How do we know your team's in town?

Long Island University is the Blackbirds. I had no idea. Hampton's the Pirates, and if you follow March Madness, you might remember their big upset over Iowa State back in 2001, which led to the wonderful image of their coach impersonating a dead bug. But other than that, I don't know much.

So here's the question, for fans of the eight schools playing here in the NCAA regionals this weekend: How will we know your team's in town?

Here are the teams coming to Charlotte, by the way -- I'm going to put them in alphabetical order to eliminate any bias: Georgia, Duke, Hampton, Long Island, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, Washington.

OK, see, I'm biased already.

Georgia is my team. I went to school there. I left several million brain cells scattered around campus. I still daydream about going back and becoming a perpetual grad student. These are my people.

Here's how you know Dawg fans are in town:

-- ABC stores suddenly low on Jim Beam; CVS stores suddenly low on BC powders.

-- Hotel-lobby debates about whether Herschel Walker could play college basketball (yes), and how many points he would score (164 a game).

-- Lots of body-painting going on... but not as erotic as it sounds.

Now then... both Duke and North Carolina are also headed this way. I could say that you know Duke fans are in town when the parking lot is full of Jersey plates. I could say that you know Carolina fans are in town when you see people counting the Jersey plates in the parking lot. But I would never say such things, because I know you Blue Devil and Tar Heel fans will step up.

(Of course, it's possible that you might actually say something about the other team, rather than your own. There's no way we can stop that. But of course none of you would do such a thing. Hint. Hint.)

But we're looking to hear from all of you. Michigan, Tennessee, Washington, Hampton: What should we look for from y'all? And you Long Island Blackbirds... is anybody coming? Because we need to talk. Clearly, the Long Island Expressway would be a much cooler name.

Have at it in the comments...

It just so happens that MY team is in town, so I'll go first.

Challenger

Now we would all know within seconds. Thousands of people would tweet it at once. Your cell phone would pick up that insistent buzz that never means good news. But this was before all that, and I made it out of class and across campus and almost all the way to work before somebody on the street said that Challenger had broken in the sky.

I laughed. It had to be the punch line to some absurd joke, and I had just missed the setup. I kept walking, toward the college newspaper where I worked, and then I saw another one of the editors. As soon as I saw her eyes, I knew. She grabbed my arm and said: "Call everybody."

College can be a wonderful bubble. Tragedy is getting dumped by your girlfriend. Terror is a test you didn't study for. On Jan. 28, 1986, I was a senior at the University of Georgia and nothing really bad had ever happened to me. I was 22 but I was still a boy.

We had to put out a paper. I remember ripping updates off the old wire machine, thinking maybe this version would say it was all a mistake. The photos showed a corkscrew of smoke, like something a pilot would do to show off. But at the top of the plume, where the space shuttle was supposed to be, there was nothing.

It's weird, the things that turn you from boy to man, from girl to woman. By the time my 20s were over I was on my fourth town in my third job, had gone through a couple of hard breakups, my dad had died, and I got cancer and got rid of it. I was a grown man.

And when I trace it back I think I started feeling grown on that day 25 years ago, when all of a sudden my little college newspaper job was important, because something terrible had happened, and people were expecting us to help make sense of it, and give them something to hold on to and remember it by.

That's still, basically, my job today.

All of this is really just a way to open the door for you. If you remember that day, step in and tell your story.