I think we all know that I’m not a “sporty” girl.  I was that girl in middle school basketball that scored 4 points a season. “But you were good at rebounds!” my mom calls out from the peanut gallery.  Yes, only because my growth spurt hit earlier than than everyone else’s. No, instead of a son that would go out and play catch or be the star of the high school football team, my father got me, an only daughter who tap danced down grocery store aisles and practiced Disney songs on the clarinet.

"A whole new wooooorrrrlllddd..."

So if you’re talking to me about baseball or the Colts or bowl games, I will nod and act like I know what you’re talking about,  but rest assured, I DO NOT.

Unless it’s IU basketball.

If we’re talking cream and crimson and Coach Crean, I AM DOWN.  If you want me to articulate the tears that fill my eyes EVERY TIME they do the flag/fight song in the second half, I can do that, too. (GREATEST TIME-OUT IN COLLEGE BASKETBALL.) Would you like to know that EVERY TIME I am in Assembly Hall, I squint at the court side seats to see if John Mellencamp (i.e. “Cougz”) came? ‘CUZ WE CAN TALK ABOUT THAT.

I know my dad is insanely proud of me, and we share a lot of interests, like photography and Paul Simon and whatnot.  But watching IU basketball together is probably the only “dude” thing we share. When I watch IU basketball I demand submarine sandwiches, and I curse and throw accent pillows. (I suppose it’s not dude-like to recognize that they are “accent” pillows and refer to them as such.)  I will get fired up and do that thing where you stand up randomly out of excitement or rage until you silently realize, oh hey, I’m in my own living room, maybe I should have a seat.

Of course, why should you be surprised?  This is standard spectator behavior, but it’s funny when you are the person that schedules grocery shopping around Colts games (ghost town!) and writes soliloquies about boys who give her flower pots.

That said, even I could have made more free throws than the Hoosiers did vs. Michigan in overtime tonight.

(Yeahokayprobablynot.)

[Go IU.]