Greatest HitsI 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 strange and off-putting experience. The keeper of the brackets was one of the publishing partners at the company. His name was Jeff, I think. Jeff was one of the pioneers in "business casual," coming to work every day in a polo shirt with the embroidered logo of some golf course or other. Everywhere he went, he carried a cellular phone the size of a Subway sandwich. During a weekly meeting (there was no mass e-mail in the Stone Age), he announced that we'd be having, once again, the annual office bracket contest. Ten-dollar fees and completed brackets would be due into him on Wednesday. Everybody knew how it worked, except for a few secretaries. And me. "So we fill the bracket out, the whole thing?" I asked him privately afterwards, hoping to save myself some public embarrassment. "Yes, jackass, the whole thing," came the reply. "That's how you win, see." I'd filled out brackets before, sure, but not like that. And people don't believe me when I say this, but I haven't filled out a bracket like that since 2003. And I know I don't have time -- the deadline's coming up fast -- but I'm going to try and convince you that you shouldn't either. Don't fill out a bracket this week.
In journalism school, they fill your mind with a lot of ideas about interviewing, stuff about asking leading questions and guiding the flow of the conversation and all that. But every so often, you have to just roll the tape, keep your mouth shut and let a legend unspool his remarkable life story for the public record. Mr. Pulliam was ever so gracious to give us an hour of his time before Drake traveled to Southern Illinois this week; he spoke about the parallels between the magical Drake basketball teams of 1969 and 2008, the $800 blue leather suit that brought the team luck on its recent 21-game winning streak, and the importance of friendship on a championship basketball team. We also reveal an exclusive, shocking surprise -- he and I are, in fact, both men of the cloth. Listen, too, as he talks about why he turned down his childhood dream (a career with the Boston Celtics or Dallas Cowboys) in order to fulfill his destiny as a destroyer of racial barriers.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- At 7:48 p.m. Central Standard Time on Tuesday night, I became infected with The Knowledge. After nearly 48 hours of conscientious objection, of no TV or radio or websites other than Google Maps, of looking the other way when passing by USA Today newsboxes, I now know who won the Super Bowl. The record, and the mythical title of Last Man in America To Know, will have to wait for another year. Because, surely, if a campaign is going to go down in flames, this is how it should go down. There are no words. Thank you, Valpo. 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 capsule that I've worked to fit within the average attention span or feature story structure. You know that I cut my teeth on big-boy basketball in Oregon in the early Nineties, then moved on to Drexel in the late part of the decade, where I fell in love with the mid-majors. What I left out was my connection with the Anteaters of California-Irvine. Game 116: at Delaware 79, Central Connecticut State 73 Thursday, December 30, 2005 Game 100: (5) Michigan State 72, (13) Vermont 61 NCAA Tournament, Second Round (Austin Bracket) Game 076: (2) Northeastern 90, (7) Stony Brook 79 Game 055: Virginia Commonwealth 62, at Drexel 59 Game 027: at Boston University 73, Hartford 22 Game 026: Vermont 75, at Northeastern 60 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 leaves you to face the bursting glory of a fresh spring. What the hell's wrong with that? (apologies, Bart) Each November, college basketball fades in slowly, takes its dutiful place in the blurry background of the American sports landscape. Only in recent years have the the Men In Charge decided that the season's opening stages needed to be sexed up to compete with the dominant late-year sports stories - the national pastime that is the NFL, convoluted college gridiron bowl jostlings, the annual start of the increasingly ridiculous soap-opera/freakshow that used to be a pro basketball league. They've done this by staging made-for-television invitationals, power-conference challenges, and sham tournaments with worthless trophies. |
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In 1969, Drake achieved the Final Four with a 26-5 record. Adolphus (Dolph) Pulliam was the emotional leader of that team, and his Bulldogs lost in the national semifinals to UCLA and Lew Alcindor by a single point. After his senior season, he was drafted by multiple professional basketball and football teams, and three decades later, he's the Director of Community Relations and Development at the Des Moines school. In 2003, then-coach Dr. Tom Davis invited Pulliam back into the program, asking him to provide commentary on Bulldog radio broadcasts and be generally available to the players. Now that Davis has retired and handed the reins over to son Keno, Pulliam has remained an important link to the program's past, an important advocate and friend to the team in every way.
