went to see iowa-indiana tonight with a few folks from work--free tickets! indiana won...i see a lot of parallels between the hoosiers' season this year and illinois' last year---high expectations, slow start to the conference season, peaking at the end. i think indiana will advance farther in the ncaa tournament than any other big ten team...they're still really good.

anyway, as has been the case whenever i've travelled in the big ten (which, granted, hasn't been a lot), the crowd disappointed me. students were lame and quiet, and there's no song where the place screams 'go hawks!' at the end, or something like that. like illinois, iowa's a traditionally strong team, but i've been underwhelmed by the home crowds at both games (granted, when i saw illinois live, it was a blowout against the cats, but tonight was iowa against a national power).

(an aside: by the way, when northwestern is okay--as iowa is this year--and plays a good team, welsh-ryan can get rocking. there's potential, a decade down the line, for evanston to be the toughest place to play in the conference.)

based on my disappointment at illinois and iowa, i've devised a theory on the midwest...bear with me, as this is still in progress. but here goes...

in the less-populated parts of the midwest (i.e. the parts where cedar rapids or springfield are considered 'the big city'), there's not much to do. as a result of this dearth of entertainment options, these people have less fun. more importantly, they're less experienced at having fun, and therefore worse at it. being bad at having fun, when it comes time to do fun things--like yell--they're incapable. this results in happy, corn-fed, and altogether quiet people. quiet people are incapable of yelling properly at big ten basketball games.