Story time! When I went to Houston this past spring for the Final Four, I was with all the other commoners on American Airlines coming from Knoxville. Minus some select United flights, I don’t think Knoxville has very many direct flights, so I connected through Charlotte. Several other commoners were there: the commoners of the general public, and also several assistants in team gear of various varieties. (Most notable was a University of Virginia assistant.)
The only guy where I was like “I am aware of this person’s existence” was seeing Wofford’s new head coach Dwight Perry on the flight one row ahead of me. I didn’t interact with him because I think it would be insane to be like “hey man here is a newsletter that has never written about your team until November 14, 2023,” but whatever, nice to see other people I’m aware of.
And then Dwight Perry endured one of the stranger events I have ever seen on a flight. His random seatmate got caught smoking in the bathroom (!), setting off an alarm and resulting in a flight attendant coming to the seat and accosting this guy for probably five minutes straight as poor Dwight stared straight ahead into the middle distance. Then the plane landed and this guy got interviewed (!!) by other staffers after. I have not had a “THIS GUY IS NOT REAL” situation on a plane ever, so this qualifies as high excitement in the skies for me.
In the event that Dwight Perry ever finds this newsletter, that sucked, dude. Sorry you had to deal with that. Presumably, that was more painful than being in a Year Zero situation with zero seniors and what appears to be a really, really bad defense. After all, this one is happening on Earth, it’s Year Zero, and you’re not the unlucky seatmate of an in-flight smoker.
BELOW THE LINE ($): some amount of Wofford coverage