Ballin’
By Kyle Jorrey
Sports Editor
I can still remember the first time I ever read aloud the name Pepperdine.
It wasn’t in the Princeton Review’s list of top colleges, or in U.S. News World and Report’s rankings of the best universities. It wasn’t in a Christian monthly and it wasn’t in my high school guidance counselor’s office.
No, I first discovered my soon to be alma mater long before I ever considered the pursuit of higher education. I found it on an NCAA tournament bracket.
There, stuck between the likes of basketball programs like Georgetown, Indiana and UCLA was a team that I, being 9 or 10 years old at the time, had never heard of before. The name jumped out at me for its ambiguity, “Where was this place, Pepperdine?” I wondered.
Like Valparaiso, Hofstra or even Gonzaga for that matter, the name did not provide any location, so naturally I went where almost all curious adolescent boys go for answers — to my father (the Internet was still a few years off).
“Oh, that’s just some school in Southern California,” he said, while he went over his bracket predictions. “I think it’s right on the beach.”
Living in Kansas at the time, seemingly a world away from both the Atlantic and the Pacific, I shut my eyes and pictured the scene my father had so unimaginatively explained to me. Though I had never been in Malibu, or even to California, the picture I got in my mind of perfect beaches and picturesque palm trees gave me cause to smile.
So I picked them, not really knowing why, as one of my first round upsets. And I did again the next year. And two years after that. True, Pepperdine did lose all three of those games to favored opponents, but for some reason, there was something about that name and team that left my young, sports-crazy mind intrigued.
That same unexplainable calling brought me to this school in the fall of 2000, and it was that same basketball program that he drove to take the job as sports editor of the Graphic. “I’ll do the job,” I told my adviser Dr. Jordan. “Just as long as you let me cover the men’s basketball team.” Apparently, the intrigue remained.
At that time, the exiting sports editor warned me that the position was a thankless job. He said Pepperdine just wasn’t a “sports school,” pointing out that students were far too concerned with weekend nights on Sunset and day cruises to Catalina to ever really care about how men’s volleyball or women’s soccer fared.
Now, two years later, looking back on all the issues, all the stories, all the silly columns, there was some truth in that statement — but he was missing the point.
Sure, our pristine location, 30 seconds from the beach and 30 minutes from America’s premier night scene, ensures that we will never be a Gonzaga or a Duke. After all, the notoriously dedicated fans at these schools are faced with basically two options — go to a sporting event, or go binge drinking at your friend’s house until you puke or pass out over a card game while watching the DVD masterpiece collection of “Girls Gone Wild.”
But what we have here at Pepperdine is quality, not quantity. From all the e-mails I’ve received at this job, both positive and negative, I have witnessed first hand the passion Pepperdine fans have for their favorite teams.
I know because I see the same faces today at games that I saw four years ago when I was just a lowly freshman trying to find a spot in the student section next to that cute girl. I know because I still talk Pepperdine basketball with people who graduated two years ago. I know because I’ve been in the stands, in the bleachers, in the training room. Heck, I was there at the Los Angeles Forum two years ago when a crowd of about 100 Pepperdine fans charged the storied hardwood with complete disregard after Craig Lewis’ last second heave banked in and gave Pepperdine an improbable win over hated USC.
Try and tell those kids they don’t have any school spirit.
With this being my final column for the Graphic sports section, may I just leave all of with this bit of advice — college athletics is the best thing the sports world has got you going for it, so don’t pass up your chance to experience it first-hand, in the flesh. Sure, the pros are fun to watch, but if you want the authenticity that makes real athletes great, if you want an athlete to give it his or her all because they wouldn’t have it any other way, you don’t have to walk any further than Firestone Fieldhouse.
Respect to all the Waves’ fans out there and respect to the Waves.
Let’s just hope we can make it back to the NCAA tournament soon, so another young, naive sports addict can happen upon the Pepperdine name. And maybe, like myself, it will bring them to the university of their dreams.
Submitted April 1, 2004