I alluded yesterday, jokingly, to the idea of attending the Missouri Valley Conference tourney in St. Louis — a.k.a. “Arch Madness” — which starts a week from today. (The important games, i.e. the quarterfinals, start a week from tomorrow.) Predictably, as soon as I wrote it out, I started to take the idea more seriously. I suggested it to Becky, and to my mild surprise, she took it seriously too. Seven awesome basketball games in three days, a battle for supremacy in one of the best conferences in the country, all just a six-hour drive away — why not?

Becky told me to calculate a budget for the weekend and then we’d talk. So I did. With hotel, gas, food, etc., plus two $64 tickets (which seem to still be available), the total comes to around $500. So the question becomes, will “Arch Madness” be sufficiently awesome to justify adding $500 to our pay-it-off-this-summer debt load? (Not to mention missing the ND-DePaul game, and taking the risk that Becky might start suffering “basketball fatigue” a week before Selection Sunday?)

Becky is amenable. I dunno… I’m still debating. But as long-time readers know, the inherent nuttiness of the idea won’t dissuade me. This won’t even crack the Top 5 list of craziest random last-minute mini-trips that I’ve taken to attend miscellaneous events around the country. :)

UPDATE: We’re going. :) Just bought the tickets.

On the advice of Kyle Whelliston (of Mid-Majority fame), we’re sitting in the Creighton section. He says the Bluejay faithful are “notoriously the craziest fans in the league.” Adopting Creighton, at least provisionally, as “our team” makes sense anyway — Creighton was the first MVC team I ever rooted for, having picked them as a #10 seed in the 2001 pool (they lost), and then again as a #12 seed in 2002 on my longstanding “keep picking your chosen underdog until they actually pull it off” theory (see also: Gonzaga). As a result, Creighton’s double-overtime first-round win over Florida was one of my favorite moments of the 2002 tourney; see photos here. (That same year, Southern Illinois went to the Sweet 16 — which I had also predicted — and my infatuation with the MVC was officially born.)

Anyway… Arch Madness, here we come!