We watched Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh try to kick an extra point, a ball boy in Oakland using his lofty position with the club to get a date, mascot antics and enough groin shots to force us to put our urologist (as recommended by Oakland Raiders receiver Louis Murphy) on speed dial.

Sadly, though, it’s time again to roll up the Sideshow tent for the summer and wait to see if my successor will allow the show to go on. I hope that person will. Legacies are sweet, even if I was only part of one for a short while. Besides, someone has to keep the legend of the “man (or woman) with the diamond tears” alive, right?

If you find yourself moping around during the summer and feeling like something is missing in your life, it’s just the Sideshow.

Not to worry. There is a cure. You can get sporadic doses of sports witticism through my Twitter account (@Tim_Seeman), which just missed the cut on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential accounts by roughly 14 kazillion votes. Tribune writers can’t get all the accolades, after all.

Anyway, it’s time to say my last goodbye and give my last tidbits of advice: Keep your eye on the ball, always see what you hit and don’t use the touch of death on your sister.

No, really. It seems like just yesterday I sat nervously in a small classroom in Lalumiere Hall waiting for my first collegiate class — intermediate French — to begin.

I would throw in some French here and show how much I learned, but it’s tough considering the last time I conjugated a verb en Francais was, in fact, freshman year.

It doesn’t feel like that much time has gone by, but there’s evidence all around me.

Zilber Hall used to be the drab 707 Building. Eckstein Hall used to be a grassy hillside. The Discovery Learning Center used to be a parking lot.

I remember paying for food before it arrived at the table at George Webb before it morphed into Qdoba. I remember closing Jim Hegarty’s pub for good and the impromptu candlelight vigil held outside Angelo’s.

But this shouldn’t be about how old I’m getting. At least not all of it. This is the sports section, after all.

So here’s my sporting reflection: There hasn’t been a better four-year window in which to follow Wisconsin sports than the four years I spent at Marquette.

Don’t believe me?

Each of the three major sports teams in the state — the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks — made the playoffs in the last four years. The only other time that happened was in the early 1980s when all three teams qualified in 1982, a year that comes with an asterisk as the Packers played a shortened NFL season because of a player strike.

Each of the teams also has young, supremely talented players under contract for multiple years. The Packers have quarterback Aaron Rodgers. The Brewers have outfielder Ryan Braun. The Bucks have center Andrew Bogut.

For hockey fans, the Milwaukee Admirals have had a good run in the American Hockey League, with them making it to the postseason in each of the last four years.

Wisconsin’s collegiate “money sports” — football and men’s basketball — enjoyed great success, too. Marquette and Wisconsin-Madison both are perennial basketball tournament participants. In addition, the Badgers’ football team played in the illustrious Rose Bowl in January.

With so much that’s happened in the sports world alone in what seems like such a short amount of time, it’s important to remember the following: Life zooms by faster than cars trying to beat the lights at 11th and Wisconsin, and it’s up to each individual to catch the details.

There are plenty of things I’ve missed in my four years, but I’m pretty sure I caught the most important ones: be on time, do stuff right the first time and always have caffeine nearby.

I arrived at Marquette in 2007 as a kid who liked to watch ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and dreamed to someday work for the “worldwide leader.”

I leave here in 2011 disillusioned with that dream — because of the irritating ubiquitousness of the network — but also encouraged by the ability I picked up in the interim to report and write my way onto a front page somewhere. Dreams can change and that’s kind of what college is about: finding the right dream.

The Tribune allowed me to put my skills on display, and for that opportunity, I’m genuinely grateful. I’m also grateful for everybody who took the time to read my articles — both as a sports columnist and as a news reporter — and for the editors who made them all fit for publication.

My time at this university is nearly up, and it’s a time I would gladly repeat. Unfortunately, with ever-inflating tuition costs and the fact that I passed my classes (knock on wood), I can’t.

The French I learned in my first year may not be in the forefront of my brain any more, but I remember enough to say this: Au revoir, Marquette. Merci beaucoup.

Guard Manu Ginobili is losing his hair. Forward Tim Duncan has been the shadow of the shell of his old self the past two seasons. Even guard Tony Parker’s French accent doesn’t carry the same allure that it did at the peak of San Antonio’s power.

Sure, they were good enough during the regular season — especially the first half of it — to earn the top spot in the Western Conference, but it was understood that the Lakers were still the favorites to reach the NBA Finals.

Now, they’d be considered lucky to make it out of the first round with their dignity intact. Grizzlies forward Zach Randolph and center Marc Gasol have played the roles of playground bullies, dangling the Spurs by their ankles and shaking the lunch money out of their pockets.

