Has it really beenThat Long? - Looking Back before Moving On

       
              Gene Bartow called me. OK, he called the Memphis State University English Department. Graduate Assistants take many side assignments.
Coach wanted me to tutor a few of his scholars.
The year was 1972.
              John "Tree" Washington from a school in Alabama. Ed Wilson from Manasas HS. Bill Cook from White Station. John Tunstall. They were Freshmen. Bill Cook played significant minutes.
          It would be years before academics caught up with basketball skills and decades before school personnel recognized their obligation to these young men.
          I did my best to get these guys through Freshman Comp, but a sentence will always be a sentence and my efforts did not result in great accomplishment. Bill Cook was the star student.
It was the year of the Final Four and the finals against UCLA.
You know the rest.

Fast Forward to 1984-85. A friend had a doll named Andresina.
Female teachers in the Upstairs Den of Iniquity (smoking lounge) completed NCAA Brackets based on uniform colors and mascot ferocity.  And won the pool.
Road trips were measured in inches...on the map. "It's only a few more inches...go for it!"

Small black and white portable televisions with antennae were smuggled into classrooms along with portable radios. That way, at the 10AM tip-off, we could listen to Jack Eaton scream "Great Caesar's Ghost!" and forget to call the play-by-play.  But, we'd take his commentary over those Yankees who never pulled for Memphis State.

Turner: "I think more than anything people will look back at it as a family event. Guys from pretty much one hometown went to the Final Four. When we played, people would stop working; in the barbershops, they'd stop cutting. It was all about us."

We rarely worried about the outcome of a Tiger game if Andre Turner had the last shot or if Keith Lee hung around the basket. The Tigers could win if  only 1 second remained in the game. Ask John Wilfong, the Peach Guy, as David called him. Tigers overcame a considerable deficit with 16 seconds on the clock, stealing inbound passes, and shooting lights-out.
               It was an incredible time in the Memphis Tigers story.
And in our story. We shared experiences and made plenty of fabulous memories following the Memphis (State) Tigers. We knew it was a time to be remembered.
               We overlooked much. It was a golden time, for a short time. Some players could not get beyond their past glory and tragedy came in buckets.
The problem Dana Kirk had was ignored.  Shoeboxes of money were never discussed in polite society. How gouache.
The gods and the saints of old were on our side at that time. All of Memphis was pulling in one direction...toward victory.

One afternoon after the final bell, a group of us beat the buses out of the parking lot.
We sped to the Student Center on the Memphis State campus. Got in line. We snaked through shelves of textbooks and talked Tigers with all who were also forming that incredible line. The T-Shirt stack was looking smaller and smaller. The stack...running out.
I made it to the counter and paid (Whew!).  The only sizes for Final Four T-Shirts (1985) were size small.  Even then, that was too small. I got one anyway. Maybe I could just pin it on, like a bib or a cape.
Dana chewed on his ring. Larry did his best to coach the boys. Villanova.  Are you kidding me?

               "I was two games away from shaking hands with President Reagan," said reserve guard John Wilfong, now a senior vice president for a Memphis investment firm. "I got to shake hands with the ball boy and the manager."

I still have the important part of the t-shirt David slept in, saved as an essential element in his memorabilia heirloom - a T-Shirt Quilt.