There are plenty of websites that can tell you who leads the nation in scoring, what kind of efficiency the starting five of Kentucky has, or even what top eighth-grade recruits North Carolina might be bringing in.

This isn't it.

Yes, we are about basketball here at the Mid-majority, but we're also not going to insult your intelligence (or web browsing skill) by giving you too much on the way of numbers (we have our sister site, BB State for that, and it's very good).

When the Mid-majority was founded by honoraris dux Kyle Whelliston nine seasons ago, it was designed as somewhere where you could look at mid-major basketball through a different lens. You see these teams (like Norfolk St., Lehigh, and Ohio did last season) show up and get celebrated in March, but that is the end of a mission that began months earlier in relative obscurity. Or total obscurity, depending on your location.

Along the way, Kyle figured out that there are so many great stories around the country among the nearly 275 Division I teams below the Red Line (more on that in a moment). Yes, the players are important, but what about the assistant coaches, the fans, the people that work at the school? They work hard for peanuts (if they're lucky in some cases), but keep pursuing a dream involving throwing a round leather ball into a metal ring. Why? Do they even know?

Kyle is gone, at least at courtside, but the mission of the Mid-majority rolls on. It's easy to make opinions and look at games through the television screen, but to really dig beneath the minutia that floods the worlds of ESPN and its billion-dollar rivals (known as the loathed Sportz here on the site), you need to go to the games.

And that's what we do.

We'll never get to all the schools we cover (although we came pretty damn close last season), but we're going to try. And we're going to go to the campuses, talk to people, give you what we see from our vantage point.

We cover the teams below the Red Line here. The site explains it better than I can, all I know is that it means schools that don't spend as much on their athletic programs as the big boys (or BCS conferences) do. Research has shown that teams above the Red Line defeat those below a ridiculous percentage (about 85) when they meet on a basketball court.

We root for the underdogs here, all the time. It sounds fun, but it doesn't always go well. You probably remember all the big upsets, but all of those teams eventually ended their season in a loss somewhere in the NCAA Tournament. Every last one of them. Even Butler. Barely. Ah, Butler (along with VCU and George Mason), you were so close.

But the struggle pushes us forward, it defines who we are. We take our defeats in stride and we push forward, looking for that one moment (not a shining one, mind you) where logic and reality take a backseat to our dreams: a world where the underdog, smaller in every way but in the size of their heart, rule the world, even if it's just for that instant of triumph.

If you're on this site, that means you're a fan of college basketball. Maybe you're a fan of a team above the Red Line (as I was once), and you're just curious. Maybe you've found yourself turned off by the overwhelming coverage of Our Game, most of it nonsensical drivel. Drivel that's repeated every minute on the minute somewhere on your television set.

However, beyond the drivel and past the blinding nonsense, there's us. We may be off the beaten path, we may be crazy, we may be quixotic in many ways, but dammit, we love Our Game enough to call it Our Game. You'll find lots of little quirks here that have ingrained over the years, like for a school to be Title-R compliant they must have a red-headed cheerleader. Or that we call three-pointers #superhoops and big dunks #omgdunx (because it gets boring saying the same things over and over, doesn't it?). You'll pick up on the vernacular as you spend more time here, it took me a while as well, don't worry.

At the end of the day, we're here because college basketball should be fun. It was once, you may remember. We're here to tell you that it still is. You've probably heard plenty about academic standards, boosters, Top 100 recruits, APR rates, schedule strength, and NBA potential. We may skim those things, but that's not what our mission in.

We're here to enjoy Our Game. Sure, we have more fun when our teams win - Red Line upsets in the NCAA Tournament are about as joyful a moment as you'll find around here - but that's not our raisons d'etre. No, we're here because it's all about the game itself. And not just what you see on the court. As legendary philosopher Ferris Bueller once said in the 20th century, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it."

We want to slow it down a little bit for you. If you get a chance, check out some of the old stuff from our sometimes fearful leader, Kyle. I suggest going to the Essays category. Then check out some from last season, as we went to more than 800 games combined. Then, you can see what we've been up to this year as our Mid-majority teams battle it out to see who will prevail, complete with challenges that they must complete by the end of each week (go Picket Fences!).

And I stress the word, "we". This is an interactive community. We want your input. We respect your input. After all, we're all fans here. We are ... together.

So give Mid-majority a shot, will you? By March, we'll have your faith in college basketball restored, and when one of the teams below the Red Line hits the shot that everyone remembers, you'll know why it's so special.

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