Watching college basketball can be a marathon event

If I could, I would watch all 23 hours of ESPN's college basketball marathon.

Right now I'm watching UNC Asheville beating Liberty 69-44 in a tiny gym in Asheville, where the sun is pouring in and I don't know a player on either team.

It doesn't matter.

It's college basketball, and I've already seen a game in Memphis, where Coach John Calipari seems to have spent a lot of the off-season enjoying celebratory food and drink -- or his fancy shirt collar somehow shrunk.

In Moraga, St. Mary's runs and passes so well, and Paddy Mills shows the skills needed to play in the NBA, and who wouldn't love a big guy named Omar Samhan who proudly showed off muscles he didn't have a year ago and a three-point shot that maybe he shouldn't try this year?

And is there something wrong about watching Idaho State at Hawaii in the middle of the night?

I think I took a nap prior to a conference call (about ESPN taking over the BCS television contract) that interrupted my viewing of the Penn-Drexel game that had started at 10 a.m. The crowd's behavior indicated that some mimosas may have been consumed.

Up next: Centenary vs. Baylor. I'm supposed to leave soon to interview the NFL commissioner. But it's Centenary and Baylor! Roger Goodell is around all the time. Centenary-Baylor? Maybe never again.

-- Diane Pucin

Photo: Memphis Coach John Calipari during a Monday game in Memphis. Credit: Lance Murphey / Associated Press

Comments

[Bonnie Lee]

You have the best job EVER.