Missing the game

I've had a hole in my life for a while.
Don't get too excited,it's a sports gap,so nothing that is really important,yet it is there.

I miss college basketball.
Oh,I don't miss the current product with its one-and-done players, made-up rivalries, and bloated conferences.
What I miss is a game from a time that I can never get back and a game that unless there are unforeseen changes in the game won't be able to get back either...

I'm always a Buckeye fan and Xavier has built up to be their equal over my marriage, but it still isn't the same.
Maryland basketball was the one team in sports that my father and I shared and few enjoyed the Terps national title more than I did.

The years under Lefty Driesell nailed me as a Terps fan and even though it wasn't the same under Gary Williams and especially under Bob Wade, I was still a diehard fan.
I considered myself a Maryland football fan too, but Ohio State took center stage in that arena.

To this day, there is still a Maryland football helmet from the Bobby Ross era that works as a lamp by my favorite chair.
Maryland fans, don't bother to ask, Ryan has already staked his claim to that lamp, if I ever decide to move it on, which I don't foresee even with the Terrapins move to the Big 10.
The day I began to lose a little interest was with the expansion of the ACC to Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech.
I could have bought Va. Tech to give Virginia an in-state rival and maybe even Miami to give the same to Florida State, but Boston College?
I tried to hang in with the changing times, but I vividly remember the end day as I watched a game and ESPN discussing "Rivalry Week" featuring the Terps against Boston College.
It just felt so forced and for a long time fan didn't feel right.
Between that and the destruction of the traditional home and home schedule with the enlarged conference, I was almost cooked.

Maryland being the most northern team in a southern conference always had rivalries that ebbed and flowed.
North Carolina and Duke each had their runs as the top rivals in Maryland fans' hearts, but being the top dog in the conference, every school rated those two at the top of their list.
When I first started watching ACC hoops, N.C. State and the David Thompson teams were a Maryland rival as was Virginia in the Ralph Sampson years, but the Terps never had a true natural rival.
I also had teams in the league that I rooted for when they weren't playing Maryland.
I loved the N.C.State teams under Jimmy Valvano, the Wake Forest teams with Tim Duncan, and especially later under Skip Prosser, and I even pulled for Clemson too.

I couldn't wait for the Jefferson Pilot game of the week that featured brands that weren't local but eventually would be such as Holly Farms chicken and Food Lion supermarkets.
Rooting for the Terps with my dad ranks among the top memories of an often less-than-strong relationship, but don't take these as a cranky middle-aged man saying the game was better in my day, although it was.
Take the words of Mike Krzyzewski, Bob Knight, Dick Vitale, and the beat goes on.
There were great coaches then and there are great coaches now.
Some coaches stretched the rulebook then and there still are, but the difference is the on-the-floor product was far superior.

Sure, some players left for the pros early, but it was usually after their junior year, rarely after their sophomore year, and next to never after their freshman year.
The only player that I remember leaving after their first year was Clemson's Skip Wise, who left for the ABA and flamed out with drug addiction.
When more and more players stay longer in the college game, the level of play improves as does the stature of the game.
When you can develop a "relationship" with the players on your team and dislike players on the others, it is good for rivalries and the game.
Ryan and I always joked that it seemed like some players played for eight years, former Clemson big man Tom Wideman was a Tiger forever in our eyes.
The guy never seemed to age or leave!

Every team also had at least one or two good players, even on the worst squads.
Balance was not a bad thing, even though every league has its bottom dwellers and even the worst teams in the league would pull an upset now and then on their home floor.
When players consistently leave after one year,it not only affects the college game but the NBA as well, which then gets players less experienced and less proficient in the fundamentals.
That is not good for the game of basketball period, let alone a specific league.

I miss those days and when Maryland leaves for the Big Ten, I'll have no rooting interest in the ACC anymore.
I've pondered selecting a new team to root for and even narrowed it down to the three teams mentioned above, but I don't know that I care enough to try.
I've become a casual fan of college basketball and I never believed that I could see that day.