The game’s over. Florida repeats as NCAA basketball champions and, what, “two-peats” as NCAA football and basketball champions in the same year. The odds of doing what Florida just did are off-the-charts-impossible, which is precisely the reason I love sports. (Sidenote: I attended one game the Gators lost this year, but obviously quickly put behind them.)

If you’re a college hoops fan and heading into withdrawal, you may want to pick up a copy of the biography Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich by Mark Kriegel*. I read it a couple of weekends ago — I couldn’t put it down.

I’ll admit, Pistol Pete Maravich occupies a mythic corner of my psyche: some never-gotten-over Jr. High hero-worshipping on my part, no doubt. If you could see a photo of me in high school, you’d see how I tried to grow my hair (back when I could do that) to be like Pete’s. I gave up on ever being able to dribble or shoot like him, but the floopy socks and hair and sad-eyed look, I tried to perfect.

“It is impossible to distinguish what is remembered from what actually happend. Memory becomes fact,” Kriegle writes at the end of the book. That’s true for me — when it comes to Maravich. Frankly, before reading this book, I’ve really never known that much fact about Pete Maravich beyond my teenage following of his seasons at LSU. This was a time when SEC basketball was Kentucky, period. All the other schools were football schools (except, sorta, Vandy) that had huge stadiums for the fall sport and not very impressive facilities for hoops. Those facilities were clear indications that the sport was an afterthought — something to do between football season and football spring practice, the saying goes.

Maravich changed all that. (At least, he did in that “memory becomes fact” part of my mind.) The first college basketball game I ever saw live was at Auburn on Feburary 16, 1970, at the then, brand new Memorial Collesium. I was one of 12,468 fans who watched LSU defeat Auburn 70-64 that night. (I’ll confess, my memory of those stats was powered by Google.) My father and I sat way up in the nose-bleed section, but I still marveled at the way Maravich could make the ball disappear from view when he dribbled it at blurring speed.

Man, he could do stuff with a ball. Kriegle notes that Rafer Alston, who currently plays for the Houston Rockets but is, perhaps, best known for his amazing street-ball tricks and Skip to My Lou ball handling, has said his moves were inspired by watching Pete Maravich tapes. “I still watch (them) always,” Kriegle quotes Alston. “(Maravich) was so deceptive…that’s what I wanted to be: the guy that could fool you with the basketball.”

Kriegle’s book, however, goes beyond a typical sports biography. In some ways, it reminds me of a Michael Lewis sports book, in that it is told with the deftness of a great story-teller, not merely a chronicler. Kreigle is drawn to the complex father-son dynamics between Pete and his father-coach, Press Maravich. Frankly, it’s a part of the story that would fascinate any arm-chair shrink. The book is a thorough exploration of the demons Maravich — indeed, both father and son Maravich — fought throughout their lives. After being hauled through his dark journey, it is nice to learn that Maravich found a personal peace in his last few years. He died in 1988, way too young at 40. But like other great ones who are taken from us early, he will be forever the young Pete in our minds.

*While I haven’t yet, I also plan on reading another biography, Maravich, by Wayne Federman and Marshall Terrill, with “collaboration” by Pete’s wife, Jackie Maravich.

Technorati Tags: basketball, pete maravich, maravich

On Topix.com (it used to be Topix.net about a million dollars ago), there are lots more social-networking-y things today and pages like this Nashville one where we can all gather around the campfire of burning newspapers and network comments with one-another. However, when there are “no humans around,” my new friend, “RoboBlogger,” edits the page. (I feel like I’m cheating on Brittney.) I continue to be a big fan of Topix, but I doubt I’ll be doing anything “social” there (however, as always, I signed up).

Technorati Tags: topix.com

(Update: After reading this post, please click over to Infoworld for Ted Samson’s response.)

It’s been, what?, a week since IDG announced Infoworld is going web-centric and folding its print version. In what can only be described as historical revisionism at warp-speed, this “post-announcement” post titled “Magazines vs. the environment” by a senior editor of the “InfoWorld Test Center,” slams the “the world of traditional print publishing” for taking a “heavy toll on our planet” and attempts to put some enviro-chic spin to shutting down magazines.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in the announcement by IDG was anything ever mentioned about the environment. That has not stopped Tom Ted Samson from trying to retro-fit a bit of green-messaging to the move by claiming that going online-only will “(reduce the) environmental impact (and that) is a welcome side benefit.”

But wait. In this well-publicized MediaShift interview, IDG founder and chairman Patrick McGovern not onlly provided many insightful business-case explanations for the decision, he even states that new print magazines will be launched if readers served on new websites want them. In other words, the “medium” of magazines was not vilified, and his explanation runs counter to the implication that magazines are a “versus the environment” thing. It is stated quite clearly that, despite being a “webcentric” media company, IDG plans to continue launching magazines in the future. Also, and I’m just guessing here, that many, many millions of dollars of revenues are still generated by magazines in the IDG family and the medium is still a powerful marketing tool for advertisers in those magazines, so as a company, IDG chose not to make the “anti-magazine” green message a big part of the official announcement. And I would guess that IDG — like most magazine publishers I know — is working with printers and paper companies to continue their innovation of environmentally-friendly products and processes.

Quote from “Magazines vs. the environment”:

“In short, InfoWorld’s move to an online-only publication makes a world of sense, not just from a business perspective, but from a sustainability standpoint. And while being kinder to Mother Earth wasn’t among the top-of-mind reasons for the move, it’s a healthy by-product — one that companies struggling with issues of efficiency and resource management can surely appreciate.”

Let me be clear. I am all for aggressive measures to lessen our impact on the environment. Heck, I’m seriously considering joining Scott Karp in paying an “environmental tax” by purchasing a hybrid car. And as I blogged last week and many other times, I’m an advocate for media companies being “web-centric” and only publishing print-based titles when they fit into the preferences of readers and serve purposes that magazines fulfill better than websites. However, in the specific case of retrofitting a green-reason for shutting down InfoWeekworld, please spare me the sanctimony.

Observation: I’m glad they have been able to communicate and agree on certain things. It’s nice to recall how intelligent and insightful Chris Locke can be when he’s not doing his Rageboy schtick. Kathy added more here. This is my last post on this topic.

Yesterday, when I heard this story on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, I thought it may have been a local story. In looking to see if it had been posted online (it has, at the previous link), I’m glad to learn it was broadcast nationally. Here’s their intro to the piece on one of the most unique Nashvillians I have ever heard of, and who, I was finally fortunate enough to meet before his recent death:

“Tupper Saussy was a musician, artist, tax activist … and fugitive. The songwriter for the ’60s group The Neon Philharmonic spent a decade on the lam, protesting a tax claim, but had just finished a recent CD when he died at 70.”

I’m told he was also perhaps the most creative advertising person ever to work in Nashville — but that career lasted just a few years during the 1960s. It pre-dates my time in Nashville, but some who read this will remember this Saussy line, ““Don’t pay no ‘tention to kangaroos.’”

Bonus links: Morning Girl (iTunes) by the Neon Philharmonic; Tupper Saussy’s obituary in Times Online