30 for 30 running thread

The rules on hotels for the NCAA Tournament have changed. My school was sent to Oklahoma City in the early 90's and we were given a hotel that had been kicked out of the Holiday Inn chain.

The place was pretty scary. There weren't mirrors over the beds or anything like it, but I wouldn't have stayed at it otherwise.

 

The clips they kept interspersing from the speech he gave also tired that film together greatly. All in all I thought it was top three along with the one on Miami and Pony Excess.

 

I've only watched the first half of it so far...was it a Valvano hagiography the entire time, or just at the beginning? Was there any acknowledgement of the rampant cheating that made the championship possible?

 

Yes.

 

It was interesting seeing Harrick interviewed. I'm assuming that's new footage, but he looks younger than he did during his last season at Georgia.

 

It wouldn't be a 30 for 30 without at least one quibble: Did I hear that those guys were implying that Valvano kind of invented fouling when you are behind?

It seemed like it.

 

I noticed that too...

 

I worked with an editor who hated Valvano as much as anyone can hate an athlete or coach... He had worked at one of the NC papers when the scandal had broke and it bothers him to this day that Valvano is remembered as a hero and not as a lying, cheating douchebag. He would always say, "Dying of cancer does not make him a hero..." and was so passionate about it that it made people very uncomfortable to talk to him about it...

I'm not saying I agree with him, it was just interesting to hear the other side... It would be interesting to see what his legacy would have been if he had lived.

 

People forget about Washburn and Shackleford and leaving Ruland, and I can totally understand where he was coming from.

But stories like Spud Webb at the baggage claim are so funny it takes the edge off even further.

 

It was just funny, every time they would show clips from the ESPY speech, he would go into his tirade.

So, like most newsrooms, half the people in there would taunt him about it and the other half would run the other direction whenever the topic was brought up because they were so sick of hearing it...

 

I remember reading a book that came out on NC state and Valvano right around the time he was either diagnosed or had just died of Cancer. It portrayed him as an absoloute colossal dickbag.

Inreresting how the general sentiment has turned.

 

That 2 hours of 30 for 30 did more for me for Coach K's image than decades of roaming the sidelines, or Amex commercials.