It takes a kind of someone to launch a blog when the team it purports to cover is 14-0 and ranked #8 in the nation.
The same people in the SF Bay Area didn’t own any Giants baseball or Warriors basketball gear until those teams collected championships. Some folks can’t help it — when they’re introduced to the games while the home teams are killing it — but others name their favorite teams according to that day’s standings.
I look down my nose at them, and stand on an elevated platform while doing so, but here I am hastily assembling this blog before the #8 Utah Utes tip off in Colorado tonight.
I never thought of writing basketball as an expensive pastime until I ran out of money. In 2006, I attended the WNBA finals in Sacramento and Detroit, the NWBL finals in Fort Collins, Colo., and the preseason Junkanoo Jam on the Grand Bahama Island without a care. And during the winter, drove to three or four games per week wherever the teams interested me.
Those days are a very long time ago, and this year I found that I couldn’t easily afford to maintain the domain and hosting for pac12wbb.blog, so I let it die. I thought I might’ve been done watching basketball entirely — writing basketball takes lots of travel, while writing basketball well takes lots of homework (to watch games on the Pac-12 Network requires taking on 100+ unwanted TV channels). But there’s an unforeseen cost to that: Instead of receiving treatment afforded media — backstage passes, folding chairs, laptop space, and sometimes food! — buying tickets is a serious drag. I thought to get back to work.
It looks like I’m new in town, but I swear I’m not, honest.