It's today

A few more barely formed thoughts before the 2024-25 season officially begins

Today, at 12 p.m. ET, the college basketball season officially tips off.

OK, so maybe the first real game is at 11 a.m., when IU Columbus plays at IU Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI, RIP), the latter of which is a Division I program. But really the first game is when Charleston plays at Southern Illinois at noon. Or maybe the first "real" game, depending on your personal fandom bandwidth, is at 10 p.m., when Texas plays at Ohio State. Or maybe it's at 11:30, when Baylor plays Gonzaga at the Spokane Arena — the lone example of a team with something to compete for agreeing to a difficult almost-true-road game on the first day of the 2024-25 season. Thank you, Scott Drew.

Whatever you think of all this — and let's not do a whole big diatribe about how college basketball as a diffuse but collective entity continues, so many years on, to shoot itself in the foot by not coordinating some sort of meaningful tipoff day/event/whatever — the undeniable fact of the matter is that college basketball begins today. Like, now.

For that reason alone, today is one of the best days of the year.

Some quick shop talk at the dawn of a new season: Doing this newsletter has been an absolute joy. Truly, we've loved every minute of it. Folks subscribed in promising numbers when it launched in the dead of the 2023 summer. Last season, Buzzer's first, was an exercise in steadily encouraging organic growth. Then, almost all of you stuck with us through the offseason. The offseason sucks! You guys rule. (Meanwhile, our locked-in core of Founding Members continues to be a gift; there has never been a better excuse to have a Zoom call and talk ball.)

With that being said ...

... lol, just kidding, nothing is changing.

Real talk: I've had offers to do this elsewhere. I don't want to. I want to write about hoops here, for you guys, about the stuff that interests me, us. I'm not concerned with chasing the largest possible audience and making some person I've never met marginally happier because whatever numbers they decided are important that week look good. I'd rather do this for real people who are here by choice, who choose to throw in a few bucks a month and get to be part of this community in return. It's my ideal arrangement.

I'm not great at self-promotion. I loathe talking about myself. I can't do rage-bait tweets to goose engagement. I am, fundamentally, a midwestern Irish Catholic. I have shame.

I would just ask, if you like this stuff, to spread the word. Online is great; in person is even better. Tell folks we're over here now, so when they look (and this is a thing that happened a lot last season) they know where to do so.

There will be some new elements to the coverage this year. Substack has added a lot of video capability that I would like to try out. Live chats were a big hit last season, thanks to you all, negating the original plan to start an accompanying Discord server. I plan to continue with that beginning tonight. (You'll see the notification.) We'll talk about the games, but we can also discuss anything you like — ask a question, start a topic, mix it up. It’s like a mailbag, but all at once.

Most of all, though, you’ll continue to get what you’ve been getting, which is (hopefully) thoughtful and unique coverage of this bizarre game we all love.

Thank you for being here. It means a lot.

Some remaining miscellaneous takes before the season tips off in earnest: