In any real-life version of the movie Road Trip, I’m trying to figure out if I’d be the Steve Stiffler character, or the character who gets Horatio Sanz’s ball sweat on his French toast. I suppose, though, I’d be neither. Given my own personal history following a freaking basketball team all over the free world, I’d be the one who gets laryngitis or the one who works on his thesis on the 1972 Olympics in a van as it putts through Wyoming.
I spent four years as a student at Gonzaga University, and for three of those four, I made trips, all with varying degrees of difficulty, to see the Zags in the tournament. Realistically, when you go to school in a place where “Spring” means that the rain falls on your head in 40 degree weather instead of the usual 33, “Spring Break” should make you run for some place with umbrella drinks and coconut bikinis. At Gonzaga, though, things are a little different. When the NCAA Tournament hits, we hop in cars and drive, like little cyber-pioneers from Oregon Trail, to wherever the Zags are playing. We caulk the wagon and raft down the river, wherever that river may lead. Some schools have students who go the more MTV Spring Break route, but Zags aren’t that smart. A friend I had in high school was planning his Spring Break to South Padre Island at the same time I was planning mine to Albuquerque…for example.
My current travels in life have taken me to Washington, DC, which is perfect because I can now hear about Georgetown students preparing for the Final Four. It’s not necessarily the fact that Georgetown is in the Final Four that makes me jealous. Really, it’s the fact that the Final Four is in Atlanta, roughly 10 hours and 23 minutes (so says Google Maps) from Georgetown’s campus. 10 hours and 23 minutes? Childs play, my friends. I once sat in a rented van for at least 10 hours and 23 minutes of Wyoming as it snowed bloody hell outside. Now, don’t get me wrong, the miles my friends and I have traveled following the Zags across this great land don’t make us better fans. They just make us much, much stupider. Observe:
-Zag Road Trip, Part One: Said drive across Wyoming took place on the trip from Spokane to Albuquerque to watch GU’s first round game. The weather all the way through Montana was beautiful. I’m talking “a home where the buffalo roam” beautiful. Literally, and I can get weather maps to prove this fact, as soon as we crossed into Wyoming, it started to snow. Not just snow, but a white-out blizzard straight out of the classic novel, The Worst Snowstorm in the History of the Universe. So whatever speed Montana’s wide-open spaces and sunny skies allowed were reduced to 20 mph by Wyoming’s horrible, horrible death traps. Who cares? The Zags are playing! Shut up and drive! Long story short, after a pit-stop at my parents’ house in Denver, we made it to Albuquerque just in time to see the Zags lose to, you guessed it, Wyoming. Next day, we drove back. Round-trip mileage: 2,678.
-Zag Road Trip, Part Two: I’m not going to lie, losing the way we did to Wyoming (I’m still convinced our center just flat forgot to jump for the opening tip. Go ahead, check the game tape) puts a bad taste in your mouth. So when GU got placed in Salt Lake City the next year, we might have all hesitated, for just a second, before piling into the car. To be honest, I think the driver of the car I was in might have been drinking whiskey while driving, but I’m not sure. Minor details. What really matters is being in a bar when the former coach of Gonzaga’s first round opponent (I’ll not name names; you’re going to have to look that one up. It was Cincinnati…oops!) hits on a waitress, gets shot down, gets punched in the face by a cowboy hat-wearing cowboy, and gets thrown out of the bar. Like the year before, this particular road trip ended in a loss, but it was a loss in the best game I personally ever saw (double OT to Arizona), so the drive back was a lot more…buoyant, I guess. Round-trip mileage: 1,442.
If you’re keeping tabs at home, that’s 4,120 miles traveled on those two tournament runs alone. I’m not even counting the time I lucked into a plane trip to Memphis for the tournament in 2001, and I’m pretty sure Gonzaga doesn’t want to know about one of its students drunkenly wandering off into the Pullman night and then showing up at halftime of the GU-Washington State game without a shirt, so I didn’t count that trip either. In any case, I figure I’ve traveled at least 6,000 miles to watch the Zags in the tournament, and there’s not a mile of it that I would take back. Well, scratch that…Wyoming probably should have been skipped, if not removed from the map all together.
In all seriousness though, there’s some great road trip potential in this Final Four. The state of Florida’s got to be, like, directly south of Georgia, and both Ohio State and Georgetown have a very do-able drive. UCLA students might have some trouble driving to Atlanta, but after that stunt their team pulled against the Zags in last year’s tourney, I hope they all try to head out and get lost in some far-off place. Like Wyoming, perhaps.
While we’re on the subject, Spokane is 4,824 miles away from Atlanta. If the Zags made the Final Four, don’t think a van full of idiots wouldn’t be on their way at this moment. So, if you’re out there, Final Four students, make that road trip. It’s got to be done, for me, for all of us.
Live Blogging the Final Four. http://thesportsgod.blogspot.com/