> A Millionaire's Minute

When people hear the name “Burlington,” hopefully they will no longer ask the question: the coat factory?

The little-known city in Wis. shares the name of a popular coat factory which, contrary to popular belief, is not actually in the city of Burlington. A certain gunslinger playing football in the lone star state should change the reference.

In the past, when fans went to exhibition games they expected to see highlight reel dunks, amazing passes and a blow out win against a mid-major. Now the games have grown to be more of a struggle for teams in bigger conferences. This new phenomenon started back a few years ago when Gonzaga burst onto the scene as that mid-major who did not quite fit the profile. When Gonzaga started “shocking” teams in the NCAA tournament, sometime around the year 2000, people started to question who was actually a mid-major.

Today this debate has surfaced once again, power conference teams, this year more than ever, have been upset. As the college basketball season got under way this year no one knew about teams like Gardner-Webb, Findley, Mercer and Grand Valley State. After Grand Valley State shocked Michigan State in an exhibition game early this season fans of the game took notice. We still don’t know who Grand Valley State is, but we do know that they were a Division II team that knocked off the eight ranked team in the nation. What’s causing this to happen? Are coaches not stressing the need to win these exhibition games? Or are these mid-major programs actually getting better?