Thinking over the last decade, two key dates come to mind. August 23, 2004: a dry, mild Monday evening after a hot afternoon. I'm sitting outside Wellington Station, the MBTA Orange Line stop in Medford, just north of Boston. I'm waiting for the woman who will, within three months, be my wife.

Sitting and waiting on the bus stop bench, I occupy my mind with a small creative process. I'm trying to figure out what to call this new website I plan to building. It's going to be about college basketball. It won't be like the college basketball page on ESPNNet.Sportszone.Com, though. It will have scores for all those games I can never find there, and maybe I'll add stats and player bios later, like the official Drexel athletics site I built back when I had a software company.

But I know that it'll also have to have a human element, otherwise nobody will bookmark it or come back very often. Lately, I've been thinking of including a continuing travelogue. I went to 83 or 84 NCAA games last season. In mid-March, I bought a round-trip ticket to Kansas City and sat in the last row at Kemper Arena while No. 12 seed Pacific beat No. 5 Providence. But I have nothing to remember those moments, save for a envelope of ticket stubs and some fuzzy snapshots I took on a brick-heavy Kodak DX6440 digital camera. I'm already forgetting what games I saw and how many (was it 86?), and I want some way to organize my memories and share them with others. Social media is still four years away.

An outbound train empties out, and I see her exit through the double doors. Somehow, I'm able to rise from the bench faster than she can rush over to me. I collect her in my arms. "I am so glad to see you," she sighs as she sinks into my chest. "That afternoon felt like it was never going to end."

As we stand there in that moment, clasped to each other, my mind softens and flexes between the previous train of thought and the next task at hand: what to eat for dinner. But that's when the synapse ends up firing, when the amalgam fuses. Mid-Majority. Bastard terminology from the mainstream sports media, an attempt to wrap something complicated into a tiny term. But those three extra letters make it mean something else, something bigger. It sounds like some kind of uprising or revolution, something out of Les Misérables. There are more small ones than big ones. We are many, and they are few. The idea feels electric; it's the "why didn't I think of that" that I actually thought of. It's such a perfect name that the product itself will be destined to have difficulty living up to it.

It's one of those moments when the universe feels perfectly in alignment. Time forms a clear future-facing arrow that's almost tangible, and it's there whether others around can see it or not. It's when the cosmos says in plain terms... this. All of this. The crystallized everything about that minute is vivid enough to still feel like present tense: her lime green blouse, the falling barometer, the pink in the sunset, the smell of her hair conditioner, the soft sonic wash of car tires against asphalt on the Revere Beach Parkway nearby.

Now, ten years on, everything related to this moment is past.

The second date: January 28, 2008. I'm sitting at a tiny booth in a Starbucks near Moraga, California. It's the middle of a long and seemingly endless weeklong West Coast road trip. I'm exhausted to the point of hallucination, and I can't drive more than two hours before having to pull over to take a nap. I'm operating on a sleep deficit so deep that I forget what day it. It's spelled out in lights on my LG Chocolate slide-phone. I can't recall if there was a argument with my wife earlier today. There probably was.

I have so little money that my bank balance is printed on my neocortex at every moment. I'm trying to make do with less, the best I can. The Mid-Majority, from the very beginning, has been all about making do with less, and dedicated to those that did likewise. The successes and failures and the whys of teams, coaches and players have always been the inspiration for what I do.

But my three-year affiliation with ESPN.com has brought with it a very different audience. These are people not quite as intrigued by overachievement against tall odds as I am. Instead, most seem to want to argue and fight about sports. On message boards and email and in column comments and chats, and on a new "microblogging" service called Twitter, it continues every day. Within the past week, to shake up the late January routine of conference play and justify their paychecks, three separate national columnists have offered their own mid-major criteria, who is and who isn't. There is pressure to respond.

Accompanied by an acoustic folk-rock CD sampler blaring on the overhead speakers, I start typing. It's never going to end. We might try to fight it, we may try to ignore it, but every year it's going to come back. I'm talking, of course, about the endless debate of what a "mid-major" is and what one isn't.

I'm just trying to make it simpler. But setting clarified boundaries just makes people argue more. All the "Red Line" ends up doing is doubling the size of the conversation: it grows from what a mid-major is and isn't into an secondary line of criticism of finance-based methodology. It shifts the focus farther away from my target topic, towards more pointless circular arguing. I don't remember anything about the Saint Mary's-San Diego game that night. The links and blogs and emails and tweets pour into my laptop, and it doesn't look like it's ever going to end.

A simple straight line can't separate the haves and have-nots in sports. It can't keep out white middle-age high-income guilt, all the people who root for Northwestern State and George Mason in March but live like Duke. The Red Line can't account for schools too embarrassed and ashamed by mid-level success to enjoy it, the junior Goliaths wanting to be treated like Davids. And there's no way for a mathematical formula to screen for deranged egotism.

