Tee's Weekly
By Gee Kane
March 20, 2008
There is one day on the sports calendar that is circled in my family in red ink.
Every year the quarter-finals of the big east tournament is the best day of basketball on the planet. I would also argue the best day of sports period.
You can have game 7 of the NBA finals, the Super Bowl, the college world series and the Denny's PBA Championship. Even if you could guarantee the finals NBA series stretching to a game 7 and even if you could pick the best possible match up of teams it doesn't match the excitement of the Big East quarters. What other day do you have the pleasure of watching four hotly contested games in the same venue with a championship title at stake?
And oh what a venue--the world's most famous sports arena. High school basketball championships and all star games are held every year and some of the most memorable professional basketball performances of the last 30 years have taken place on west 33rd street. However, on a Thursday in the middle of March eight of the nation's most storied basketball universities converge on this most holy wood alter--the court of Madison Square Garden.
My journey started this year at a Penn Station south of the Mason-Dixon Line. As I entered the station at 6:45am I nervously asked the K9 officer guarding the gates if his German Shepard was a drug dog or a bomb dog. He was not amused but he thankfully let me proceed--for this wouldn't be the first time I was detained by the authorities on the day of the Big East quarters.
After sitting next to someone competing in a loudest cell phone whisper contest I arrived at a Penn station north of the mason Dixon line. Once I arrived at the platform at the station the distance to my seat at the world's best sporting day was five escalators up.
However, you can not just go into the Garden without surveying the local fare surrounding the blocks of between 31st and 33rd street between 7th and 8th avenues. There is more illegal activity than legal in the sixty minutes prior to the noon tip off.
While having a pint of Guinness at a local establishment I witnessed illegal ticket scalping. I also witnessed illegal wagering, illegal prostitution as well as illegal smoking in a bar. I attempted to make a citizens arrest for several of these criminal offenses but was abruptly halted by the 5th amendment.
I planned on writing a running diary of all four games, but after my fifth Guinness of the morning I entered the Garden and found my seat just in time for the Georgetown-Villanova game. The rest is kind of blurry but I do remember arriving back at the southern Penn Station 18 hours after I left with a smile on my face because I was lucky enough to have a ticket to the world's best sports arena on that arena's biggest day.