These Five Things I Know Are True

- It's especially nice that today the sky was a perfect shade of Carolina Blue. :)

Okay, okay, I'll get it all out of my system soon, I promise. But I figure that I get a few days leeway for a national championship, right? Especially since I don't know a single soul in this town who is also a Tar Heel alum who can share the glory.

On another note, there's a great big misconception that I need to clear up for the sports media of this country right now, so that they can shut up about this already - Matt Doherty was not going to win a national championship at Carolina. Never. I don't care if Sean May was healthy, I don't care if he had been given another year to coach, I don't care if he found a freaking genie at one of those Franklin Street thrift shops and it gave him three wishes. He might have managed to recruit some of the best talent that ever hit the hardwood of the Dean Dome, but they hated his everloving guts once they got there. As did pretty much everyone else in that town. He fired a lot of folks, thumbed his nose at the Rams Club, and above all else, he pissed off Coach Smith. What was hell was he thinking?!? It would have never worked. And those "spoiled brats" that the press whined about two years ago became a team with heart under Roy. There's a lot more to coaching than recruiting. If there wasn't, Coach of the Year should go to an assistant coach somewhere, because they usually do the real legwork on that end. That was Roy's team, and if Doherty is so talented and wonderful and has been screwed out of a job because of this, I have one simple solution. Someone give him a coaching position and three years. Then let's see where he is in the tournament and we'll talk.

Now that I have that off my chest....
- I have discovered that as soon as your team wins it all, and you're so excited that you can't sleep and you get about 3 hours total, and you're wearing your lucky blue rugby shirt that you love but that looks horrible in pictures, and your hair is a mess and you don't have makeup, you are certain to end up in a news story. No, I'm not going to say which one. But if I needed some incentive to get back on a diet, I found it. Incidentally, that same shirt was my incentive for last year's diet, which probably means that I should throw it out.

I'm definitely not a vain person. Anyone who's seen me on a regular basis knows that. I don't have enough fashion fundage to be vain. And it's very hard for me to find the motivation to stick to a strict diet, because I'm a big believer in having what you want, when you want it, if you can have it without bothering anyone else with it. For example, if I'm at home alone on a Saturday night, I might want Keith Urban with a little jazz, a bottle of champagne and some strawberries (and not much else) but that ain't happening. However, I can have a pizza and my TiVo. So dammit, why should I do without on everything? Somehow, sitting at home on a Saturday night, watching TiVo and eating a salad just doesn't work.

And on to a much better subject...
- One of my all-time favorite shows has managed to do something that rarely happens on TV. They've reinvented themselves and actually made the show more interesting. This is the BBC America version of What Not to Wear (not the Americanized TLC version - it's truly unwatchable) where two British fashionistas named Trinny and Susannah take an unfashionable girl, throw out the worst of her old wardrobe, give her 2000 pounds for new clothes and then teach her how to shop for things that make her look gorgeous. And it actually works! At the same time, they teach all of us fashion-deficent women stuff that we probably need to know (i.e. never wear sleeveless shirts, and show off your best parts in a tasteful way, like cleavage and ankles.) But after about four seasons and a zillion makeovers of dowdy British women, I thought that the only way that the show would be interesting again would be if they came to America and made me over (hint, hint.) But this year they've taken a new slant - each week has a theme, and they pick two women out of a group of 100+ that fit the theme in some way for the makeover. The first week it was mothers who dress their children better than they dress themselves, and one of the women they helped was a young mother of triplet toddler boys. This week's theme were unfashionable mothers of fashionable teens. Doing two makeovers at a time gives a little bit of contrast and breaks the monotony, and they even delved more into their real lives as part of the whole process. All in all, it's a nice change of pace, and it's good to see that two old hands in the fix 'er up biz can learn new tricks to keep things going. And I'm going to keep pitching my Blue Collar TV version, which involves $250 and a trip to Wal-Mart.

And I can't think of a good way to transition this one...
- I haven't been to a real movie theater in a very, very long time. Too long. Movie theaters are good for the soul. But suddenly it's beginning to look like a very busy spring for me. I really, really love the look of Fever Pitch. I mean, c'mon, it's a love story about sports fans! I also think that it's going to inspire a long-overdue post about the myth that men think that girls who are into sports are hot, but that's for another post. There's also a new Batman movie coming out that actually gives me hope that the franchise can be saved after Schumacher, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which has the potential for being the first film that compells me to see it five times in a theater since, um, The X-Files movie (shuddup.) And, oh yeah, the final Star Wars film. I have mixed feelings on that one, for a variety of reasons.

And finally...
- Somehow I have managed to win an award! Not sure how this happened, but I am now listed as one of the Best Blogs in Tennessee. Thanks Lynnette and Jim! Now I have to post more often, right?

Wow

They actually did it. They won it all. North Carolina Tar Heels, 2005 National Champions.

For some reason, I don't quite believe it yet. Even though I saw that weird-looking trophy in Roy's hands. I'm still in shock. I think I will be for a long time.

Who would have thought two years ago, when we were 8-20 and didn't even have a tournament berth, that we would win it all two years later? When Roy took the job, I predicted to my friend Pax that we'd be back in the Final Four in two years. But I was never arrogant enough to think we'd win.

But here we are. And it's a great place to be.

And contrary to rumor, I am not here tonight. Although it is a testament to how much I love my job that I'm not driving eastward right now. I feel like I should be at the Groundhog on Franklin Street, 500 sheets to the wind. I wonder if there are any trees left on campus?