"Watching" The Kansas Jayhawks Win A National Championship from Abroad
Many of you who frequent this site are avid watchers of Jayhawk basketball. The kind of people who never miss a minute, the type of people who plan evenings and weekends around tip times. I am one of you as well. I have watched mostly every minute of every game from the past 30 plus years, but the last few weeks were different. And interesting. And here is what happened.
My wife and I are avid travelers, and we'd been jonesing to get out of the country again. Due to Covid restrictions and a world in pain, it just hadn't been possible until recently. And, after having the same trip to the Basque Country in Spain delayed due to Covid twice (March 2020 and December 2021), we decided to switch things up and head to Italy. Rome and Naples were our new destinations.
As a teacher, I'm lucky to have lots of chances to travel, but typically hold out until summer. We didn't want to wait this time, and with a later than usual spring break, we knew we'd miss some Kansas post season games. So be it, getting away will be worth it I said (it was!) and we were off just after KU won to advance to the Elite 8. I'd even joked on the message board that if Kansas were to win it, the guys that frequent this site could pay to kick me out of the country each March (I'm sticking with it guys, pony up!).
So away we went, and I wound up "watching" three Kansas games at odd and sometimes obscenely weird tip times.
We arrived in Rome on Sunday morning and spent the day wandering the city and eating delicious pastas and pizza, seeing historical landmarks and overall, enjoying a great city. The Miami game was set to tip around 1:25 PM Jayhawk time, but that was right in the prime dinner eating time in Rome, 8:30PM. So with that, I left it up to fate to get Kansas to the Final Four. We enjoyed some delicious fried artichokes as well as some tasty local wines at a cool spot in Trastevere, and I'd asked a friend to send me texts, giving me updates on the game so i could see them when I was online (we didn't pay for an international plan).
So when we got back to the hotel, and onto the wifi, I read the texts and in nothing close to real time saw KU make a dominant second half performance to beat the Hurricanes and advance to the Final Four. This vacation was off to a nice start.
We spent the next week in Rome and moved on to Naples. We ate some delicious pizza in the city where pizza was invented, went to Pompeii and Herculaneum at the base of Mount Vesuvius and overall, had a great time. Saturday arrived, and the tip to the Villanova game was midnight CET.
I was texting the same friend and following along on the ESPN gamecast. Things went well. My wife fell asleep around the half, but I stayed up and "watched" as the Jayhawks closed out the Wildcats. I slept well that night.
We eventually made it back to Rome to catch our plane back to the States. The tip for the National Championship was at 3:20 AM on Tuesday, but I had a plan. With our plane leaving the next morning, I was going to short on sleep anyway. The alarm was set for 3:20 and the Jayhawk Radio Network was loaded and ready to go. With Brian Hanni and Greg Gurley on the mics, I was set. In the dead of night and awake in bed (with millions of Romans asleep in their beds), I silently fist pumped, shrugged, whisper screaming "YES!" and "CRAAAAP!" whenever yes and crap* were called for. I tried not to wake my wife.
*More colorful whispering occurred. Crap is putting things mildly and appropriate for print.
My wife woke up once late in the game, and I informed her that we were up 4 and that lead dwindled to nothing and eventually a deficit, and I wondered if I shouldn't have led her on. It didn't matter, you know the rest, and with that we were the happiest people to ever have to wake up early for a nine hour flight.
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