers obviously had to go pretty deep into their Rolodexes to find two East coast teams willing to tip off at 6:00 AM. Monmouth fans: There are plenty of good courtside seats to be had.
6:00AM: I can't believe that they have the real college basketball studio crew in there for the halftime show. Are these guys going to plow through until midnight?
7:09AM: Monmouth misses the buzzer-beater. Stony Brook wins. Obligatory shot of students with their hands on top of their heads, and we're off to Robert Morris at Kent State. Only a few Kent State students appear to have chosen class over basketball this morning, as I can make out individual cheering voices in the broadcast.
9:42AM: Live blogging is more difficult than it seems. The whole notion is that I'm semi-imprisoned on the couch, and that you can see my sanity deteriorating with my words throughout the day. But I spent the last couple of hours on coffee and breakfast, getting Vanya ready for school, dropping him off, and then taking care of errands that I needed to do. I missed a whole game, and it's likely that I will never know who won the 7:00 AM Robert Morris/Kent State game on November 16, 2010. To make it worse, I have to go get to go back to Vanya's school for their Thanksgiving party now. So it's probable that I won't catch any of the Northeastern at Southern Illinois game that's on right now.
11:14AM: After listening to little kids dressed like Indians and Pilgrims sing, we did snack time. Up until then, I was well-caffeinated and felt good, but my 4:30 wakeup was starting to catch up with me as I left. I stopped at a convenience store for a gyros sandwich and to pick up a season preview magazine. Ate my sandwich through the last few minutes of regulation, and now Northeastern and Southern Illinois are in overtime.
11:18AM: These fans still sing na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey goodbye to sing when an opposing player fouls out of the game. I thought that had been replaced universally by the "left-right-left-right" schtick, which is funny, but has gotten old too. I hereby challenge the college students of America to come up with something new this season. Look toward Duke. Those smart kids are clever.
11:25AM: Of all of these colleges I've seen play today, I only know the locations of Hawaii and Northeastern. For Monmouth, Stony Brook, and Robert Morris, I don't even know the state.
12:37PM: Is there a University in the world with a worse name than Oral Roberts?
12:49PM: I've seen this commercial a few times. Former LSU Baseball coach Skip Bertman talks up the benefits of getting a home loan from a local company that I thought was one of those fly-by-night-we'll-make-you-a-loan without-regard-to-whether-or-not-you-can-pay-it-back companies. I'm 70% certain that someone at Cox accidentally queued up this commercial from a stack of ones made and run back in 2002.
After that, I got more caught up in work. The games kept playing, and some of them got to be pretty good, but I didn't pay much attention after this, and when I did pay attention, I didn't write anything about it.
I never noticed whether the studio crew plowed through or changed, but I did see that the Stony Brook courtside team was on a different game in the evening. I do know that Oral Roberts is the worst name of any university in the world.