College basketball used to revolve around Kansas City

I guess it has been more years than I care to remember, but it doesn't seem all that long ago that we used to have a postseason basketball competition at Kemper Arena known as the Big Eight tournament.

This year, they had the Big 12 tourney in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City? They've had it in Dallas and just about any place you can name. I long for the good old days when Kansas City was the headquarters for college hoops in the nation. So much so, that the NCAA had its offices there. Along came Indianapolis with a better deal and off they went to a city where it rains most of the time when it isn't snowing. At one time, no one could imagine holding the NAIA tournament anywhere but in the Municipal Auditorium. Or at least in Kansas City, for gosh sakes.

It seems that every year, we never had any trouble getting tickets for the Big 8 championship because we went quite a few times. If not the championship, we often hit the semis. I still recall walking up those steps, wondering where our tickets would be and finding that we were pretty close to the court. The only secret was buying the tickets early meant you weren't in the rafters.

One year, when Steve and Cheryl Hale lived in Nevada, the editor's desk at the Nevada Daily Mail had a big purple logo on it that read "Every man a Wildcat." Hale wrestled at Kansas State and claimed that was why they dropped the program a number of years back. The Hales asked me if I wanted to accompany them to the championship of the Big 8 tourney at Kemper between KU and K-State. Dumb me. I said, "Sure."

I used to think Kansas and Missouri had a rivalry. Used to! Never have I heard anything like it. Here were these attractive young coeds, directing the most jaw-dropping vulgarities you have ever heard in the form of curses toward one school or the other.

I just sat there, shaking my head and pleased to be a Missourian as the K-State Hales had some choice obscenities that always either began or ended with the words "chicken hawk."

#But what has happened to the college game since then?

Kemper Arena has gotten too small for what it was originally constructed. The Big 12 wants more glittery and glitzy venues in which to pick the pockets of fans with overpriced tickets and concessions for what is often no more than dunking and taunting contests that bear little resemblance to the game I used to watch at Kemper in the days when walking was a violation and tattoos were something sailors got when they had too much to drink. It sells, though.

I watched several of the games in this year's tournament on television. I watched Texas Tech go down in the first round and I also watched Kansas State play well until running afoul of Kansas. Nothing unusual there, except that the NCAA tournament committee told the Wildcats to take a hike -- all the way to the NIT. The same committee further unpopularized itself with me by sending the Missouri State (always SMS to me, as Istanbul is also Constantinople) Bears to the same NIT.

I know I'm a Razorback, but Arkansas had about as much business in the NCAA tournament as Duke -- none. Both school's teams proved that in the first round. So did Bobby Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders. What a committee. Must be some of the same folks who decided Buck O'Neil didn't belong in he Hall of Fame.

Speaking of Arkansas, Missouri beat the Hogs. Oops, I'm sorry. There is no Missouri according to the uniforms that read Mizzou. Personally, I liked the uniforms that said Missouri on them. You know, the ones the Tigers wore when Norm Stewart was coach and they played in the NCAA tournament. Where is Norm when you need him? Oh, wait. We've always needed him, some people just failed to notice that.

Maybe the Tigers will come back some time this decade and I'm sure the Big 12 tournament will be featured at Kansas City's sparkling new arena when it is completed. All I know for certain is the tickets will cost a whole lot more than what they cost when I used to attend the league tournament, and the good seats will be long gone before the peons get a chance to even bid. At least I'm old enough to have memories of when it was different and better.

With only one area team in the NCAA tournament this tine, I at least stayed interested until those same Jayhawks choked against UCLA and failed to make the Final Four.