COLUMN: Gonzaga Kool-aid

Let the Madness begin.

By now, the teams involved in this year’s basketball mayhem, AKA March Madness, have pretty much been settled.

I haven’t come across any bracket contests, where entrants pay a set amount and take a stab at the nearly impossible task of picking the winners among the 68 teams who began the tournament this week.

It all culminates in the basketball Holy Grail known as the Final Four.

There is a road to the Final Four. Pick the most winners and there are unimaginable prizes (or maybe 10 bucks?) in your future.

I try to enter this betting insanity every year, but this year I’m sitting it out.

I will not do as I have done so often, along with thousands of other college basketball fans, fill out a bracket and insert one name that is symbolic of NCAA tournament heartbreak...Gonzaga.

Every year the Bulldogs from Spokane put together a solid year. A couple years ago they ran the regular season and conference tournament table, entering the meat of the competition unbeaten and untied.

You knew it was coming.

The dreaded Gonzaga Kool-aid.

Don’t drink that stuff Billy, it will rip your heart out. Gonzaga, it seems, is an ancient basketball word for disappointment.

Sure, they are 30-0, with a game against Muddy Bottom State all the remains between them and basketball immortality. Sharpen the scissors and find a sturdy ladder, those Final Four nets are coming down this year and heading for the University of Gonzaga trophy case.

Make some room for that trophy. Cue the sappy Final Four theme song.

Gonzaga can’t miss.

But they do.

And every year I swallow a big gulp of the Kool-aid, picking Gonzaga to bring home the top prize.

Surely, I think, this is the year they will win it all. This is a school that produced one of the greatest NBA guards of all-time, a Spokane guy named John Stockton. They are a clean program by all accounts.

And, as I tell myself every year, this is the year of the Bulldog on the Chinese calendar.

Then, reality bites.

Open wide Chucky boy, take a big drink of GU potential.

And get ready for a kick like a shot of whiskey sliding down the wrong pipe.

The feeling is unmistakable.

You’ve been seduced by the local boys. A church school from this part of the country just tore out your still beating heart.

Gonzaga, the best of the West, has gone down in flames….again.

Oh, sometimes they drag it out and make it to the final game. Along their way they have left basketball carnage.

This is THE year. Can’t miss.

But like an embarrassing air ball launched from 10 feet away, the wind gets let out of the Bulldog bubble.

Hearts break in Spokane by the thousands.

Mighty Gonzaga, the can’t miss pick, has done it again. A day late and a dollar short they call it.

Now, getting to the Sweet 16 or the Elite Eight, not to mention the Final Four, is a feat not many schools have achieved.

This year, Gonzaga finally lost its own conference tournament. St. Mary’s, the perennial Lucy in this Charlie Brown tale, has pulled the ball away early.

But in the weird world of March Madness, this may be just the sign Bulldog fans have been holding their breath for.

Don’t rank them high. Ignore them.

But, pick them. You will. Most of us do.

Don’t watch their games alone. You will eventually need the comfort of a good friend, the one who did not pick Gonzaga on their bracket sheet.

The sweet nectar has let you down again.

But, maybe...dare we dream, this will be the year of the Bulldog?

Naaaa!