THP #56: After The End

March 20, 2025 – Providence, Rhode Island
McNeese State v Clemson
Men’s Basketball
NCAA Tournament – Round 1

Dreams. Funny thing about them. No one tells you what to do once you catch them in your hand. 

My entire childhood, from the age of nine or 10, I wanted to be a sports writer and sports broadcaster. As long as I can remember there was never anything else for me to aspire to. I got my first internship at my local newspaper at the age of 16. I remember covering my first game, with my own byline, in January of 2009 at age 17. It was a Methuen-Haverhill high hockey game at the god awful, brutally cold Veterans Memorial Skating Rink in Haverhill, a 2-1 win for the hometown Hillies. 

And ever since then I’ve been in the business. I’ve traveled the roads up and down New England covering anything and everything I could. I almost died on I-95 on the way up to the America East tournament in Portland, Maine when a snow squall popped up out of nowhere. I covered thousands of high school and college games. I was in the gym with 100 or so other people for a prep school game that featured Andre Drummond, Wayne Selden, Nerlens Noel, and Georges Niang. That was neat. 

Nineteen NCAA tournament credentials. Everything from Division 3 soccer to Division 1 basketball. I was there when Ja Morant had that triple double. It was magic. 

Made a documentary. Been in press conferences with Geno Auriemma and Tom Izzo and Dan Hurley. I’ve broadcasted games on real, actual TV. It’s been an incredibly wonderful, lucky life. I got to my dreams. I did all these things I wanted to do. 

And that’s why my career is now over. Perfectly so right here at the NCAA tournament, America’s greatest carnival. I’m tired. I’m at peace. Now I have a fun little hobby to stay in touch with my inner fifth grader.

No one tells you while you’re chasing your dreams that there’s a lot of tiring, forgettable malaise. Tens of thousands of miles to stand on sidelines in the New England cold to write words that’ll be read by a few dozen people. Two major car wrecks driving to or from games that totaled cars. Years of feeling like I’m on a treadmill both feeling incredibly frustrated to not be moving up professionally and also not feeling like I’m allowed to say anything because of what I’m doing for work.

It was just a handful of years ago that I viciously resented pretty much everything I was doing in sports. Driving an hour or more to make $50-75 in towns like Turners Falls, Massachusetts or Hollis, New Hampshire to be at a place I had no interest being, writing about a game I could not have given less of a shit about. There was none of the mythical bullshit “you’ll never work a day in your life” feeling. 

I remember my lowest moment. September 14, 2019. I covered a high school football doubleheader, one game in Massachusetts and the other in New Hampshire. The latter game was under a mist from start to finish. St Thomas Aquinas beat Alvirne 13-12. The game was brutal to watch. The weather was brutal to exist in. I pulled off the highway to write my game stories at the Dunkin Donuts in Greenland, New Hampshire. A most depressing place to feel like the future you’d been chasing was a mirage. I still remember how bitter I felt walking out of there and back into the rain. 

My mom understood what I was feeling because she is both not a sports fan, which gave her needed distance, and saw me crumbling under the weight of myself. I was imprisoning myself in the dreams of a younger man who I no longer knew. Yet, when I would mention that to other friends or family I’d regularly get some response like “keep pushing, these are your dreams.” 

Considering my wife works in the medical field, is only licensed in Massachusetts, and made it incredibly clear that she wasn’t about to criss cross the country, it made my next move easy: I changed focus. I love her. I wasn’t about to round hole/square peg my relationship, now marriage, for a distant, possible maybe. 

Pit stops in marketing and editing at weird, strange organizations got me to financial advising with New York Life. I love what I do now because the people are great. They encourage the hobby. The partner at the office had games up on his office TV during championship week and the tournament form noon till quitting time every day. Good people, good environment, encouragement to still get creative in the world of sports. 

It’s so wildly freeing to no longer feel shackled by my former dreams. Because I caught up to those dreams only to realize they were actually a ghost because my life desires and wants had changed. 

But this March I got the two final feathers in my hat. The first came at the start of the month when I got to call real, actual NCAA tournament games. I got the mic at WPI for their opening round matchups in the D3 men’s tournament. What a thrill that was. 

And then here, in Providence, with the March Madness signage aplenty, I was credentialed for this very blog project. My thing. My silly nonsense basketball memoir where I write about french fries and art museums had the same access as people like Pete Thamel. 

I’ve told my coworkers that my goal is to drag the office down to my level of silly and beat it with experience. The point stands here for my work going forward. I love covering sports, I love the doors and experiences it’s unlocked for me. I also have no respect for the business because, on its face, it is a very silly endeavor. 

