A word for the Drake Bulldogs...

[alnorth]

So, here I've am, at work in Des Moines Iowa. Returning home from a.. *ahem* "long lunch", and I am greeting by stunned silence. A dark cloud of silence as the city and my co-workers struggle to cope with this sudden incredible loss.

For the last 3 years I've lived here in Big 10 hell, surrounded by Cyclones and Hawkeyes, but curiously on my floor there is almost nothing but Drake Bulldog fans. Lowly under-achieving Drake, known for great academics, track, and nothing else. Every March everyone casually filled out their brackets, not deeply attached to the NCAA's but interested enough to follow along a bit. I was known as the huge Jayhawk fan, with the banners and wallpaper declaring my allegience, my fellow Drake co-workers, their own team too crappy to mention, would constantly ask how the Jayhawks were doing in friendly conversation, slowly adopting them as their sort-of favorite team in March, and offering me their condolences when Kansas made their annual 1st-round faceplant. (except last year, which was nice)

This year was obviously different. Iowa was just not going to make it, UNI was pretty bad, and the Cyclones were God-awful to the point of being unwatchable. But, there was this little team that could, picked to finish 9th in the MVC, no expectations at all, but they just kept winning games. This wasnt just Des Moine's team, the whole state of Iowa tuned in to watch, the gym was sold out, and the loyal long-suffering Bulldog fans were the center of it all. As the record kept climbing, these astonished Drake fans started to ask each other and me during January if their alma mater could somehow actually play on CBS in March. Knowing about RPI, strength of schedule, good wins, etc better than they, I assured them that yes, the Bulldogs were pretty much a lock even if they didnt win the conference tourney, and they began to dream.

Today, those dreams have ended, and I watched as one by one, my fellow co-workers stumbled back in to work from their "long lunches", bravely trying to offer jokes and shrugs to one another, but the pain was obvious. Their team actually wore white today, who woulda thought that was possible? They didnt expect to win the championship game, but they dared to dream they could beat UCONN, go to the sweet 16, give a great team a run for their money, who knows! But this magical team, led by a former walk-on-turned-star with 4 majors (academic all-american of the year) was out with one cruel unreal shot by a shooter with hands in his face from some dinkey little school in the middle of nowhere.

I tried to offer my own condolances, but I could tell that they werent having it, how could I understand? I could argue that some of our greatest championship teams were cruelly snuffed out much too early as well, but this was their magical team. Its been almost a generation since the last time the team made it big, and everyone is graduating. Slowly I understood that these people needed to work this out on their own, so I left them to mourn their fallen team in peace.

Spare a thought for the Bulldogs of Drake University. We've had our tough years at Kansas too, but to me this sudden tragic end seems far more cruel than anything we've had to go through.