In 2004, I made less than nine thousand dollars after taxes. I was ill-prepared to re-enter a post-dotcom workforce, once my company's services were deemed unnecessary by the market. But I loved college basketball. That brilliant and clever title that had dropped from the heavens into my mind that August day? Clearly the product of some gypsy curse.

January 28, 2008 was when this officially stopped being fun. That's when I stopped loving it completely, when I found myself complaining about the complaining, and when I started wishing for it to just end already. After that date, it was just another unpaid volunteer job where annoyances outweigh benefits, and there's no joy in that. Fielding complaints all the time is fine, as long as there's compensation involved. January 28, 2008 was the day when I wanted to reverse course, absorb the loss, end The Mid-Majority, and focus on finding something else to do. But if I'd ended it then, people would have complained about that too.

Even now, here in present-day 2014, when I think back now on a decade of TMM, what I remember most is the arguing and complaining. For whatever reason, we were a magnet for it. I remember all the bellyaching about the Red Line, "what a mid-major is", things that were written, teams we weren't close enough to cover, our policy of blocking annoying people on Twitter, the fundraising drives, the end of the crowdsourcing format, the beginning of the crowdsourcing format, the format of The Game in Season 9, unanswered messages, the logo, everything.

This was designed to be big basketball fun, it was supposed to be a good time, and there was a lot of other internet for who didn't like it. This wasn't for team superfans or people who equate college sports to American regional warfare. What was there not to get? What was so difficult to understand about that? I brought a goddamn motherfucking stuffed toy on press row with me.

The "enemies" of the site who hated it the most, the ones we'd always hope would just please go away and fart all over something else, all had one thing in common: they took spectator sports far, far, far too seriously. Tell me, is there any subset of the American populace more scary and creepy than overzealous sports fans? (Is having a sports team name in your social media username or email address a leading indicator of sociopathic behavior?)

I ended up with plenty of reasons to want to end this, destroy it. I got sick during Seasons 5 and 6, really sick. I never shared exactly how sick I got, because there's nothing more humiliating than being a figure of sympathy first and everything else second. On booster message boards, it was suggested that unfortunate events in my life were karmic comeuppance for criticizing their favorite team. Boosters, the absolute lowest form of athletic humanity, seemed to think that supporting TMM guaranteed positive coverage of their schools. They'd complain that the site failed to see the hidden and subtle majesty of their alma mater. They were always the loudest complainers.

The Mid-Majority damaged my ability to like people. I was mail-bombed so many times that Google temporarily suspended my account. I had to change my cellphone number three times during Season 6. I was stalked. Once I moved to Chicago, a "fan" camped outside the gate of my apartment building until I had to call the CPD on him. Having strangers know who you are, which is the goal of nearly all public online activity, might bring a pleasant, temporary boost of self-confidence. On balance, though, it's not an experience I'd recommend very highly.

But misguided suburban rage always finds another outlet, given enough time, as long as one has the patience to outlast it. I'm glad I didn't end it when I wanted to end it. You are the ones who understood all along what we were trying for. You, the people who truly loved this site deserved a proper, graceful and non-abrupt windup. You found true happiness in these digital pages, enough to be truly sad about this end. These last three years have been yours.

You also found each other. Over the years, you found like-minded people on your level. You've made friendships that have lasted years and will continue for many more.

The last three years should have also served as enough time to prepare for what comes next. TMM has always been a conduit between one thing and another. My blogging generation is simply relaying the torch's flame from the hands of our heroes to yours, because this is how it works. It's you who will take the spirit of this site forward in your own projects, and hopefully you'll get it a lot more right than we did.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Ten days before Season X began, my father David, who was occasionally referred to in this space as The Official Dad Of The Mid-Majority™, died suddenly of congestive heart failure. I haven't mentioned this anywhere online until now, because the internet's depth of response to such things is a hollow buzz of Facebook posts and tweets. "So sorry". If you consider attention from acquaintances and strangers to be more of an annoying liability than anything else, so sorry doesn't do much for you.

My father taught me to love the game of basketball. He took me to Madison Square Garden when I was a kid, and then to Boston Garden once he moved following the divorce. It was the early 1980s, shorts were short, and David Stern was just getting started as NBA commissioner. In 1983, my dad bought us a Bird Pak. That was a 16-game weekend plan, named for a certain Indiana State graduate whose would go on to be the namesake of the MVC player of the year trophy. For $15 a seat, we were six rows back from the baseline on the outer aisle, parallel to the Celtics bench. I could practically reach out and touch Rick Robey if I wanted to.