The ride was fun while it lasted, but it’s almost time to bid farewell to these old Spurs and listen as they jangle their way out of contention for the next few years.

I want to be polite, so I’ll put it this way: It’s not something tour guides talk about when marshaling large groups of high school seniors and their parents across Central Mall.

Ask any public relations professional, and he or she will tell you it’s hard to sell a program that had a 15-59-13 record from 2005 to 2009. Louis Bennett’s first season as head coach in 2006 went about as well as a Nancy Pelosi appearance at a Tea Party rally.

It started decent enough with a win and a draw, but 15 straight losses — including 10 shutouts — resulted in the worst season in program history.

You’d have more luck promoting Rajon Rondo as a clutch three-point shooter than promoting Marquette’s first five Big East seasons as successful.

The conference dragged non-basketball Golden Eagles through the mud a few times before they stood up and fought back. Both the volleyball and women’s soccer teams threw some haymakers last fall.

With top-level talent filling spots in all three sections of the pitch, the men’s soccer team might finally scrape itself off the mat and land some punches of its own next season.

The Golden Eagles found a way to keep their metaphorical gloves up during 2010, finishing with a 10-8-6 record, including an unprecedented six-game unbeaten streak and the program’s first Big East Championship tournament victory over St. John’s. The seven wins were the most for the team since it won nine games in 2002 as a member of Conference USA.

Midfielder Calum Mallace and his penchant for putting the ball in the net separated the 2010 squad — which averaged more than a goal per game (1.26) for the first time since joining the Big East — from those of the recent past that treated the penalty box like it was contaminated with smallpox.

The mohawked junior was second in the Big East in shots (71) and shots per game (3.74) and led the Golden Eagles with six goals and six assists for a total of 18 points.

Redshirt freshman forward Adam Lysak has put together a highlight reel of his own so far this spring, scoring eight goals in seven exhibition matches. He and Mallace will form a dangerous two-pronged attacking threat in the fall where there used to be no prongs, and the pressure of being the only reliable scoring threat will be off Mallace’s shoulders.

Entering last fall, there were major questions surrounding the team’s defense. Senior defenseman Scott Miller stepped away from the team with a year of eligibility left because of injury, leaving freshman Eric Pothast as the lynchpin of the back line, a daunting task for any rookie, even if Top Shelf Soccer named him the No. 25 freshman to watch in 2010.

Alongside senior midfielder-turned-defenseman Anthony Colaizzi, Pothast had an OK season, but there was often more work left to be done by the goalkeeper than teams usually like. Axel Sjoberg, a 6-foot-7-inch Swede capable of stopping strikers’ attacks just by stepping on them like ants, will work with a maturing Pothast to keep opponents off the board.

If anyone knows about keeping opponents off the board, it’s goalkeeper David Check, who burst onto the scene as the starter a year earlier than expected. The lanky sophomore recorded 89 saves in 18 games, good for the second-highest total and the best per-game average (4.94) in the conference. He also cracked Marquette all-time top 10 lists with his save total and six shutouts.

The start to the Bennett era at Marquette left a lot to be desired, but the building blocks assembled here now have the Golden Eagles on the verge of building a brand-new tradition at Valley Fields.

Aspiring Marquette tour guides, take note.

There was no gasp when it happened. No strained silence as the training staff attended to him. No supportive applause when he came off the pitch. In fact, there was no break in the action at all.

It was routine soccer action. In the first half against University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on a cool, rainy day last April at Valley Fields, Miller merely headed a ball.

But when his feet hit the ground, he knew he knocked something loose in his brain.

His natural toughness — the quality that earned him his spot at center-back and his captain’s armband — carried him to halftime, but everyone on the Marquette side knew something was wrong.

“We could tell he wasn’t as into it as he usually is,” said senior midfielder and team co-captain Matt Stummer.

Team athletic trainer Lauren Boyler said Miller kept holding his head and shaking it, like a kid on a playground trying to shake an annoying pebble out of his shoe. At halftime, Boyler and the coaching staff decided to take him out of the game.

Early beginnings

Miller’s infatuation with the game started at an early age in Jefferson City, Mo.

“From when I could walk, I was playing with a ball,” he said. “I played all the time.”

By high school, he competed on the club soccer scene in St. Louis, Mo., which got his name and his game in college scouts’ notebooks.

He traveled to games on weekends and several times a week drove 2 1/2 hours from Jefferson City to St. Louis school to practice with his club team for a couple of hours, usually arriving home after 10 p.m.

In four years at Helias Catholic High School, Miller scored 62 goals, had 26 assists and was a four-time all-district selection. As a junior, he was tabbed as a second-team all-state player. In his senior season, Miller was picked as first-team all-state and earned regional player of the year honors.

