Fascinating

So an ex student of mine who shall remain nameless left Case a few years ago and went on to graduate school at Indiana. He has many, many hobbies and interests, but sports is not one of them (despite my many attempts to corrupt him). And with a small school like Case lacking a big university sports program, he never had any opportunity to experience big time college sports.

Until yesterday, when he finally he went to an Indiana basketball game. And a humdinger of a game it was, with IU beating Minnesota in overtime. So I dropped him a note this morning asking how it was, and his ensuing report sounded like what you'd expect if Mr Spock had beamed into Assembly Hall to study human behavior (you need to imagine Spock's voice saying this):

It was an exciting one, yes (so they tell me... something about the scores being close and the outcome not being obvious). I had made other plans for afterward and was surprised when they didn't call it a tie and had to play some more. I even read the sports section (for the first time ever) this morning in the paper just to see more about the game in general. Now I really feel like I am at a big 10 school. There were 17,000 people all in the same place and it was a little dizzying. Also surprising were the feelings of negativity! Do you know that song called "The Hey Song?" it's the one where at the right time in the music, you shout "Hey". Even I knew it. However, the IU crowd had a new twist on it, which was to say, in rhythm with the melody, "Hey....YOU SUCK". I only use capital letters because of the volume they used while shouting it.

Heh. Welcome to the Big 10.

(ps: I should say this note was posted to the blog with his permission...)