So yeah, my career ends at my favorite place in my favorite month. But having a hobby sure is nice. 

Ya know what else is nice? A moment with Bella.

Bumming Around

I’m not even really supposed to be here. One my coworkers had tickets for the weekend with his family, and I just wanted to show him how easy it is to apply for a credential. it’s a quick 2-3 minutes filling out one form.

I filled it out for the blog, sent it in back in early January, and thought nothing more of it because obviously I was going to get rejected. Then I got the approval email in February and cackled.

So there I was Thursday morning, getting berated by one of those fire and brimstone weenies with a microphone as I walked by the front of the building trying to find the media entrance.

At least there was a tent to protect from the wind.

I’ve covered plenty of games here at the Dunkin Donuts Center (I’ll call it the Amica Mutual Pavillion when I’m dead) and underneath it’s pretty wide and spacious. Of course, with the added NCAA stuff it felt more congested.

The television crew had a palatial area complete with buffet, the works.

Looks nice. I’m sure that the area for print and web media was the same.

Oh, it was just a food voucher? Well, I’m sure it was at least something worth a damn, right?

The voucher was for $20. I should have gone tender box with a hot dog but went with the box lunch instead. Let’s see what I got for $20.

A prepackaged vending machine ham and cheese sandwich, a cup of pasta salad, Oreos, and mixed nuts. $20. These cheap fucks never fail to underwhelm.

The media packet also listed drinks and snacks for media as well. I’m sure there was a wide variety.

Nutrigrain bars, coffee, and room temperature soda. At least the soda wasn’t expired, so there was that. NCAA made $1.4 billion last fiscal year. With a B. Four legs good, two legs better. Same as it always was with the NCAA.

Side note, how the hell does one even find a pack of Oreos with four cookies in it?

Six is the standard you can get at the market or the gas station. Two is the number you get in a National Biscuit Company variety pack at BJ’s or Costco. I’ve seen six and two plenty. But where in the absolute hell do you find four packs of Oreos?

First thing I did was bum around on the floor for a bit to see who was there and what was up. My seat was upstairs in overflow, which I figured it would be, so I wanted to breathe in the energy.

Providence is one of the smaller venues that’ll host the NCAA tournament, with just over 12,000 seats in the building. But the Ocean State loves basketball and the fans showed out.

Everything was cramped, people on top of people. It really was an excellent atmosphere. And I got a high five and a hug from Prowler.

It’s always a treat to be at a game when the crowd is hot from the jump.

Usually I’d want to be on the floor, in the thick of that electric soup of fan energy. But it was too cramped even for me. And the upper overflow seating offered a spectacular view, space to move, and a small private bathroom.

The biggest negative of the arena is that it seats more than it can handle. Even with the renovation to the building two decades ago, it is so wildly cramped on the concourse when it’s a full house.

It doesn’t come through on the screen, but it was a good 15-20 degrees warmer in the concourse than the seating bowl. It was miserable.

After Purdue pulled away from High Point it was Pokes-Tigers.

You all know how this went. McNeese came out like a house afire. Clemson also existed in the same space.

Yes, those TV cameras weren’t lying to you: Clemson did score in the first half.

McNeese tore Clemson apart in the first half to a 31-13 lead at the break, and they kept at it in the second half even if the Tigers started to make shots.

And then Clemson decided to show up. The deficit grew to as much as 24. I was the only one in press overflow thinking the game had any juice left at all as Clemson looked barely willing to even amble to the final horn.

Down 17 with 4:30 to go, the Tigers figured it out. The gap fell and kept falling and kept falling until it looked like Clemson might have a crack at tying this one up.

But the Cowboys did enough to hold on and enter folklore.

It was the Cowboys’ first postseason win since defeating Dayton 86-75 in the opening round of the 1986 NIT.

McNeese 69, Clemson 67. Final.
Time of game – 2:21:07

I didn’t go back to Providence the rest of the weekend. No Kansas-Arkansas. No Pitino v Calipari. I had other things to do. That second session on Thursday ends brutally late and I had a daughter to hug and put to bed. And Saturday was meant for errands and cleaning the house.

March rules. March is the best. It just isn’t that important anymore. To that younger man who game by game filled out the empty bracket printed on a full page of the Boston Globe, your time has come and gone and is a wonderful memory. Now, I have other things to do and journeys to investigate.

Of all the unimportant things, sports is the most important. I just got some real, important things in front of the horizon these days. Onward to season seven.

And as we head into the offseason, here’s one for the road…