The Madness of March

Houston's rise in NCAA tournament brings back long-ago memories

March has been a weird month. Winter made a belated arrival as soon as clocks sprung forward. Inflation has replaced Covid as the buzzword on the lips of government officials.

A Hall of Fame quarterback came out of the darkness, but the bright lights of New York aren’t shining on him yet. Soon, a former U.S. president who craves those bright lights could join the quarterback in New York, outfitted in an orange jumpsuit that matches or clashes with his hair color, depending on your opinion.

And having been part — and at times bemused by the fervor — of my wife’s college basketball loving family for the past 27 years, I’m the only one with a vested interest in this year’s March Madness.

That last statement may be the most unusual one of all.

The Agony of Defeat

When it comes to sports, I hold lifelong grudges. I still have one against the Pittsburgh Steelers more than four decades after they defeated the Houston Oilers in back-to-back AFC championships in the late 1970s. And I have a continued animus toward North Carolina State after Jim Valvano’s team defeated the University of Houston in the NCAA championship game.

That game, one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history, took place in March 1984 during my freshman year at UH. It was the height of Phi Slama Jama, a term coined the previous year by Houston Post columnist Thomas Bock to describe a team that used its athleticism to dunk on anyone and everyone.

UH made it to the championship the following year, losing to Georgetown, and then began a three-decade slide into mediocrity. By the time I moved to North Carolina in 1993, I was years removed from paying attention, preferring to focus instead on the Houston Rockets, who were led by UH’s Hakeem Olajuwon.

Because my focus was on pro football, baseball, and basketball, I didn’t realize the depth of what I was getting into when I moved to North Carolina. At the time, NASCAR and the Charlotte Hornets were the only professional games in the state, and college sports — specifically basketball — were king.

What It Was Was Football

With four ACC teams — University of North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, and Wake Forest — the state has long been a college basketball powerhouse. The year I moved to Reidsville, UNC had just won its second national championship under legendary Coach Dean Smith.

When Jill and I got together, she refused to go out with me during the ACC tournament, instead citing her allegiance to all things Tar Heel. UNC runs deep in her family, as deep as football does for any family in Texas, so that has meant years of watching the NCAA tournament, annually enduring the promos that show Valvano rushing across the court following N.C. State’s upset victory.

This year, during a season when they were the preseason pick to finish #1, UNC was a huge disappointment, failing even to make the tournament that will end with the Final Four in Houston.

And who could be there in this weirdest of weird years? My alma mater, with a ghost watching from above.

The End of an Era

I arrived at UH as a freshman in the fall of 1983, having finished the summer after high school graduation working at the Texas City Sun. I had my first front page byline in The Daily Cougar on my first day of classes; by year’s end, I had spent so much time working for the campus newspaper that the university gently encouraged me to go to a community college.

My best friend from those days was Brian, a sportswriter and English lit major who came from an upper middle-class family and all of the stereotypical shitshow issues you can attach to that. Brian was five years older, a semi-reformed stoner and the only person I knew at the time who seemed determined to stretch a four-year degree program into a decade-long experiment.

Brian and I shared interests in music, books, and sports. He was also a girl magnet, and a mentor in that department for what to do (and, sadly, not to do). He became the older brother that I never had.

The night UH lost to N.C. State, we got loaded on cheap beer while filing on-campus reaction stories. Given we both were from the Houston area, we were used to our teams disappointing us. It was one reason Brian started rooting for the Dallas Cowboys — “I have to have at least one team that wins,” he said.

The following season, 1984-85, I was working in Texas City and Brian was logging time doing agate (the small type that used to be on the statistics and standings pages) compilations for the Post. After filing my stories, three or four times a week we would talk late at night using the Sun’s Houston line, which we had to avoid long-distance phone charges when we called any place north of the Texas City city limits.

UH lost to Georgetown, ending an era that resulted in three consecutive Final Fours and two championship games without a national title. It was, and remains, one of college basketball’s most dubious achievements.

A Phi Slama Jama poster from the mid 1980s and the cover of this season’s media guide.

For 33 years, UH did not win a single NCAA tournament game. But under Coach Kelvin Sampson, the team has made it to the Sweet 16, the Final Four, and the Elite Eight over the past three seasons. They’ve spent this entire season in the top 10 and have been ranked #1 for a good portion of the year. Two more wins and they go home to play in the Final Four; three more wins and they have a chance at that elusive first national championship.

UH’s success has been welcome, but it was strange this year to see the ACC teams I’ve watched for two-plus decades crater one by one. In some ways, it reminds me of the Olajuwon-led Rockets teams that won back-to-back NBA championships in 1994-95 in a league that didn’t have Michael Jordan, the sport’s GOAT and — of course — a UNC graduate.

It’s also another reminder of how strange this month has been.

Remembering a Friend

Over the years, Brian and I remained friends, moving from job to job and place to place through our personal ups and downs. We both married and had kids. We both left newspapers and went into communications. I got divorced and remarried; he separated any number of times from his wife but refused to divorce because he was afraid of losing access to his sons.

After I moved to North Carolina and then Virginia, we remained in touch, but the calls became less frequent. On occasion, we still would catch up on a late night, reminiscing and talking about the things we mutually loved, and always we chatted before the NFL season started to give our predictions. Given I lived in the D.C. area, he would razz me about Washington’s football team and the Cowboys’ ongoing superiority.

In the summer of 2005, Brian and his wife separated again. Although I reached out, we didn’t talk for several months, which felt strange because the Houston Astros were en route to their first World Series and we had been to so many baseball games together. I left several messages on his voicemail at work with no response, which came as a surprise because it meant there would be no NFL preview chat.

I figured we would talk before Washington played Dallas on Monday Night Football, the 15th such meeting between the two teams. After Washington won 14-13 against the heavily favored Cowboys in what was dubbed “The Monday Night Miracle,” I called his work and apartment and left messages without a response. A few days later, I left for a conference in Las Vegas.

While there, I got a phone call from Sandra Santos, a UH classmate and mutual friend of Brian and me. Brian had died by suicide; it was his second attempt. He had been on medical leave from work and died alone in his apartment. His death, at 45, was soul crushing, in part because I had not realized the depths of his depression. It took me a long time to realize there was nothing I could have done, especially from 1,200 miles away.

Since then, I have made a conscious effort to reach out to those I care most about in this life, no matter how far flung from each other we are. I’m know how lucky I am to have a terrific extended family, a motley crew of folks biological and otherwise that I speak with regularly.

I think of Brian often, asking all the questions one asks. As I get older, I think of other friends who have been lost along the way, including two who died just this past year. It’s a reminder to take the time to seek out someone you haven’t thought of in a while.

Because you just never know.

The Present