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Mar 19, 2026; Portland, OR, USA; High Point Panthers center Youssouf Singare (24) embraces Wisconsin Badgers guard Nick Boyd (2) during the second half of a first round game of the men's 2026 NCAA Tournament at Moda Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Wayrynen-Imagn Images | Troy Wayrynen-Imagn Images
I’m bad with money and missed the first day of the NCAA Tournament because I’m driving around the rural Midwest, but at least I’m not a wisconsin fan
Look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in life.
Was it a particularly good idea to plan a driving trip to Detroit on March because (1) I wanted to save money and (2) I don’t actually have the legal documentation to fly at the moment?
No. Of course not. I am a man in my thirties, I should have my life together.
It’s a fun reminder of the pointlessness of it all, though, that my driving trip should coincide with gas becoming 50¢/gallon more expensive because our nation…well, you know.
Point is, I’m not good with money and never have been.
But in comparison to these friends who have now BOTH torn their Achilles tendons in the last year because they insist on playing ludicrous amounts of adult league soccer and have to pay for ACL surgery for their dog on top of it…
…it could be worse, I guess, is what I’m remembering.
I could be a Wisconsin fan.
Also my passport just came in the mail, get off my back.
NCAA Tournament Day 1 Results, B1G-Style
TCU 66, OSU 64
Self-denial is important, Buckeye fans. Remember that.
One of the sots I prepared to give myself for an overnight drive back to the Twin Cities was a stop at Casey’s for some delicious gas station pizza. And as I pulled off this morning, my mouth was watering. Look at them, all cheesy and greasy and loaded with whatever I wanted: breakfast sausage or bacon or plain old pepperoni.
And then it hit me.
It’s a Friday. And it’s Lent.
A small price to pay, two pieces of Casey’s cheese pizza, especially when I checked out and noticed this placard, tucked away behind the napkins at the register:
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I cannot tell you how profoundly…sad…this crap makes me. The tens of billions of dollars we seem content to piss away killing brown people overseas for the privilege–the privilege!–of paying 50¢ more per gallon at the pump, as all the while the real problem with poverty is that the poors need to be disciplined into not buying a pop or a candy bar.
Anyway, tough break for the Buckeyes.
Nebraska 76, Troy 47
We briefly interrupt my unhinged rambling to note that I’m genuinely happy for Nebraska fans who, yesterday, got to witness their team’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game victory. Facebook has been reminding me that nine years ago this week I was in Salt Lake City for my team breaking a similar duck, and while I have stories to tell from that trip, I don’t want to distract from the joy Husker fans are feeling.
I’m not entirely sure what exactly makes it work for this team — their center is a Kevin De Bruyne wannabe and their star scorer is an Iowa castoff — but damn if they haven’t found it. It’s all gravy from here on out, and though I’m sure no one in the Nebraska locker room would say they came to win just one game, we’ll see how the Huskers fare with that psychic liberation.
High Point 83, wisconsin 82
I don’t think I’d taken the Chicago Skyway in a decade. I’m never driving this way anymore, for one, and it always feels unnecessary, for two. A luxury.
But I was too tired to argue with Google Maps, so I paid the toll and took the drive.
I’m not a good enough writer and too bleeding a heart to write convincingly about the way cities make me feel — the history I write has become in recent years more on rural America, as there’s a niche in that market and my work takes me physically there more often than it does Detroit or Chicago.
I walked downtown Detroit, on Wednesday afternoon, profoundly or perhaps just ordinarily emotional as I did. God, are those buildings beautiful. You stare up to the soaring heights of the Penobscot Tower, noticing all the little balconies and ornamentation, the exclusive catwalks and perches of the privileged who were and are and are yet to come, and then you wait to the riverfront and are confronted with the monuments to labor.
People built all this. Capital dried up, moved on, or simply vanished — but the people who built that city stuck around and lived with its consequences.
With Detroit in my rearview as I got on the Skyway, I took in the beauty of the Chicago skyline: the raw, energy of the Second City and how, every time I step off a plane and onto the L or out of my car and into the busy Chicago streets, I get a big, dumb grin on my face. It’s hard not to feel the energy, whether the joy or the struggle, of those places.
And then you remember that wisconsin basketball pissed down its leg yet again in the NCAA Tournament. The two things aren’t similar, but my smile is.
Michigan State 92, North Dakota State 67
I have a working theory that you could write a pretty convincing social history of the Upper Midwest by driving the entirety of US Route 10 from its beginnings in Bay City, Michigan, to its terminus in West Fargo, North Dakota. Someday I hope to write that book.
Michigan 101, Howard 80
That Duke struggled with Siena, a team that played its five starters for all but :10 of this game and led the #1 seed for 28 straight minutes of game time…god this tournament is great.
Illinois 105, Penn 70
Brad Underwood’s hair reminded me; I need to get an oil change.
Also, working on a character: Bread Underwood. Not sure the purpose of that or any of this, but that’s life.
NCAA Tournament, Friday Games
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I passed a hospital somewhere in rural Indiana that used its video billboard outside to announce the names and weights of newborns. Congrats to Lila Jade (7 lbs, 3 oz) and Samuel-Dale Michael (8 lbs, 5 oz, 1 unnecessarily hyphenated name). Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred to hear news of births the traditional way—a collect call I wouldn’t accept:
Apropos of driving through terrible parts of Ohio, I realized I don’t know the words to “There Is A Balm in Gilead,” because I kept humming the melody for what I would then realize I thought was “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” but what was in fact actually the melody to “I Sing the Mighty Power of God”.
Mount Vernon looked like a lovely little town, is my point.
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I hadn’t thought about Steak’n’ Shake in years, which is interesting because it’s our Health and Human Services Secretary’s favorite beef tallow user. BUT! When I passed one somewhere in Indiana, my college years came flashing back.
While I didn’t have a car, one of my Quiz Bowl teammates, even more of a degenerate than I was–and a wealthy one at that, a St Viator grad from some neighboring suburb whose parents rented him an apartment in Evanston rather than make him live in the dorms–did. I would be working the graveyard shift at the campus library (12-3am with supervisor James, a delightfully rumpled man who also worked at DePaul’s library for what I’m sure was a pittance), and this teammate would message me on Facebook asking if I wanted to Steak and/or Shake.
Assuming I did, he would pick me up outside the library at 3:05am and off we’d go, for a Frisco melt and a cookie dough shake and all the crap we could talk about our various teammates.
He’s an actor and aspiring gameshow regular who manages Apple Stores now, I think.
Here’s your open thread for the day’s hoops. I’m about to hit the road again, only this time without the spare minutes to drive off I-94 and see if Ford Heights really is that bleak.
(It is, and I’m not sure I know how to process its existence. Not quite Sandbranch, Texas, levels of “damn,” but…woof.)
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