In arguably the most exciting week of the college basketball season, conference champions are crowned and tickets to the NCAA Tournament are punched.
A bit cliche I know, but when you're a part of it all as we are this week in Cleveland, the excitement builds each and every day.
This year we played the first round of the MAC Tournament at home - our win over Toledo this past Sunday afternoon. A playoff game yes, but the atmosphere here in Cleveland is a complete 180. All the teams stay in the same hotel (more on that later). With a mall attached, players often cross paths during downtime. Signs and flyers for the MAC Tournament litter the landscape as you are the main attraction.
And the games are played at Quicken Loans Arena, home of LeBron James and the Cleveland Caveliers.
Back in the day, weekend-long summer basketball tournaments were what we lived for. High school and travel teams getting by in dingy hotels with four guys to a room. The opposing teams stay right next door and three games in a day is a light day.
This weekend in Cleveland is as close to that as it gets. Just up the stakes, increase the crowd and upgrade to an NBA venue and you have the MAC Tournament.
As I said earlier, more on this hotel.
The Renaissance Hotel in downtown Cleveland, Ohio is an historic landmark renovated for the contemporary 21st Century traveler. Nestled proudly adjacent to Quicken Loans Arena and mere minutes from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, this beautifully decorated establishment is attached to a three-story shopping mall that spans several city blocks.
I've probably booked like ten rooms for them just from that paragraph. You're welcome.
The real excitement comes in the crapshot that is room assignments. You see, not all the rooms are the same. You might feel cozy in an average-sized (yet elaborately decorated) hotel room with your typical two bed, one television, desk and chair square setup with a bathroom. Or you could luck out with a stretched rectangle that houses two beds, a desk, a chair, full-size couch with coffee table, and two TV's - oh, plus a bathroom and a closet of course. Then again, you might stumble into a forgotten closet that, aside from two beds and a TV, provides just enough room for you to stumble over your bags on the way to the bathroom.
In five years coming here I've had all three. For my final tour? Look behind door number two - now I just need to decide whether to lay in bed or relax on the couch.
I can pretty much watch both TV's. And both remotes work both televisions. This makes for some interesting channel surfing. Especially at bed time when all you want to do is turn one TV off, but hitting the Power button turns one off and the other on in a vicious back-and-forth game that ends in me getting out of bed and turning both TV's off by hand.
Unfortunately now I'm not in my room - it somehow slipped the minds of the hotel's upper management to provide wireless internet access to the rooms. No, I am currently at the Caribou Coffee shop in the mall, where ownership has realized that it is 2010 and provided free wi-fi. Business is booming.
We're heading over to the arena later this evening to get a feel for it. It's a new experience for some guys and we want to get the jitters out before game day.
Before I go, however, I'd like to mention something that has been bugging me this afternoon. On the bus to practice this morning the Apollo 11 moon landing was the topic of discussion. We have a few guys on the team who blasphemously believe that the historic steps Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took were staged. Yes I know, hard to believe but there are those out there who mistakenly think that Hollywood setup the "hoax" that was mans' first landing on the moon. I didn't even pursue the conversation on the bus. It just grinds my gears.
For years as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. It wasn't until high school that I realized you have to be a real-life rocket scientist to even begin thinking about that career. I thought you just had to go to space camp. Since I'm missing the part of the brain that understands higher math, my NASA career ended abruptly. Not, however, before I discovered the NASA channel and downloaded the Solar System App for my iTouch.
I'm not far behind, Neil. I just need a little calculus help.
When's the last time you used calculus in real-life anyway?
