HOUSTON — I didn’t think watching college basketball in a football mega-arena would be memorable — at least not in the way I wanted it to be.
In a giant, cavernous building with more bad seats than good seats, how could there be any kind of electric atmosphere?
Much like the city of Houston and the entire state of Texas, the NRG Center is a sprawling structure. It wasn’t intended for basketball, and yet, that’s just where 74,340 people saw one of the most incredible game-winners in the history of the NCAA Tournament.
I knew no matter who played or what happened, covering a national championship would be an indescribable experience.
But in such a large, cold venue, I didn’t think I’d find half the atmosphere that I’ve felt sitting courtside at Cameron Indoor or in the auxiliary press seating at Michigan State’s Breslin Center or on top of the risers in the Smith Center.
No way could a building that impersonal foster that kind of relationship between the fans, the players and the game.
But from the minute the first note of the hair-raising national anthem was sung and the paratroopers from Afterburner Inc. rappelled down ropes hanging above the baseline and the indoor fireworks went off, I knew I was wrong.
It was a setting far from intimate but every time UNC hit a 3-pointer or Villanova pounded in another shot, the crowd roared and you couldn’t help but get enveloped in sound.
My seat in the end zone of the football field was securely bolted down to the ground, and yet, as Villanova went up by double-digits in the second half, it shook with the jumping and the screaming of everyone around me.
Before the game started, I complained that my vantage point of more than 100 feet from behind the baseline and past the rows of Carolina blue-clad students would keep me from feeling involved in the game, that I would miss everything happening on the court.
And sure, sometimes I couldn’t see who got the rebound on the far end of the floor, but I was fully engulfed in every single second played Monday night.
A lot of things are described as jaw-dropping.
Jaw-droppingly large prices, a jaw-droppingly large engagement ring, jaw dropping finishes.
I didn’t realize how often that phrase is misused and overstated until I experienced the first truly jaw dropping moment of my life, when my mouth reflexively opened and my jaw locked into place.
That happened with 4.7 seconds left.
4.2 seconds later, the second jaw-dropping moment of my life happened.
I couldn’t think. The confetti burst from the sky and the fireworks went off before I could even process what had just happened.
Seconds earlier I was preparing for overtime, hastily rewriting one of the three drafts I had prepared for a buzzer game story and drafting a snarky tweet about one more tipoff to this college basketball season.
Then, it was over.
The finality of the moment seemed impossible, unfathomable. For a minute, the score hadn’t been updated and I thought that maybe it hadn’t happened. Maybe we would get five more minutes in this season.
But as the players dog-piled Kris Jenkins and the Tar Heels walked slowly back to the sideline, I knew it was really over.
I couldn’t have asked for a better ending to my first national championship game, the perfectly improbable ending to a chaotically unpredictable month.
And now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be napping for the next week.