Even with his sparkling prep resume, interest from collegiate programs still did not surface until he showed up at a Marquette soccer camp and impressed head coach Louis Bennett.

“Miller is a true diamond in the rough. He could possibly be the best unheard-of player we’ve ever recruited,” Bennett said after Miller signed his letter of intent in February 2007.

“He played unbelievably tough without playing angry,” Bennett said in a recent interview.

Miller’s nose-to-the-grindstone approach earned him playing time as a freshman and the nod as Marquette’s Newcomer of the Year in 2007. It also got him back into the starting lineup following a frustrating 2008, when he played in only two games due to a knee injury and an emergency appendectomy.

He had a breakthrough season in 2009, leading Marquette in minutes played as the key cog in the Golden Eagle defense. The National Soccer Coaches Association of America named him to the Wisconsin All-State team, and it looked like his promising career was back on track — until it came to a screeching halt.

Playing through the pain

To say an innocuous header knocked Miller out of the game he loves wouldn’t be fair.

No, the hit that cost him his career happened a week before, when Marquette hosted Northern Illinois University.

In that game, a threatening ball floated into Marquette’s 18-yard box. Miscommunication between Miller and his goalkeeper resulted in a collision when both tried to clear the danger away. Miller broke his nose and now concedes he probably suffered a concussion.

“I don’t remember going to the sideline. I don’t remember holding my nose. I just remember kind of waking up, and I was bleeding,” he said.

Miller soldiered on, ignoring the taste of blood in the back of his throat. After the game, Boyler administered concussion tests that Miller passed. He reported no symptoms.

It was not until the game-day adrenaline subsided that he suspected he was dealing with more than a busted nose.

“I knew if I told anybody, they’d tell me not to play, so I just shut up,” he said.

In the week leading up to the game with UW-Milwaukee, Miller had little contact with coaches, who were away on a recruiting trip, and Boyler, who speculated Miller was avoiding follow-up evaluation.

Had he consulted team doctors, he might have learned about a relatively new discovery in sports medicine called Second-Impact Syndrome.

“During the (seven to 10 days) following a concussion, the brain is much more susceptible to injury because it is still under stress,” Boyler said.

This means Miller’s chances of sustaining a more severe concussion from a less forceful impact increased dramatically. And that is exactly what happened against the Panthers.

Life after concussions

The life Miller led following his concussions was a miserable one.

“The doctor told me to basically go lock myself up in my room and turn the lights out,” Miller said.

He couldn’t watch TV. He couldn’t work on his computer. He couldn’t text his friends. Instead, he slept 20 hours a day and spent the remaining four wishing he was still sleeping. After a week of this, he set his mind on reclaiming his starting spot.

“Even after going through all that … I still had every intention of playing (in the fall),” Miller said.

As time passed, however, Miller realized this injury was completely different than anything he battled before.

“It’s not like an ankle sprain where you can ice it,” he said. “When your head hurts, there’s a part of you that’s not really sure what’s going on.”

His doctors also shed light on the potential long-term effects of multiple concussions, including strokes, amnesia and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

“He started to learn there’s more to life than just soccer … and if he had a neurological deficit for the rest of his life, he probably wouldn’t enjoy (life) the same way,” Boyler said.

A career-ending decision

With the 2010 season fast approaching, Miller had a decision to make.

He spent the summer in Milwaukee catching up on classes and getting back in shape. He kept Bennett and Boyler in the loop about his recovery.

Bennett tried not to pressure Miller into playing, saying Miller was the only one who could decide whether he was healthy enough to return. Boyler provided the education Miller needed to make the best possible medical decision. Stummer lent his support as somebody who dealt with concussions himself.

The decision ultimately came down to Miller’s long-term health against his obligation to the team.

“When a lot of people look up to you, you put a lot of pressure on yourself,” Stummer said of his teammate.

With all the medical information he received and the fact that he didn’t feel as healthy as he would like, Miller decided to step away from Marquette soccer.

“There was no reason to put myself in a situation where I could cause permanent brain damage,” he said.

All sides agreed it was the right decision.

“He could pass a physical, but you never know. That’s the problem with the brain,” Bennett said.

Moving on, while fulfilling captain’s duties

Last September, Marquette hosted UWM in one of the biggest games on the schedule. This time, Miller sat on the sideline.

Sitting that game out was difficult for him.

“I think that night it kind of hit me that it was all over,” he said.

Though his time playing was through, Miller was still able to contribute to the team last season as a mentor on and off the field, especially for his replacement on the backline, freshman defenseman Eric Pothast.

“For him to put the disappointment aside and continue working with the team was admirable,” Stummer said.