I loved the anticipation in the days and hours before a basketball game. I'd spend all week doing research during my fifth grade classes, then he'd come to pick me up on Fridays. "How many rebounds you think Robert Parish gonna get tonight?" he'd ask me. Then we'd go watch one of the greatest teams in NBA history play. After that, we'd go to a Dunkin' Donuts near North Station and talk about what we'd seen.

He was one of the very first voices you heard on this site, all the way back at the very first post on November 9, 2004. That was a scene that took place during my freshman year in high school. "Do you think I'll ever make it to the NBA?" I asked him while he was napping one day. "No," he replied.

My father also taught me to hate the game of basketball. My deep introspection last autumn dug out a painful memory of a Saturday afternoon from that following summer. My dad and I were on the well-kempt concrete court at Constitution Quarters in Charlestown, shooting hoops. I repeated my question. "Dad," I asked. "Do you think I could ever make the NBA? You know, if I tried hard enough?"

"Let's see," my father said. He checked the ball at the top of the key, and a game of one-on-one was on.

The final score was something to zero. I didn't score a single basket. I don't think I got more than two or three shots off. Every time I had the ball, my father would reach in and swat it away for a steal, or he'd block my shot, or if I got into the key he'd send an elbow into my neck. When I was on defense, he sent me flat and sprawling to the court. It didn't matter if I had my feet set or not.

Afterwards, crumpled against the chain-link fence, I tried to recover. My chest was heaving, I was gasping for breath and on the verge of tears, and my knee was badly skinned and oozing blood. He came over to me on his way to the water fountain. "To answer your question," he said. "No."

As I was remembering this, what struck me was that on that day he was the same exact age that I am now. From this perspective, I can understand the primal desire to punish youthfulness, crush the dreams of the young, exercise generational dominance. I can recognize the natural, latent impulse to inflict middle age's deep meaning on others. I know the urge to insist that there's some kind of outsize value and power in experience, because the alternative is to admit to having lived a wasted life.

That's not the lesson I learned that day, though. In that humiliating moment, from that perspective, I clearly sensed the size and space between my athletic level and his. I knew the amount of work I'd have to put in if I wanted to outplay him on the court. If I passed that test, I might be able to beat other, better, younger players too. Looking up from a deep below, I felt so much respect for that distance.

I never put in that work. But whenever a team from the CAA or Horizon League made the Final Four, it didn't feel like beating my dad. I knew it as a clear vault over a yawning gulf of overwhelming odds, and I deeply recognized that. I'd felt and seen it for myself as a teenager.

In that moment, though, what my father had done was shaping my relationship to the game. If I couldn't play it, then I needed distance from it to appreciate it; I would have to love it in spite of the people. I wanted my soul and basketball to become one, perfect and true. I wanted basketball like Christians want their Jesus: towering divinity in recognizable human form, without all that messy and frail humanity in the way. Without the transactional needs of priests and parishioners.

The first season felt like that.

I am getting older every year. Every year, my average mile-run time falls farther away from my personal bests of a decade ago. I still tell myself that I could run another sub-3:45 marathon someday. But I can also recognize the emptiness and foolishness of that denial. What a loser's game ignoring time's arrow can be. Even as my father's health deteriorated, he would be too proud to admit it. He would still boast of how indestructible he was. "My doctors say I'll live to 100," he'd say. He made it no farther than 75.

These ten years of The Mid-Majority are lovingly dedicated to my father, his memory, and the joys and frustrations he passed along to me. But most of all, it is dedicated to the life lessons he imparted, directly and indirectly, to me. My conflicted and complicated relationship with basketball began with him. As such, his ghost is present in every one of these words.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

A lot has changed in the past ten years. Not very many teams are in the same conferences as they were in when The Mid-Majority began in 2004. There are no best-kept secrets in Division I college basketball anymore. Every team is covered exhaustively by mobile websites, social media, YouTube, and by more national online sports outlets than the market could ever bear. Players still don't get paid, but they're employees now. In 2004, per-possession statistics were oddities collected and calculated by misunderstood geniuses in their nerd caves. Now they've gone mainstream. The only analysts who cite "rebound margin" as a serious statistic are at least 55 years old.

There are many things that haven't changed at all.

People are just as terrible to each other online as they've ever been. The only difference is that we can be terrible to each other a lot faster now, more anonymously, and more efficiently. Basketball is still argued about more than it's marveled at, and the sport generates far more bitterness and anger than exuberant joy about how absolutely incredible awesome it is that people can do that.

"Sports entertainment" existed back in 2004 too. Back before games were presented as vague frameworks to support male-oriented soap operas, sportz was caged within the scratchy confines of AM radio. It was only a matter of time before it clawed its way out. Mining casual fans for money makes good financial sense, and these gigantic TV contracts require more cash-flow than ever.

There is one thing I think that we've definitely left behind along the way, in the half-life of this rapid half-generational shift.

We've lost the precious feeling of scarcity. With everything so available everywhere anytime we want, and so easily replicable, anticipation and appreciation are the primary casualties. In digital 2014, there are so few remaining opportunities to have a tiny analog moment all your own, to discover something small, to place and protect it in your heart. Love carries with it an undercurrent of pain. Your beloved might disappear forever, so you must cherish it.

I remember how during the 100 Games Project, thinking about the next day's game would keep me up at night. I would play the game out in my head, all the matchups and variables, all the plays the teams might run. My imagination was in high definition before TV caught up, right down to the weave of the uniforms. I couldn't sleep, I would toss and turn and anticipate. It would drive my wife crazy.

Here in 2014, I have a black box attached to my television that lets me watch all the Atlantic Sun and Sun Belt games I want, whenever I want, on demand. That's the difference between then and now.

Our final act is to make ourselves scarce. Ten hours after the timestamp on this post, one hour for each year, these two thousand posts will cease to be served. The site will be replaced by a dark screen. The site's Twitter accounts will be emptied and reset to zero.

Within three months, all the pages from this site will be removed from Google's cache index, as per the search engine's policy. All that will be left will be jagged fragments in the Wayback Machine, and the memories of those who held this project dear. To everyone else, it will be as if The Mid-Majority never happened.

Its legacy will live, though. The original ideas from 2004 live on, but in other forms and under alternate names. Dreams never end, and this house believes in skyscrapers.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

One final story. Along the journey, I met a Christian missionary couple in Indianapolis. They previously lived in shacks in West Africa and on South America's Pacific Rim, in poor villages, for years at a time. They would go there and live among they people, in hopes that they could convince them to believe the same things that they did. Came time that the man was recruited by a charity, was given an offer he couldn't refuse, and so they chose to settle down.

But as time went by, he became more and more disenchanted. Occasionally, he'd share his inner pain with me. His heart finally broke when the charity cancelled a shoe drive at an middle school in a poor neighborhood in Detroit. They chose instead to stage an event at The Palace of Auburn Hills with the Detroit Pistons. The organizational reasoning was that the message would get out to a wider audience with a photo opportunity with several NBA stars. They felt that they couldn't pass the opportunity up.

He made up his mind that it was time to leave. "I can understand where they're coming from on this," he told me over breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Indianapolis Airport. "But I just don't agree with it. Their priorities and mine just seem like they're too divergent for us to continue on together."

"You seem so calm about this," I said. He did seem far too calm about this. "Where would you go? Would you stay here? Either way, it would be a big change for you and your family. You gave up a lot for this, and you'd be giving up even more."

"Whatever is next for us will only happen because we made the decision to do this," he replied. "Life is a cumulative thing, Kyle. One chapter leads to the next. Second-guessing yourself, or being bitter about the past, is a waste of time. It also blocks the natural progression of things. God made it so that time moves forward, and you're either along for the ride or you're not."

The Mid-Majority didn't go how I wanted it to, nor how I expected it to. Does anything, really? It was quite an experience, and now it's over. I won't spend very much time reminiscing or nostalgizing, and I probably won't want to hang out with you and discuss it much after today. I'm busy with other things now.

But I am so very grateful and thankful for this journey. College basketball is how I make my living now, the fulfillment of a crazy dream I had ten years ago. I have more happiness in my life than I deserve.

Some of you will continue to be my friends in these next chapters. More of you will continue to be friends with each other. There are too many of you to mention each and every one of you, but if you're reading this, please consider yourself warmly thanked for your participation. So many coaches and SIDs who believed in this project, so many people who helped along the way in small ways and in large ones, so many Members of the site. So many people who I've crossed paths with who are not in my life anymore, but are still part of my story. If it weren't for Sarah from Butler University, I would never have ended up in Chicago, the city that is now my beloved home.

And so it is with you. The Mid-Majority is gone now, but it will remain a part of your life. It is part of your story. Bodies fail, relationships dissipate, fortunes rise and sink, and in the end our stories are all that truly belong to us. Our stories give us the opportunity to turn our souls inside out, to explain ourselves to others. And I believe that we are obligated to tell and share them. Otherwise, they're just tiny secrets, hidden away in our souls but fastened to bodies that are doomed to expire.

I am so very humbled and grateful that you've taken the time to listen to my story, and to Ray's, and those of all the others who have shared their stories in this space over the years. On behalf of myself and all of them: thank you, thank you, thank you. Let it be said that this ended in gratitude.

It doesn't end in a loss, and any inflicted pain does not linger for long. It ends when it's over, and then something else happens. So it goes.

The Form™  •  @midmajority / #TMMX  •  Share This Page  •  RSS

Season Archives: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X  •  Author Directory  •  Bally  •