The Mid-Majority Scholarship Program is back for a third year.
Having recently completed its 8th season, The Mid-Majority is a community chronicle about the 24 smaller D-I college basketball conferences (plus independents). We went to 800 games this year.

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S7 November 8, 2010 Thankfulness involves being truly grateful when things go well. But equally or perhaps more important is to be thankful for what you learn in the hard times, and to have the wisdom to grow from them.Before Jim Larranaga became the head men's basketball coach at George Mason in 1997, he roamed the ...
S7 November 7, 2010 Servanthood is knowing your role and sacrificing as needed to make your teammates better. It's a key element of team unity and greatness. It involves having a servant's mentality when it comes to your team. Will you truly give of yourself to make your team better? Manny Ohonme once shared a lette...
S7 November 6, 2010 Unity is best illustrated by this adage: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Basketball, more than any other sport, is one in which a team can come together and achieve greatness without having the greatest individual talents.Before George Mason, there was no George Mason. No team from...
S7 November 5, 2010 Passion is all about being vibrant and eager to put forth the effort. Are you hungry to compete and excel, and enthusiastic about the opportunity to do so? Will you be passionate when you don't feel like it? On November 25, 2008, two days before Thanksgiving, Davidson College hosted Loyola of Mar...
S7 November 4, 2010 Humility is knowing who you are -- not thinking too highly of yourself, but also not thinking too little of yourself. Simply put, it means having sober judgment. Do you know who you are as a player on the floor? At the start of a college basketball season, it's all free chaos and beautiful possib...
S7 November 3, 2010 The late Thomas Rubick, my dear friend, professor and sensei, had a unified theory of communication technology. When a utility matures, he said, once a superior thing surpasses its functional usefulness as a tool, the old tool is more free to act as a conduit for art. He first told me of this idea b...
S7 November 2, 2010 A common question people ask: why don't I fill this site with team and conference previews in early November? Shouldn't I use my extensive knowledge of mid-major college basketball for the common good? The easy answer: all that stuff can be found elsewhere. I did a 1,400-word flyover for this month'...
S7 November 1, 2010 "It is not surprising that after a long period of searching and erring, some of the concepts and ideas in human thinking should have come gradually closer to the fundamental laws of this world, that some of our thinking should reveal the true structure of atoms and the true movements of stars." - V...
S6 April 4, 2010 INDIANAPOLIS -- It's even uglier up close. I mean, the architecture of it isn't offensive; its tall flat surfaces of impossibly smooth brickface appear as out of a three-dimensional CAD drawing, a simulation come to life. But Lucas Oil Stadium (or "Sports Bubble Stadium," if you prefer) is repulsi...
S6 March 12, 2010 CLEVELAND -- It was February 19, 2009, 11:49 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, during our nine-hour BracketBusters marathon chat. We have a lot of people sign in with names that aren't theirs, but we hadn't had any multi-platinum rock stars show up before. [Comment From Tom Petty]  Two questions. 1) Wh...
S6 March 11, 2010 CLEVELAND -- Just as you don't need to put lipstick on the P.I.G., Championship Fortnight doesn't need any pretty dressing. It's compelling competition that sells itself. March basketball is elimination basketball, and we need to get 31 from 347 before we whittle 65 down to a single champion. It...
S6 March 3, 2010 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It's 2010, and the future is now. We have androids and robots that do our bidding, we use magic phones, and all the kids are having droid sex on "virtual AOL." Everything either flies, glows, or has a touch screen. But there's one machine from the old-school that has not been ou...
S6 March 2, 2010 VANCOUVER, Feb. 24 -- I'm writing to you from the diiiiistant past. Wooooo-ooooo-oo. By the time you read this, the flame will be out, the [CENSORED - ed.] will be over, conference tourney time will have begun; I'll be a jello glob with re-entry syndrome and a fried immune system, telling everybod...
S6 February 9, 2010 Most of the great coaches in college basketball came from down here, below the Red Line. There are plenty of old friends in the national polls. Bill Self got his head coaching start at the Badlands Conference's very own Oral Roberts. Jay Wright got his current Villanova gig because he was so good ...
S6 February 1, 2010 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- This was going to be the day. Conditions could not have been more perfect. The Bryant Bulldogs, 0-21 on the season, had the struggling Monmouth Hawks right where they wanted them -- on the ropes. The newest member of the Northeast Conference sprung out to a 15-5 lead on the four...
