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Couldn’t Be Me: Because I’m a National Champion

Gonzaga went 31-1, and boy that 1 is a real shame.

NCAA Basketball: Final Four-Baylor vs Gonzaga Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Hellooooooo Baylor Nation!!! My family! My friends! My fellow National Champions!

You saw the article title. You know why I’m here. So we’re not going to waste any time.

LET’S GET IT!

GONZAGA

Just imagine going through the entire college basketball season blowing out everyone, looking completely invulnerable, having the best season in school history, your 7,000-student Catholic university in Spokane, Washington is the talk of the nation. You’ve got the best NBA prospect your university has ever seen, you’ve got 2 big lovable white guys who are also stars, nobody can hang with you. Nobody can touch you. The media is talking about you as one of the greatest teams in college basketball history, and then you get truly challenged for the first time in the Final Four and it’s the greatest game you’ve ever seen in your life. You win the game on the greatest shot you can remember, and it feels like it’s finally the year. You’re going to win your first championship. You’re going to complete the first undefeated men’s season since 1976. Everyone is hyping you up. Everyone believes in you. Everyone is happy for you. You’re going to play the 2nd best team in the country so you can truly leave no doubt about your wire-to-wire greatness.

And then you just get absolutely BOATRACED in front of God, your family, your friends, and the entire United States of America.

Just picked up by the ankles, held upside down, and shaken like a box of cereal on a Saturday morning.

Them dudes got straight up bullied.

Weight-roomed.

Smoked.

Cooked.

Fried.

IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

They didn’t look like they belonged in the same sport as Baylor.

Let alone in the same conversation as the greatest college basketball teams of all time. From the opening tip they were just too slow, too small, and not good enough. Media pundits who had spent the entire year, and especially the day of the game, hyping up how DOMINANT Gonzaga was and how SPECIAL they were as a team were looking around on Tuesday morning trying to figure out who was at fault for the lies. Cause them Gonzaga boys were some FOOD out here for 40 minutes straight.

They got so overhyped that they were * allegedly * buying the hype (and the champagne) themselves.

I don’t care how implausible that story is. As an American, facts and truths are what I decide they are, and I have decided that that story is 100% factual and true. I will not hear otherwise.

Imagine ordering champagne to celebrate your undefeated season and your national championship just to get ground into a fine powder and danced on by this group of goobers.

Couldn’t be me. Because I’m a National Champion.

Jalen Suggs’s Buzzer Beater

Some people have decided that there’s no way that they could’ve been so UTTERLY and TOTALY wrong about how singularly good Gonzaga was this year, so there must be some other reason that Gonzaga got that ass whooped. The only reason they could settle on was that Gonzaga was coming off a very emotional game against UCLA.

But uh...whose fault is that?

Who told you to get all emotional with the 11-seed KNOWING that you’d have to play Baylor in the Championship game?

Scott Drew and the Bears would probably be emotional too if a double-digit seed dropped 90 points on their head in the Final Four.

That’s why they obliterated Houston in the first half and were able to coast the rest of the way. Smart.

UCLA-Gonzaga was an AMAZING game. Jalen Suggs had an AMAZING moment. It was one of the best games and one of the best buzzer beaters I’ve ever seen. I’m certain that one day my grandkids will see replays of that shot and say “Wow grandpa! That was so cool! Did you watch that game???”

And I’ll smile smugly and say “YEP! I sure did. And you’ll NEVER guess what happened next...”

But that couldn’t be me though. Because I’m a National Champion.

The West Coast Conference

Everyone has made mention of Gonzaga playing a bunch of nobodies in their conference all season and that’s very unfair to the young men of <checks notes> BYU, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Pacific, Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s, San Francisco, San Diego and Portland.

This disrespect has gone on for years.

And I have had ENOUGH.

These young men give the game of basketball their all. They work very hard. They would probably give you buckets at the SLC right now (I assume. I’ve never seen any of these people before. Who knows?). These men are the future Enterprise Rent-A-Car Manager Trainee Program graduates and real estate agents and insurance salesmen and mailmen of America and they deserve your respect. Not to be anonymously roasted as “nobodies” that were just food to fatten up Gonzaga before Gonzaga was ritually sacrificed to Baylor.

Respect the West Coast Conference!!!

Imagine working your whole life to be a D1 athlete and to go to what I’m sure are fine universities just to have some random dude from Middle of Nowhere, Texas reduce you to nothing but a bum.

Couldn’t be me though. Because I’m a National Champion.

Drew Timme and Corey Kispert

I haven’t seen 2 overrated white guys go out this sad since the end of Game of Thrones.

Taylor Hill / Getty Images

Couldn’t Be Me. Because I’m a National Champion.

Me

Obviously before we go we have to address the elephant in the room.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote about the basketball team on this here website, for reasons many of you are aware of but I will recap briefly now.

I wrote an article a couple years ago that declared it was time for the Baylor and Scott Drew marriage to come to an end. I said it had gotten as good as it was going to get. Scott Drew had been here more than a decade and a half and hadn’t won the conference or the conference tournament and could never break the glass ceiling of a Final Four.

The article itself has long been deleted but Kendall’s rebuttal remains.

Here’s a thread of people roasting me for my article.

But I was younger then. I was a different person in those days. I wasn’t a National Champion yet. I’ve grown up. I’ve changed. I’m a different person now. I got it wrong and I know that now. I never meant to offend anybody. I can’t tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart I’m so very, very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that’ll be a home run. And so that’ll make it a 4-0 ballgame. I don’t know if I’m going to be putting on this headset again.

Anyway, Baylor Nation I look forward to our long and peaceful reign over the College Basketball Kingdom together. I hope this Couldn’t Be Me serves as a transition moment so that we can call a truce and y’all can stop tweeting me about writing your letters.

If you’ve requested one, it’s coming soon. And do you know why?

Because I’m a National Champion.