The Slice: Big Dance, bigger conflicts

You don’t really have to care about the NCAA basketball tournament to realize that Selection Sunday has the potential to be intriguing on a personal level.

Ten years ago, one of the more loyal Gonzaga fans I know – he was a booster long before half the city jumped on the bandwagon in 1999 – was all set to unreservedly root for the Zags in the tournament. And what happened? GU got paired in an opening-round game against this guy’s alma mater, the University of Wyoming.

Or consider the conflict facing a mayor of Spokane a few years later. You would think someone with that job and a law degree from Gonzaga would have clarity about which team to root for in the tournament. But what about when the Zags get matched up in a first-round game against your undergraduate alma mater, Davidson?

Of course, Selection Sunday surprises and the resulting personal stories don’t have to involve GU. It has happened that married couples in the Spokane area have seen their far-apart colleges paired against one another. And there have been cases of a parent’s alma mater getting bracketed against a school where one of the kids currently matriculates.

And so on.

Anyway, if one of these situations surfaces for you this afternoon (or when the women’s tournament pairings are announced), please let me know about it. I’ll put something up about it on the Slice blog.

Following up on last Sunday’s column: I heard from readers after asking if the Inland Northwest’s attributes create special opportunities or pose specific challenges for our area’s children as they grow up. But I wasn’t satisfied with the pool of answers. There was some delusional rah-rah, some crabby Spokane-bashing and a fair amount of “If you use this, please don’t print my name.”

To be sure, there were a few thoughtful notes. But they tended to focus more on personal stories than assessments of Spokane as a launch pad. Truth is, it might not be an answerable question.

So I’ll take the blame and say let’s move on.

Today’s Slice question (fill in the blank): After you have lived here for (    ) years, you really need to start taking at least a little ownership re: the way things are in Spokane.