Not every person from Texas is born with a belief in Texan exceptionalism. Only most such persons are.
As a child growing up in the Metroplex, I believed in it. Though certain other aspects of my life and nascent worldview may have contradicted with that belief — family ties and sports allegiances to Minnesota; a distaste for Texas' largely bland rural areas; and a lifelong disconnect with the state's sizable population of rednecks (in some parts known as Aggies) — I still felt that I lived somewhere special.
From the time I first heard it, I have celebrated the (perhaps mythical) line from Davy Crockett's concession speech after losing an election in Tennessee: "You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." The president was Texan. I didn't yet like Buddy Holly and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but so were they. Tex-Mex, Whataburger, Dr. Pepper, and the best barbecue are Texan. All of my friends were Texan. Texas Tech University, my parents' school, was in Texas. And Denton, my hometown, was in Texas. What a place this was.
I was Texan, but I was also a sports fan. With time, I discovered the NCAA Tournament and then college basketball video games. When I found the game mode that allowed you to play a 32- or 64-team tournament and pick the competitors, my brain quickly turned to the idea of an all-Texas tournament. However, I ran out of teams quickly. So I begrudgingly granted bids to teams from Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and even Oklahoma to complete the field.
I never played through a whole tournament, as I think the mere concept was always more alluring to me than the real possibility of Tech's run ending after two rounds because I wasn't very good at the game. But that concept stuck with me.
Two years ago, I brought that idea to
this space, picking teams based on their RPI ranks. I chose venues in the five-state cluster based on overly ambitious minimum capacities (few arenas in Arkansas or New Mexico hold 9,000 or more people) and held regional finals in NBA arenas, which guaranteed that future editions of the exercise would boringly rotate between the same handful of places. And I went on a bit too long about the selection process when really, all anyone who read the post would have cared about was the bracket.
I changed a few things
last year, using KenPom ranks instead and lowering the capacity threshold for the early rounds. And I spent a little less time droning.
One of my sub-hobbies as a part of my sports fandom has for many years been the sport's aesthetics. Since I drew my first uniform concepts in elementary school, a lot of other people have caught onto this sub-hobby, too. Now, uniforms are a part of the business of college football; some teams wear something different every week to draw the attention of recruits.