|
 |  |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |
It's about time Midnight Madness emerges as much more than practice
Posted: Friday October 15, 1999 02:46 AM
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- College basketball fans must be really spooky. After all, we like to put on our Halloween costumes two weeks early. If you thought sitting though the "Blair Witch Project" was scary, try the student section at Cameron Indoor Stadium at the stroke of midnight Friday. Duke students, like so many of their college basketball counterparts around the country, will be decked out in ways impossible to predict right now. That's why they call it Midnight Madness. Former Maryland coach Lefty Driesell, now at Georgia State, is the man credited with first creating this zany ritual. As the clock struck midnight on October 15, 1970, the earliest possible practice time allowed under NCAA rules, the Terps could be found running laps in near-darkness in Cole Field House. Other coaches quickly followed Lefty's lead. Diehard fans loved it. The late start appealed to students, who brought a frat-party feel to the event. The benchmark of a program's passion soon became attendance at this first official practice. Today, the event is the ultimate pep rally and team promotion -- a spectacle for the Age of Television. Midnight Madness has evolved into a tradition shared by hoops fans nationwide. This year as the calendar flips from Friday, Oct. 15, to Saturday, more than one-third of all Division I schools will whistle in practice in the wee hours. Midnight Madness is a time for schools to entertain recruits as well as fans. If the Cameron Crazies seem even more enthusiastic than normal (if that is possible) this Friday night, it may be the presence of a special visitor. Jared Jeffries, a high school senior from Bloomington, Ind., who happens to be one of the top five recruits in the country, is expected in Durham for the weekend. Fans would like him to go home a future Blue Devil. And even in the adulterated world of big-time, big-money college basketball, Midnight Madness is a time for dreaming. At the University of Texas, kids can participate in the "Midnight Mania" sleep-over: meeting players, shooting hoops, then having a giant slumber party at the UT Recreation Center. Or take the "Tuition Shot," a tradition at several schools. One student, one half-court shot. If it goes, the shooter is figuratively and literally "money." In 1994, on live television from Cincinnati, Cory Clouse drained the shot, sending the crowd and viewers everywhere into a frenzy, and earning himself a year's tuition, room and board. In the new season's opening minutes, even the lowliest teams entertain the grandiose hopes that only a clean slate can provide. So permit a revision of college basketball's fairy-tale theme: If the Final Four is about finding a glass slipper that fits, and if Selection Sunday is about getting sized for the slipper, then when the clock strikes midnight on Oct. 16, future Cinderellas all run for the shoe store.
| |||||||||||||||||
