Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

For Kyle Whelliston, mid-majors, the less-beautiful end of the NCAA men's college basketball pool, were not love at first sight. A friend once raved to him about the great personality of mid-major basketball, but when Whelliston made his first date with a Drexel-Northeastern game, he found "great personality" to be a euphemism for dog-faced.

"It was sort of a shock," said Whelliston, who had transferred to Drexel after three years of hobnobbing with the Pac-10's beautiful people as a student at Oregon during the early 1990s heyday of future NBA point guard Terrell Brandon, "because it was a step down going from the Pit [Oregon's MacArthur Court], this beautiful old arena, to a 1,000-seat gym with cardboard pizza at the concession stand, with the [side] baskets turned out of the way so they could play the game.

"I had gone from the top of college basketball to the bottom."

A great personality might not make a wowing first impression, but it's amazing how an ugly duckling can turn into a swan, or at least an ugly duckling you'd like to hang around with for a while, once you get to know it. That could explain why Whelliston, 32, is now head over heels for mid-majors, a love he professes on a web site called The Mid-Majority: Truth, Justice and College Basketball.

There, Whelliston kisses and tells (even showing pictures!) about every game he attends, almost all of them mid-majors, on the way to a goal of 100 games this season. Whelliston built up slowly, attending about 10 to 20 games a year, then pushing it to 82 for the 2003-04 season. A big reason for the Mid-Majority, Whelliston said, is because he wanted something to show for all the time he spent going to games.

Surely, this is no infatuation, no fling. A deep commitment to mid-majordom is the only explanation for why Whelliston includes on his site roundups of other mid-major games around the country; schedules organized by date, by team and by conference; links to maps for each school; and a ZIP code-based search that allows you to find the closest mid-major games to your location every single night of the college basketball year.

Something in the way mid-majors move attract Whelliston like no other basketball lover.

"It's the aesthetic first and foremost," he said. "In a major conference, what you're thinking about is trying to be No. 1, and your success is based on that. On the other hand, at the mid-major level it's not how flawed are you, but it's what you have, what are the tools you have available, which is a lot more realistic and satisfying.

"At [Oregon] they'd say, 'We don't have a good center.' At Monmouth, they'd say, 'We've got a good point guard,' or, 'We've got a good inside-outside game.' They start at a base of zero and go from there."

Whelliston is bringing all his skills to this relationship. He studied journalism and graphic design in college, and he's a partner in a software company in Philadelphia. Being in Philadelphia gives him quick access to the scads of Eastern Seaboard gyms featuring NCAA wallflowers from circuits such as America East, the Northeast Conference and the Patriot League. Owning his own company means he doesn't have to ask for time off to go, as he did one week, to American-Holy Cross on Monday, St. Joseph's-Penn on Tuesday, Richmond-LaSalle on Wednesday, Manhattan-Rider on Thursday and Brown-Princeton on Friday. Or to plan a six-day, six-game "Red State Basketball Goodwill Tour" of the Midwest and Southeast for mid-February.

(If you're wondering, Whelliston is married — has been for a little less than a year — and his wife is OK with this. In fact, half the time she's at games with him, even though Whelliston said she had zero interest in basketball before their relationship. "The other day we were at Holy Cross, and she said, 'Hey, American just switched from a zone to a man-to-man.' And I was so proud.")

A great personality often will be appreciative when someone pays it attention. Whelliston's site, up since November, is drawing about 1,000 visitors a day, often funneled by links on fan sites for mid-major teams — yes, they exist. Bruce Bosley, the assistant sports information director at Vermont, sent his team the link to Whelliston's coverage of the Catamounts' Jan. 5 victory at Northeastern. As sometimes happens, Whelliston didn't do a straight basketball writeup. Instead, he affected the guise of an indie-rock hipster critic, one having been blown away by the opening band (Vermont, the road team) and its most charismatic member (Taylor Coppenrath).

The players "loved it," Bosley said. "Kyle has an interesting and refreshing approach for schools at our level."

Alas, a great personality can also feel hurt or patronized when someone suddenly starts fawning all over it. Whelliston said he's gotten angry e-mails from fans who feel like he's making some kind of joke out of their team. A few times, Whelliston got media credentials for games, but stopped quickly when teams — he won't say which ones — treated him "like an imposter, like someone trying to get a free ride." A lot of games are only $5 anyway, so Whelliston figured he may as well just pay.

Whelliston also gets notes from West Coast fans of such mid-major conferences as the Big West and the Western Athletic Conference accusing him of East Coast bias — an accusation that seems to happen at about all levels of all sports. "Hey, I'm doing this with my own money," Whelliston said. "I write back, 'You can fly me out to a Cal State-Northridge game.'"

Despite those blemishes, Whelliston continues his project, and keeps his passion alive. To be sure, Whelliston is not wearing rose-colored beer goggles. He's as aware as anyone else that some mid-major teams will cheat to get a star athlete or fire their coach like any big-time school.

Or that a mid-major like Gonzaga, with a five-year NCAA tournament run of Elite Eight, Sweet Sixteen and Tremendous Thirty-Two accomplishments that rivals any big school, may well aspire to be more than Provost Congeniality. Whelliston, perhaps because his company once got canned by a school with such aspirations, doesn't go for that type of program. (Whelliston refers to Gonzaga as Unnamed Major Program From the Northwest, or UMPFN, to protest the school's refusal to move up to a major conference to reflect its status.)

No, when you're in a relationship for the long haul, you realize that it's right, it's true, and it's real, no matter what bumps there are along the way.

"There was a point where I realized this isn't the gimmick I thought it might be, that it's actually pretty cool," Whelliston said. "I do this for the love of small college basketball."

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.