S6 January 14, 2010 CHICAGO -- As we waited to fly out of Philadelphia on the big orange, yellow and blue bird this morning, we learned of the death of one of that city's greatest musical innovators and ambassadors. Teddy Pendergrass died following complications from cancer surgery, and he is now able to connect with t...
S6 January 11, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- On June 6, 2001, the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Los Angeles Lakers 107-101 in overtime. It was Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and the Allen Iverson-led Sixers catapulted to a quick series lead. It was a promising harbinger of a championship, since the game was out west, on the road. Ph...
S6 January 7, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- Malik Rose asked me to go to Drexel. Not in person, but through a TV set. It was a somewhat elegant request, though -- it came in the form of two-point dunk shots and sweet jumpers, as he led the Dragons to a stunning 12-over-5 upset over Memphis in the first found of the 1996 NCAA...
S6 December 29, 2009 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- One more drinker's holiday, and the calendar will flip. Many Americans are spending this week in silent fear of what's on the other side: a return to the bleak routine of five-day workweeks, the gray skies of short days, and January bills from December's illusions of prosperity. O...
S6 December 22, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- What is the Sports Bubble? Can you see it? Would you recognize it if you could? Does it have a smell, touch, taste? Can its movements be tracked with GPS or radar? We know it exists, we know that. But in what dimension, on what plane of consciousness? There is no sole point of foc...
S6 December 17, 2009 Every year around the holidays, a team south of the Red Line unleashes a surprise stretch of inspired play. Upset kings can spring up from any corner of Hoops Nation. One year, it could be Rhode Island, Nevada, Pacific or Davidson. Or in 2009, it could be William & Mary, Portland, Charlotte or Weste...
S6 November 8, 2009 I've often wished that college basketball would somehow become a year-round pursuit, that it would stop disappearing in April and returning in November. (Or, for some, the following March.) But not like this. I don't remember a summer with so much college basketball news. Our Game never left the na...
S6 November 7, 2009 Back in the late 1990's, I was one of those people who thought that the internet would save the world from itself. I honestly believed that limitless information would lead to limitless knowledge, and that our new generation of enlightened master thinkers would transcend manipulation. What I didn't...
S6 November 6, 2009 Dayton, you had a good run. There are so many reasons why the Birthplace of Aviation was the first capital of Hoops Nation. No other place can match its fan awesomeness-to-population ratio; the University of Dayton Arena will always be packed, no matter if the Flyers are 28-1 or 1-28. Since the At...
S6 November 4, 2009 Do you mind if I talk baseball? Just for a second. This is a decidedly American League Central-centric website. I've been a supporter of the Twins since I discovered baseball in 1983. Our new compatriot Damon Lewis, who you'll meet next week if you haven't already, is a lifelong Tigers fan. So it ...
S6 November 3, 2009 Sports are great. Actual participation is awesome, but watching other people do sports is still pretty good. These days, anybody can watch sports without being there at all -- anytime, anywhere and in any state of undress they choose. This is truly the age of miracles and wonders, and it's all thank...
S6 November 2, 2009 History, as Winston Churchill famously said, is written by the victors. I believe that maxim only holds true for the quick, easily-understood sweeps of human affairs, the kind in schoolbooks and on multiple-choice tests. Interesting failures have more to teach us about the trajectories of empires an...
S6 November 1, 2009 PAWTUCKET, R.I., October 21 -- On Monday, March 23 at four a.m. Central, on the dot, my cell phone alarm woke me from a two-hour nap. I was behind the wheel of a rented Hyundai Elantra at a rest area alongside the eastbound lanes of Interstate 94 in Wisconsin. I was en route from Minneapolis, the ...
S5 November 9, 2008 Ninth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. I have no Wikipedia entry of my own, not even a stub. If I understand the process correctly, you have to be either rich or a character on The Simpsons to get one of those. Being neither, and therefore not su...
S5 November 8, 2008 Eighth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season.Since the invention of the printing press and discovery of binding, it's been the dream of everyone who strings words together to write a book. A longform work of 80 or 100 thousand words that can be touched,...
S5 November 7, 2008 Seventh in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. For a nation that takes its freedom so seriously, we sure are confused about it. Our society is rigidly segmented and specialized, everyone must find their place. From parental career projections to colleg...
S5 November 6, 2008 Sixth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. Here in early November, we're still at least a month away from the non-stop barrage of "Year In Review" specials, all those tidy bow-snapping recaps that attempt to impose order on a loosely-joined, selectiv...
S5 November 5, 2008 Fifth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. In case you haven't heard, our great nation recently concluded a long and protracted and polarizing popularity contest that decided, among other things, our heads of state and guiding ideologies for the fore...
