POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- I'll tell you what holiday hell is.

Last Saturday, heading back home to Providence from another mid-major excursion, I was stuck at New York's Kennedy airport on a scheduled three-hour layover, which suddenly became a seven-hour layover when the schedule started backing up. Then, my flight to Providence from Gate 25 simply disappeared from the departure board -- and the good folks at Gate 25 had no idea that it was even there to begin with. So when I called the airline's hotline, the nice lady told me that the flight had already left out of Gate 22. When I informed her that there was no indication anywhere that the flight was either boarding, departed or at another gate, she rebooked me for free on the next flight which left jsut before dawn the next morning... it was the least (and most) they could do.

PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- If you're a native New Yorker, or just someone who lives in a town with a Tribune-owned television station, you probably know about the Yule Log. It's that close-up shot of a fireplace that goes on for a commercial-free two hours and plays Christmas music. I've loved The Log for years, and the Official Wife and I watched the whole thing again this year. Hope your holidays were great too.

Turns out that the origin of the greatest six-minute loop on television is closely tied to our game. According to a new documentary produced this year, the original broadcast of The Log in 1966 was made possible because college basketball takes the annual break we just took, and WPIX used its regular hoops timeslot to send a "Christmas Card" to its viewers, missing out on four grand in ad money.

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- First, a few noteworthy results from the past couple of days, and after that a couple of quick mailbags.

Delaware State 65, at Buffalo 62 Yo, Andy! A win at Buffalo is good, especially if you're from the MEAC! The Hornets shot 63%, and won despite the fact that Buffalo outrebounded them by nine and controlled the tempo... Del-State had nine more possessions (66) than their third-from-slowest in the land average of 57.5.

MARTIN, Tenn. -- First of all today, I want to welcome the newest member of the Mid-Majority family, the "vs. Others" page. Every team now has one -- even yours! -- and it's got all sort of cool stuff on it like records and results against current conference opponents, as well as records against other conferences for 2006-07, the last five seasons, the last 10 seasons and in the NCAA Tournament. Here's a completely random examplehere.

And secondly, there's this.

There's a debate raging in Hoops Nation, one that has very little relevance whatsoever to anything relevant. It's supposed to be about respect, honor and parity. It should be about ball control, free throws and the flex offense. And sure, it's about basketball -- a little bit -- but it's also about television and eyebrows.

This is a debate about what a mid-major is and what it isn't... but at its very root, it's really about which teams are in The Club and which teams it's okay for the media to ignore.

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- After the lull of Finals Week, a literal explosion of college basketball action over the weekend! Here are a few results of interest and note from around Hoops Nation.

Butler 68, Purdue 65 (Sat.) -- The Bulldogs keep doing what they do. They kept hold of the ball (only 13 turnovers), made their free throws (80%), and had a super performance by A.J. Graves (25 points on 8-for-14, which is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp finger). This game also featured a statistical oddity: both teams ended up scoring (and therefore giving up) exactly .999 points per possession; that's how close it was! But Purdue, despite crushing Butler on the boards 38-23, coughed up the ball 28 percent of the time. I'm telling you, ball control is What's Sexy in Oh-Seven.

Kyle, it seems like mid-majors still aren't getting any respect. It doesn't matter how many games CAA or Missouri Valley teams win, it's either a "step towards respectability" or some kind of fluke. How many steps is it going to take?

John, Falls Church VA

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. -- Let's go straight to the mailbag, no delay, no bullpoop.

Kyle, all these heroic recaps of "mid-over-major" results are great and everything, but what about the December games that really matter, the early conference stuff?
Stan K.

PHILADELPHIA -- Just a quick check of the tally board: mid-major wins are still ahead of last year's total at this time, 60-54. Seven of those came on "Black Saturday," when you had such corkers as Wichita State's 64-61 nailbiter over Syracuse, in which they held on after building a huge first-half lead, Western Michigan over San Diego State, last year's champions of the Airport Handshake Conference, and of course the biggest upset of the year, North Dakota State over highly numerically popular Marquette. Sunday brought more joy, with Cal under Nevada and Drake over Iowa State. No Iowa state title for the Cyclones this year.

Our 60th collective victory of the year came last night in Boulder, when the WCC took down a bad Big XII team in a 78-72 Pepperdine win over Colorado. The Vance Walberg era hadn't started off very well with a Astyle=font-weight:bold HREF=http://schools.basketballstate.com/PEPP&a=schedule>three-game deathmarch against the Big West in mid-November, but perhaps this means that the Waves are gaining confidence as they campaign to wrest the league title away from the hands ofUMPFN.