John Walters

Come clean, America. You did not have the Memphis Tigers winning your office pool and you most certainly did not have them winning your heart. You are wary of their coach, wary of their program and wary of their players.

Cinderella don't do tats.

The Memphis Tigers are about to win their first national championship and there's nothing you yourself can do about it. Only Bill Self can, and even he may feel somewhat overwhelmed this evening, in an arena that commemorates a site that is the living symbol of that sensation.

Should Memphis prevail, they will become the first non-BCS level school to cut down the nets since UNLV did so in 1990. Chances are that you've already drawn other comparisons between the two schools, and their tight-roping-the-rulebook coaches, in your mind.

Unless you attended Memphis or live in Memphis, you're likely not rooting for Memphis. And if that is so, that's not entirely your fault. It's mostly ours.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous," said a man who 40 years ago last Friday was slain in Memphis, "than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

If you are not a fan of Memphis because Chris Douglas-Roberts' right arm looks like the Dead Sea scrolls or because Derrick Rose has likely attended his last college class or even because Joey Dorsey once made it rain at a Memphis nightclub, then we, the media, have failed you somewhat. Just as people in their past have failed them.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly 70 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock. That does not necessarily mean that the fathers play no role in the children's lives, but often they wind up not doing so. According to the Memphis men's basketball media guide, four of the Tigers' six most prominent players (Antonio Anderson, Joey Dorsey, Derrick Rose and Shawn Taggart) have one parent, and it is a female.

Certainly this is not any of these players' faults. Nor is it the media's. However, how much more comfortable is it for a writer to sit down next to a complete stranger and ask him, for example, if he ever sat onstage while his uncle sang "Good Vibrations" than it is to approach another and ask, "I see you have three brothers. Are all of them from the same father?"

And when the player is black and the writer is white, as is so often the case, how tense might that moment be? Is the writer being callous if he asks the question? How lightly should a scribe tread when interviewing a player whose father is not listed in the program? And what if that absence or presence has much to do with how that athlete became the player or person he is.

Special feature Memphis vs. Kansas: Who has the edge? NBCSports.com breaks down the players, coaches and more in the NCAA title game. You decide who wins. NBCSports.com

(An aside: There was a Notre Dame football player of recent vintage who has the same surname and plays the same position as a former NFL player. And the two bear a resemblance to one another. The surname was not his mother's. No one, though, ever asked him if this was his father.)

And so, Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina's mow-my-lawn-and-date-my-daughter three-time All-American, has been on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice this season. Hansbrough's dad is an orthopedic surgeon (a respectable career, quite) and when SI ran a feature on Psycho T last winter, Dr. Hansbrough was quoted at length.

Kevin Love, UCLA's freshman All-American who appeared on a regional cover of SI this week, has precocious old-school talent. He also has irresistible feature angles. His dad, Stan, played with the Washington Bullets and Los Angeles Lakers. His Uncle Mike played with Brian Wilson, among others. Rare is the feature writer who has been not succumbed to dropping a "Be true to your school" or "God only knows what they'd do without him" line when penning a feature on the All-American.

Video   Memphis win critical to city April 6: Memphis coach John Calipari thinks his team's win will give hope to the children in Memphis. NBC Sports

The media loves asking players such as Hansbrough and Love about their families. Maybe even more, we thrive on contacting those proud dads and asking for their most cherished memories of their golden children. It's the DeNiro principle of sportswriting: Meet the parents.

How to meet the parents, though, if you do not know who they are? And so, too often we media types, from beat writers to the talking heads at ESPN, gravitate toward those we find more accessible. More like us. In the process we foster the danger to which Martin Luther King, Jr., alluded.

For, if Tyler Hansbrough and Kevin Love (who, make no mistake, never courted this attention themselves) are All-Americans, then Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey are the American dream. And before you decide to cheer for Kansas, even if it is subconsciously, because the Jayhawks have at least one all-American looking player who sees serious playing time (nevermind that he is in fact, Russian), it may be time to learn a little more about Rose and Dorsey.

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