It's Back On, Baby

After what I believe is a year hiatus, I'm once again attempting to watch every last minute of ESPN's College Hoops Marathon.

On the off chance this is your first visit to this blog and are new to my endeavor, I'll provide a (mostly brief) background.

When I was in Junior High School I read an excellent book by Norman Chad called "Hold On Honey, I'll Take You To The Hospital At Halftime." In the book, Chad had a chapter in which he decided to watch 24-straight hours of ESPN, simply because ESPN is a 24-hour sports network, and the option was available. This struck teenage me as an excellent idea, and I always planned an attempt at climbing the 24-hour ESPN mountain myself. Several attempts in college were thwarted by a variety of factors, but then ESPN announced its first College Basketball Tip-Off Marathon, which seemed like the perfect opportunity, considering other 24-hour ESPN blocks almost certainly involve SportsCenter re-runs or exposure to Skip Bayless.

At some point, it also occurred to me that perhaps my friends who found my behavior most likely appalling, but perhaps also entertaining might "sponsor" the event, as a way to take something good out of my useless activity. And since my love of sports stems almost directly from my father, who passed away as a result of heart disease far too young, I thought I'd try and solicit contributions to the American Heart Association.

I now realize this was not at all a short explanation, but if you feel inclined to contribute, here is the link and at the end of the 24 hours I'll match whatever total we brought in this time around.

There will also be a live blog of the event that I'll put in the next post, and will begin promptly at midnight, and will hopefully feature noted basketball blogger Dr. Slam Please feel free to stop by and join in the fun.