I didn’t expect to meet him so early in my travels. My hopes were to finally come face to face with him sometime in January, when a trip to Cedar Falls or Indianapolis loomed before me. I really hadn’t anticipated him showing up in late November, just three weeks into what will be a 17 week journey through the mid-major basketball world. 

But I recognized him right away. I know him from so many places before, heard his voice and seen his ugly face so many times before. That voice rang loud and clear in my head first thing in the morning, just as I rolled over in my warm bed in St. Louis to turn off my alarm clock...

“Do you really want to get up and drive five hours to see a game between two teams you don’t care about? It’s cold. It’s raining. No one will notice or care if you don’t go. Come on, stay home.”


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The phrase “Will it play in Peoria?” traces its roots to the days of Vaudeville. Performers believed the inhabitants of this city on the banks of the Illinois River to be the ultimate “focus group”: far enough from the East Coast that most of the latest trends hadn’t reached them yet but close enough to Chicago so some of them had, small enough to ensure the residents had some sort of common rural sensibilities but big enough that they weren’t total bumpkinish rubes. Advertisers, entertainers, and politicians still see the people of Peoria, nestled in the heart of the state in the heart of the country, to be the quintessential Americans. If a message could be accepted here, if it “played” here, it would play anywhere. 


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When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.
-Larry Bird


I know what you’re asking yourself, and the answer is yes. There is a shrine to Larry Bird at Indiana State’s Hulman Center. It’s ok. I asked that question when I first came here, too. 

The shrine isn’t much, and it’s not like Larry’s name is in 12-foot high letters above it. It’s just enough to remind anyone who may not be aware of it that Bird did in fact attend Indiana State and carried the Sycamores to the highest point they have ever, or possibly will ever attain. The shrine is simple, but effective, just like Larry.

There’s a series of photos of Bird in various poses: shooting, celebrating a basket, sitting on the floor in front of the scorer’s table. Then there’s the trophy case. 


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“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned... I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
-Maya Angelou

The last rays of daylight coming through the gray sky guided our way back over the Mississippi River and into Illinois. After a quick jaunt to Memphis for an early tip-off, my friend Drew and I were back on our turf headed for a familiar haunt: SIU Arena in Carbondale. 


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“He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.”
-Harry Emerson Fosdick

We were up before the sun and on the road by the time the first light filtered through the low, gray sky. We drifted south through the southernmost part of Illinois and then paralleled the Mississippi River. For the beginning of this journey that will be the 2011-12 season, I figured someone else should enjoy the travel and the games with me whenever possible, so I invited my friend Drew. He was able to get a day off from enlightening young minds on the ways of physical education, and we were on our way to Memphis.



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