Goble: Final weeks after the Final Four game
Kansas’ victory proves time at University worthwhile.
By Corban Goble (Contact)
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Last week, I went through something cathartic and powerful, something that tested the true fibers of my character.
I sat in the stands of the Alamodome feeling blue as the deepest part of the Pacific, bargaining with myself.
We’ll be good next year if some key players stay at Kansas.
Maybe the Royals will make something out of their early spring momentum and take my mind off of things.
Maybe BALCO founder Victor Conte would announce during a TV timeout that he supplied the Memphis players with a super-steroid, finely tuned for basketball prowess, therefore rendering the Tigers as cheaters and making Kansas the national champions by default.
But then, it all unfolded so fast that I couldn’t stop to think. My heart was aflutter and mind reeling.
All at once, everything raced toward me for the first time in my last semester as a Kansas student.
In six weeks, I’ll leave this campus and move on to the next stage.
I’m typically not a nostalgic person, and I’m ready for the change of pace.
But now as I think about it, I’m going to miss the college sports scene a lot.
I don’t know if there’s anything more authentic that the pageantry of college sports. I couldn’t imagine going to school where sports weren’t a big deal or where I didn’t have a chance to kill a rainy day or watch a modestly talented classmate compete against modestly talented competition.
Some of my professors shiver at the thought of Kansas’ coaches and their big salaries, and they are irritated by the lack of academic focus consistent with celebration of athletic accomplishment.
I have some friends who go to school at Ivy League institutions and the little Ivies and the Ivies of the central Missouri area.
They’re from the Midwest, and they love Kansas basketball.
I have a friend at George Washington University who texts me during every game. He straps himself into the emotional rollercoaster, wholly mocking the Colonials’ poor attempts to construct a basketball team that could even qualify for the Atlantic 10 tournament.
I have a friend at Duke who, despite the strength of their program, ranks them at a distant second place in his heart.
Not to mention the dozens of other friends who don’t attend KU who traveled to San Antonio to watch coach Bill Self cut down the nets.
A lot of people see athletics as trivial and undeserving of such media prominence, but I would encourage those people to look at this Kansas national title in a different way.
After the final game, I hugged strangers, high-fived octogenarians and re-enacted a shabby version of the St. Louis Rams’ famous “bob-n-weave” celebration dance with a 9-year-old.
This Kansas national title made people feel good. Going to a basketball game this season probably prohibited that final, needed revision of my Romance and Satire paper or truncated my studying for a tough Public Finance exam.
I knew that coming in, though. Although I’ve enjoyed getting a good score on an exam or polishing up a difficult project, neither of those feelings compared to the jubilation that came with watching the Jayhawks win their third national title.
I felt so alive that it totally seemed I was living 10 to 12 awesome lives at once — I jumped, I screamed, I danced. I could hardly get to all the text messages I received from friends.
I’ve loved my time at Kansas. There’s as good an education to be found here as anywhere, though you might have to look a little harder for it.
That Monday night, I finally got to celebrate my success here through another awesome team’s success.
It felt so good that I don’t know if I’ll ever recapture that feeling.
In a way, I was celebrating myself a little bit.
I’d like to thank the basketball team for their incredible performance in the NCAA Tournament, because the players brought genuine joy to my family, my friends and me.
Goble is a Mission Hills senior in English and economics.
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