I have to admit, not being a basketball fan, I wondered for two days who George Mason was before I found out. Am I alone?

 

All this sounds great but, sorry this is as far as they will go. Go GATORS.

 

If you were a basketball fan, you would be even more unlikely to know who George Mason is.....

 

Morris,
I expect you have more people like you who have never heard of George Mason Univ than people who have. But it is interesting that a university relatively unknown outside its own geographical area becomes known more generally through its success on the court. And without the new found fame in basketball there are many people in the country who would not have heard of George Mason Univ.

The President and the Board of Governors at Rice Univ in Houston where I teach claim that sports furnish one of the ways the university needs for getting outside press and providing for school spirit. Rice is also a small school (less than 3000 undergraduates) known for its academics, and it has only one sport in which it excels; baseball. They have been going to or getting close to going to the College World Series every year for several years now, and they won the championship in 2003. So anyone who follows college baseball knows about Rice. But if you don't follow baseball you probably wouldn't have heard of Rice before either. Without this argument Rice would have acquiesced to majority faculty opinion and abandoned all varsity sports long ago in favor of less costly intramural sports.

It was very clear that the George Mason basketball coach, who was interviewed after their victory over UConn, was exhibiting elation that was projected beyond just the basketball team to the whole university.

 

S1997, thanks for making me feel not so out of it.
Since we are running so many polls now in Vintage, somebody should start one as to who heard of George Mason before last week.

 

Seriously, the whole campus is abuzz. After the last win, you could hear people honking and celebrating all over the campus for hours, and that's pretty remarkable since it's primarily a commuter school. (there are 28,000 students!)
My daughter is in her sophmore year at George Mason University. She just bought tickets and is heading to Indiannapolis for the next two games. Check out their website: www.gmu.edu home page.
They are offering tickets and making group travel arrangements for those who attend the college.

And BTW, I have no clue WHO George Mason was.

 

He invented the resealable jar.

http://www.gmu.edu/vcenter/vtour/tour02.html

 

I'm one of the relative campus curmudgeons at Florida Atlantic who thinks college sports are emphasized too much, often to the detriment of academics. It's particularly difficult here, where the athletic program runs a deficit.

But my boss, who used to teach at Syracuse, told me this: several years ago, after Syracuse won the NCAA basketball tournament, they found that their first-year student applications went way up, both in quantity and quality. Ultimately, they were able to raise the average SAT score of the incoming freshman by 20 points or something like that because of the national visibility of the tournament.

Soooo....I guess there may be something to these arguments, and we may as well have fun with it. HPH

 

The Headline on the Sports page of the Houston Chronicle today is:

MASON MANIA STRIKES

"Looks like everybody in the country is jumping on the George Mason bandwagon."
"It's really cool everybody is rooting for the underdog."

People in Fairfax are having a lot of fun. The players are busy signing autographs, and a local grill is selling Larranaga Burgers, named after the now very popular Basketball coach.

Well, we'll see if their magic is still working tomorrow evening. Go Patriots!!

 

Regardless of the outcome, GMU has made an impression like Gonzaga did few years ago. GMU may become perrenial contender from now on. Winning produces more winning.