-

Though it could have meant big bucks, keeping license tag and persona worth the decision

Date published: 3/16/2008

TO UNDERSTAND how much I'm into college basketball when tournament season rolls around, it helps to share my license plate story.

It happened years ago, at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament at Capital Centre in Landover, Md.

As I pulled into the parking lot, in plenty of time to see a day's worth of basketball, the attention of a handful of people turned my way.

They were looking at the Virginia license plate on my car: HOOPS.

For the first time in, say, my entire life, there was real envy in the eyes of several fans as they looked at me and my car.

One went further than just envying my tags.

The rather beefy fellow walked up, bent down to look at the tags, and stepped over to where I was getting my day's worth of supplies ready.

"Give you $300 for the tags. You ask for something else and then I'll get HOOPS," he said.

I'd like to say that I'm such a college basketball fan that his offer didn't get a second's consideration.

But that wouldn't be the truth.

I was a young reporter, and that was probably the better part of the next month's rent back then.

But there was more to those plates than just the indication of my affection for college hoops.

It was also a link to the regular afternoon basketball games I enjoyed with friends, many of them not-so-gracefully aging former athletes like myself.

When these guys saw me walking onto the playground and parking-lot courts we frequented then, they responded the same way.

"Hey, Hoops, what's happening?" they'd ask. Or something like it.

Yes, my tags had become my moniker, my nickname, my pal persona.

Was it worth 300 smackers to give up part of myself?

After all, it would mean giving up a pretty cool nickname.

Not one, mind you, that I had earned with a great jump shot, ball-handling skills or a killer baseline move.

Nope, I'd just put it on my license tag and then showed up to play ball in that car for years. Not the coolest way to earn the nickname, but an effective one nonetheless.

Date published: 3/16/2008