S5 November 4, 2008 Fourth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. If you're just now dropping by and don't know what this is all about, this site is all about going to mid-major college basketball games. A lot of them. I attended 117 total games last year, and I've been to...
S5 November 3, 2008 Third in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. New technology always takes time to find its proper place, to soak into the mainstream. Over three centuries passed before the printing press changed from a luxury item for the powerful into a tool of the pe...
S5 November 2, 2008 Second in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. This being the first Sunday of The Mid-Majority's Season 5 (and a Daylight Savings-adjusted morning upon which thousands of churchgoers will miss their services), it's as good a time as any for a Bible story...
S5 November 1, 2008 First in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. It's not supposed to work out for the best, and the system is designed to anticipate failure. On March 21 in Birmingham, the four lower seeds wore their extra digits like anchors, eliminated one after another...
S4 March 18, 2008 I remember my first March Madness office pool. The year was 1992, I was about to leave my teenage years behind. I had just nabbed my first real actual journalism job, working for out-of-state tuition as a junior copy editor at a farming magazine in Oregon. I recall that the whole bracket thing was a...
S4 March 17, 2008 I can't think of anything that captures the essence of modern corporate America better than Selection Sunday. Four and a half months of sweat and blood spilled by on-court workers is distilled into numbers and charts, spreadsheets and presentations. Merits are debated by people in suits in a locked ...
S4 January 21, 2008 It's never going to end. We might try to fight it, we may try to ignore it, but every year it's going to come back. I'm talking, of course, about the endless debate of what a "mid-major" is and what one isn't. Within the past few weeks, we've had weigh-ins here, here, here and on countless blogs. W...
S4 November 9, 2007 Once upon a time there was a tiny little cell, one among a million billion, sloshing and sliding inside a gigantic and vibrant and heaving body. The tiny little cell did its tiny little job as well as it tiny little could, and during its time off it had fun bouncing around with other tiny little lik...
S4 November 8, 2007 It was an easygoing, unassuming late-summer Saturday in Rhode Island. I had completed my weekend house-husband chores (saving the stinky litter boxes for last, as usual), then prepared for a long, languid afternoon of relaxation on the patio. I contemplated the birdfeeder, turning out a few chamber-...
S4 November 7, 2007 Before throwing the switch, he gathered his thoughts in the virtual darkness, choosing his words carefully. He didn't know who was out there on the other side -- who his audience would be, whether or not he would be able to find one. If an audience for someone like him even existed. This was somethi...
S4 November 6, 2007 Here's another story we won't have time for later. When I was 12, I went through a phase that most failed child prodigies go through, the fitful burst of youthful creativity and frustration that comes right before the realization that girls are interesting. For me, it manifested itself in a short-li...
S4 November 5, 2007 In 1995, five years into my stay out in Oregon, I became homesick for the opposite coast, the one I grew up on. The feeling started as confusion and frustration, which grew into a acute sense of not belonging, culminating in a crystalline realization. I missed hockey. My New York Rangers had won th...
S4 November 4, 2007 The New Hampshire boarding school I attended is located on a remote hilltop, in a broadcast television dead-spot and a half-hour's walk from the nearest cash register. Back in the 1980's, before WiFi brought the world together, our only contact points with the real world were the radio and the Bosto...
S4 November 3, 2007 Mid-major universities tend to fall in one of three categories. There are the expensive and tiny religious schools in remote and leafy locations, flame-keepers of Christian subsects born out of the Great Schisms. You have your specialized colleges: the teacher's schools, the agriculture and mining i...
S4 November 2, 2007 There's an annual event -- if that's a phrase suitable and grey enough to describe something that doesn't cut it as a tradition -- here in our household. Every year around this time, the satellite television company beams in a solid week of unlimited American professional basketball in a free previe...
S4 November 1, 2007 First, this. In mid-August, I was inside a cube-shaped Pilot Travel Center alongside an otherwise barren and remote stretch of northern Pennsylvania. That's where I met someone who might be the tallest truck stop employee in America. He must have been about 6-foot-8, at the very least. The mop he p...
S3 February 7, 2007 LOS ANGELES -- This one's for the old-timers, the folks who have been following the journey from its humble beginnings two and a half years ago. You know who you are. There's a secret I've been keeping from you (shhhh...), or rather it's part of the story that didn't fit well inside the 30-second c...
S3 January 1, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I'm not a complainer by nature, not at all. I don't gripe about primetime television becoming a lowest-common denominator toilet, or that Kenny G did a lite-jazz cover of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," unknowingly creating the audio skeleton-key to hell's gates in the process. ...
