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AD PARTNERS
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Let's get ready to boogie
Posted: Saturday April 01, 2000 04:11 PM
By Tim Crothers, Sports Illustrated GREETINGS FROM INDIANAPOLIS -- Sitting at ground zero of Championship Square in the shadow of the majestic RCA Dome, it is just a few hours before the start of the Final Four. Finally. The rest of the country is turning its clocks forward today, but I am informed that the time never changes in Indiana. This is evidenced in the music blaring from the nearby 12-foot speakers, something about how we're going to "boogie-oogie-oogie `til we just can't boogie no more." I am reading a newspaper story about how this county recently passed a law that forbids the selling of tickets to this event for more than face value, which is anywhere from $80 to $120. I ask around a bit. A guy with three cellular phones and a pocketful of tickets offers me "a great deal". Just $5,000. He then asks if I'm a cop. I go to the official NCAA store on the square and from the front door I can see nine other souvenir outlets. I ask a woman selling garish $28 T- shirts if she can name the schools that have reached the Final Four. Even though the answer is printed on the shirts, she stares at me as if I've asked her to explain the Pythagorean theorem. How many did you say there were? I go to the mall across the street and I find famous college coaches (who shall remain nameless to protect their private gluttony) waiting in lines 25 deep at Manchu Wok and Sbarro. I order beef and broccoli and sit down to start writing this postcard. Just when it seems like life at the Final Four is some surreal April Fools joke, I walk back to my hotel past the ticket window at the arena and meet a group of disheveled and pungent Michigan State students. They camped out in sleeping bags the previous night to be first in line when the will-call window opened and to save some dough on a hotel room. They pick up their tickets and are promptly attacked by a half dozen scalpers offering them a down payment on next year's tuition to hand over their precious ducats. They laugh and boogie-oogie-oogie to Sbarro. Let the games begin.
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