How Do I Start This?: Mario's Miracle, or Scott's Valid Reason to Discuss Kansas Basketball in Class

In my class last month, we talked about introductions. I didn't plan to include any self-gratifying discussion of the Kansas Jayhawks'* win in the national championship game of the NCAA tournament, but when good writing presented itself in the form of Grant Wahl's Sports Illustrated article on the Jayhawks, I couldn't help myself.



I showed a YouTube clip of the final ten seconds of overtime, shared the context of the game with the non-sports fans, and opened up a discussion of how they would choose to begin writing about the game: the beginning of the season, the beginning of the game, the missed free throws, the inbounds pass--one student even suggested starting from the perspective of a fan looking up at the scoreboard.

Then I shared what Wahl wrote:

"The ball floated through the air, its pebbled surface spinning softly, as serene and peaceful as a space capsule in a low-earth orbit. At 10:29 p.m. CDT on Monday at the Alamodome in San Antonio, the fate of a college basketball season rested on Kansas guard Mario Chalmers -- or, to be more precise, on his last-ditch three-pointer, a make-or-break heave with 2.1 seconds left that would either send the NCAA title game into overtime or give Memphis, clinging to a 63-60 lead, its first championship in school history."

A student said it was like Wahl was in The Matrix, slowing down time, letting the ball spin and spin and spin. Exactly. His entry into the subject wasn't the beginning of anything. It was a zoomed-in look at the middle of the most important moment of the game. In the article, he goes back to the season for both teams (and way back for Mario Chalmers), and he continues on to the future, into overtime and the post-game celebrations, but I love where he started and how he describes the ball itself--not even the teams or the shooter or the fans or the game, just the ball.

*I grew up in Kansas, where basketball=Jayhawks.