dcat's NCAA Basketball Coaching Debut (Self Indulgence Alert!)

For my entire time at my university I have been closely affiliated with our basketball program, and with the men's program in particular. I broadcast the play-by-play of the home games on radio and have been on numerous road trips with the team, at which point I have played a sort of jack-of-all-trades role, including serving as the most highly educated waterboy in all of college sports.

But tonight, due to a confluence of circumstances, which included the assistant coach having to miss a road trip to Austin and San Antonio and me happening to be in the Alamo City for the weekend, I took on a new role: Assistant basketball coach. I have a good deal of experience coaching track at the high school and college levels, but basketball coaching was new to me. I kept the stats, held the clipboard, looked up portentously at the scoreboard, yelled the encouragement, hollered at the refs, gave coach useful tidbits of information, shook hands with the refs before and the opposing team after the game, gathered the official stat sheets as I stood solemnly during time outs, and served as sounding board for coach before, during, and after what turned out to be a bad, bad loss, and -- this is most important -- responded with an appropriate blend of gravitas and hail-fellow-well-met when people called me "coach."

So, to all of you Division I programs about to can your head coach in the next month: I'm available at the right price. Just so you know.