S3 December 19, 2006 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 ...
S3 November 2, 2006 One thing you can never say about our game is that it overstays its welcome. For all but the lucky pocket of players and fans whose season didn't end in a meaningful loss, college basketball is quickly forgotten, gone, off the radar. For some, it's the pull of the new baseball season, but for most...
S2 April 9, 2006 INDIANAPOLIS, Apr. 2 -- There are huge signs all over town -- on airport walls, strung over streetlights, over the main gate to the RCA Dome. They all read, "The Road Ends Here." There's also a giant logo on the side of the 45,000-seat venue, a green and gold star with zag-zigging trailers that has...
S2 December 12, 2005 This is the 9th in a series of 10 early-season essays. "A dream is a wish your heart makes," it's said, "when you're fast asleep." That's nice and everything, but why does Disney have the market cornered on all that dewy fantasyland crap? This date - 12-12-2005 - marks a key development in the his...
S2 November 30, 2005 This is 8 in a series of 10 early-season essays.Yeah, you, buster. You're as guilty as the next one. There's nobody around, it's okay to admit it - it's happened to you too. Here's the scene: you're sitting at the sports bar, watching the sports ticker out of the corner. There it is - a score that...
S2 November 18, 2005 This is 7 in a series of 10 early-season essays.Karl Marx was a smart guy, he had some revolutionary ideas about class struggle and stuff. But even though the East German city named in his honor would field a dominant women's team named the Karl-Marx Stadt Chem Cats, the father of modern communism d...
S2 November 17, 2005 This is 6 in a series of 10 early-season essays.There are 4,484 young men currently playing Division I college basketball for 334 schools. These players come of all shapes, sizes and ability levels. Some are thin, some are fat, some think they'll wear a draft-night hat. Some are far and some are nea...
S2 November 14, 2005 This is 5 in a series of 10 early-season essays.It was a dark and stormy night. The villain, sweater-vested and scowling, paced the floor. Boo! Hiss! the audience cried. But just then, the mood was leavened by a comic-relief appearance of the drunk clown, teetering and leering at girls half his age ...
S2 November 4, 2005 This is 3 in a series of 10 early-season essays.In 1891, as James Naismith considered the equation of ball and hoop, a French physicist named Henri Poincaré was contemplating a similar issue involving roundish objects. Kepler's laws of planetary motion had only dealt with the orbit of one pla...
S2 November 3, 2005 This is 2 in a series of 10 early-season essays.I think we can all agree that progress is a good thing: forward is preferable to back, and up is a hell of a lot better than down. Progress is all about development, advancement, evolution. If you examine our history as a planet, you'll notice that a...
S1 March 29, 2005 Epilogue With the notable exception of our friends in the Ivy League, very few choose to be mid-major people. It usually starts with a stumble: a spate of bad grades during a streak of teenage rebellion, or a bad night of sleep before SAT Saturday (for whatever reason). All of a sudden, there's a ...
S1 December 7, 2004 The U.S. Postal Service recommends that folks get their holiday mailing done early, because an estimated 20 billion pieces of mail will be sent through the pipes during these next few weeks. That's a lot of mail. So just because there are 16 whole shopping days left until Christmas doesn't mean you ...
S1 November 18, 2004 When your humble proprietor was a wee lad, he played him some base ball. Although official statistics were not recorded in the Keene-Peterborough (N.H.) Pee Wee League, I'm sure that my .560 season batting average (achieved primarily with slap singles) would have been near the top of the league lead...
S1 November 15, 2004 I can remember a time when close only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades. When second place meant "#1 loser," when gold was for champions and silver was for dinnerware, when "Miss Congeniality" and "bridesmaid" really meant "No Soup For You." There, in the dimmest recesses of my memory, I remem...
S1 November 13, 2004 It is designed to do a lot of things, but it certainly is not designed to break your heart. The game begins in the late autumn, when everything else has shriveled and fallen and died. Its blossoms come slowly in winter's course like crocus starts popping through icefields. And when it does stop, it ...
S1 November 11, 2004 To the baseball fan, a long winter of hot stove leagues and hibernation is rendered tolerable by that most optimistic of sporting phrases, those two words that warm the soul like sunshine on the coldest of January mornings: "Opening Day." The football fan can summon the bracing chill of September w...
Sunday Funnies: Media Day!|Sunday Funnies: In Training!|Sunday Funnies: ...Strikes Back!|Sunday Funnies: Conspiracy?|Sunday Funnies: Balltamont|

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