This Fairy Tale Has An Ambiguous Ending.

There is no Cinderella story this year in the Final Four of this year's NCAA tournament, so Josh Peter over at Yahoo decided to catch up with the three seniors that powered last year's improbable George Mason team to the Final Four, and it's not exactly the prettiest of pictures. Forward Jai Lewis, point guard Tony Skinn, and guard Lamar Butler are all playing overseas (Skinn with a girlfriend and a child) after their university raked in money from the appearance and they had visions of the NBA (not stardom, but at least a shot.) For every player that turns himself into a lottery pick during the tournament, there are probably many more Skinns, Butlers, and Lewises out there: trying to make a living doing what they love and know best, yet finding the reality is so much harder than the dream they all chased one year ago.

It's educational in the sense that we all ought to witness how a game you love can turn into just another dreary, depressing job, when the other options are limited and the dream still exists. And if you don't hate the NCAA enough already for allowing schools to make millions off the backs of these kids, yet deny them most ways of making their own cash while in school, then this will probably help stoke the fire a bit more.

These things even happen to national champions -- an NYT article on Jim Harrick, otherwise unremarkable except for the oddity that is his career, becomes compelling when you realize that two of Harrick's players on the D-League's Bakersfield Jam are former national champs: namely, MSU's Mateen Cleaves and Syracuse's Gerry McNamara.