Cinderella Wears Red

Rolled back into Orlando at 10:30 on Saturday night, absolutely cooked.

This was my schedule for the last ten days: host the Chevy Florida Fishing Report on Thursday, February 21st. Drive to Lakeland that night. Do play-by-play for three Florida High School Athletic Association girls' basketball state championship games on Friday, which requires several hours of preparation. Do three more on Saturday. Drive back to Orlando. On Monday, fly to New Jersey. Host the Magic pregame show prior to the Nets game on Tuesday. Fly back Wednesday. Host another Chevy Florida Fishing Report on Thursday. Drive to Lakeland again. Three boys' basketball title games on Friday, three more on Saturday, again, each one necessitating copious amounts of homework. Drive home.

So yeah, I was cooked.

However, before I crashed back into my own bed for only the fourth night in the last ten, my spirits were sent soaring by a teeny, tiny bullet point in the far-right corner of the Bottom Line ticker on ESPNEWS:

"Cornell becomes first team to reach NCAA Tournament."

As in, March Madness. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The Dance. Cornell University, my alma mater, had wrapped up a stellar 12-0 Ivy League campaign to claim the conference title, and the accompanying tournament bid, for the first time since 1988 -- one year before I arrived on campus in Ithaca. It's the first time over those twenty years that a school other than Princeton or Penn will represent the Ivies in the Big Dance. And just to make it a little more delicious, the Big Red trounced those ninnies from Harvard to do it.

Let's back up for a moment.

Academically speaking, I had some game in high school. I also had a strong interest in the broadcasting and media field, so I narrowed my college options to those schools that offered a balance of academic reputation and opportunities in journalism. Taking all factors into account, I ended up applying to six schools as a high school senior: Cornell, Penn, Virginia, North Carolina, Stanford, and Florida. Stanford rejected me; UVA placed me on a wait list, and I was eventually offered a spot, but it was very late in the game. The other four schools admitted me.

I chose Cornell. There's a long story behind it, but it came down to reputation, course offerings, the desire to see a different part of the country, and the campus itself, which is pretty much Central Casting when it comes to what a university is supposed to look like. My experience there is worth a novel, which I might write someday. But the relevance here is this: in terms of athletics, well, it's the Ivy League.

The Ivies are non-scholarship I-AA programs. In Cornell's case, the men's hockey program is probably the school's most successful and notable, having claimed two NCAA titles, eleven ECAC crowns, and 19 Ivy League titles, including five in a row from 2003 through 2007. But that's college hockey, a niche sport if ever there was one. When it comes to the marquee sports, like basketball and football, Ithaca is a long, long way from Chapel Hill or Gainesville. At Lynah Rink, a Cornell hockey game is a religious experience along the lines of Cameron Indoor Stadium or The Big House. Everything else, however, was a diversion, an innocent way to kill a couple of hours between studying for a Calculus exam or reading another 200 pages of "The Odyssey."

As a result of choosing Cornell, I've always found myself left out of the conversation come tournament time or bowl season. It's a part of the college experience that I missed, quite frankly. Now that I'm back home in Florida, the land of Gators and Seminoles and Hurricanes and Knights and "Bulls in the BCS" and conference titles and postseason berths, it comes up all the time, especially when you consider what I do for a living.

And then, boom -- "Cornell becomes first team to reach NCAA Tournament."

I have to admit, I haven't followed Cornell basketball at all this season. Nor have I followed it for any of the fifteen seasons that have passed since I graduated. I can tell you that Jan van Breda Kolff and Mike Dement both coached at Cornell at one time; I can assure you, from personal experience, that my former roommate Stuart Roth played one season on the Cornell JV. That's the extent of my Big Red hoops knowledge. So I looked it up.

First off, there's a blog dedicated to the 2008 Ivy League Champions, a sure sign of success. I learned that head coach Steve Donahue spent ten years on Fran Dunphy's staff at Penn, another good sign (see the note above regarding Ivy League champs over the last twenty years). I also learned that one of the Big Red's star players is Ryan Wittman, son of former Indiana University star and NBA head coach Randy Wittman. And he's only a sophomore.

In fact, the Red have but one senior on the roster this year. Can you say "repeat?"

Never mind, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The last time we made the tournament -- and you have no idea how cool it is to write "we" and actually have a legitimate claim to it -- was 1988. The opening-round game was against Arizona. We were the 16th seed in the West region -- such respect -- and lost by 40. However, that was Arizona's first Final Four team, a squad that won 35 games that year behind Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr, and Kenny Lofton (really). No shame in that loss.

Now, we're back. I can finally watch a first-round game at the NCAA Tournament with a rooting interest.

Bracketography.com has us as a 14-seed in the South. Joe Lunardi of ESPN.com says Cornell is a 13-seed in the West. I've seen a couple of sites that claim we'll play Connecticut in the opening round -- another delicious coincidence, as Storrs is about 30 minutes away from West Hartford, where I lived for nearly seven years while working at ESPN.

Know what? I don't care who we play. I'm just thrilled to say "we" and mean it.

First ones in, baby. Cinderella wears Red.