The injury irreversibly changed the future for Miller, who planned on playing a fifth year in 2011 and eventually pursuing a professional playing career after that.

“It was hard because I had to end my own career, and I always assumed somebody else would tell me I wasn’t good enough or would cut me from a team,” he said.

Instead, he will graduate next month and currently works full-time with an orthopedic sales group.

His biggest contributions to Marquette came in creating a culture of success both on and off the pitch, Bennett said. The team plans on holding a ceremony some time next year to commemorate his playing career.

“The amount of challenge that he faced as an athlete and as a person and as an (academic) was huge, and he’s come out of it shining,” Bennett said.

That’s not worth talking about on its own merits. There are plenty of white people. As Marquette students, we should know that well.

What is worth talking about is what he does for a living. He’s an NFL running back, and a really good one at that. He had 1,177 rushing yards, good for 10th in the league, and only five players had more than his 11 rushing touchdowns last season.

As the Cleveland Browns’ best player — not a difficult distinction to earn — the people at EA Sports who produce the Madden video game franchise put him on the ballot as the team’s representative in the fan vote to decide who would grace the cover for the 2012 edition.

They put him down as a 10-seed in their tournament, counting on him to get eliminated by one of the odds-on favorites, Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan or Green Bay quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers.

Instead, Hillis bulldozed his way through the competition the way he bulldozes through linebackers on Sundays, and he’s now set to face off against Philadelphia quarterback Michael Vick in the final vote.

The sociological nature of the vote is fascinating.

We want to believe that sports are colorblind, that the racial tension that exists in everyday life (you’re lying to yourself if you claim it doesn’t) is non-existent on the gridiron, the baseball diamond or the basketball court.

Obviously, it doesn’t take long to find evidence to the contrary.

In this case, we have a rare role reversal. It’s the white person who’s fighting for recognition in the almost-exclusively black world of NFL running backs.

In my experience in classes concerned with media representation, white peers seem largely unsympathetic toward minorities’ push for equal representation in media. They’re the people who argue against affirmative action or the NFL’s “Rooney rule,” which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate during a head coaching search.

With the tables turned in this way, it gives those white folks the chance to see what the other side of the representation coin feels like.

Not surprisingly, people — whom I’m willing to bet are overwhelmingly white — have been going to ESPN by the truckload to vote for Hillis, just like blacks went to the polls in 2008 and cast ballot after ballot for Barack Obama.

Maybe I’m stretching in comparing a vote for a video game cover to a presidential election, but it’s easy enough to see how the voting patterns might be similar. White people want to be able to go to the media and show their kids that a white person can become an NFL running back, just like black people want to be able to go to the media and show their kids that a black person can become an American president.

Don’t underestimate the importance of Hillis beating out Ryan and Rodgers on his way to the final, either. Whiteness is the norm at quarterback.

But white running backs? They’re the NFL’s aurora borealis. Only one other white running back registered in the top 50 in rushing yardage last season, New England’s Danny Woodhead — who, incidentally, had a strong showing himself in the Madden cover voting.

The dueling racial novelties — a white running back versus a black quarterback — add another intriguing dimension to this vote that the people at EA and ESPN probably never expected.

I don’t want to say a racial breakdown of this vote would serve as an accurate gauge of the current state of race relations in this country. It could just as easily serve as a gauge of Cleveland loyalty against Philadelphia loyalty.

But you have to admit you’d be interested to see what that breakdown would look like.

One of the quirkiest guys to ever take a Major League Baseball field, Manny Ramirez — a left fielder known for cutting off throws from center, disappearing into Fenway Park’s Green Monster and being one of the clutchest right-handed hitters of all-time — retired last week.

In true Manny-being-Manny fashion, he made the decision after the league informed him of “an issue” he had under the league’s drug program. It doesn’t take an IQ much higher than Manny’s to figure out what that meant.

With a second positive drug test on his rap sheet (the first coming after tests found a female fertility drug in Ramirez’s blood in 2009), a 100-game suspension wasn’t too far behind. Instead of serving it and returning to the Rays afterward, he decided to retire and take a trip to Spain. How quaint.

I’ll remember Manny like I remember the kid who hit puberty before everyone else. You always wanted him on your team because he could hit the ball farther than anyone else. But when somebody called him out for something, his pre-teenage angst would get the better of him and he’d quit.

And just like it did on the playground, the game will go on and will be more fun without him.

But when the lights clicked off in Dallas, it dawned on everybody that we might not get to see these stars again for a long time.

The 2011 offseason was going to get ugly, and not just because of the shirtless photos of 320-pound defensive tackles from the draft combine. The collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the NFL Players’ Association players’ — the 1993 deal that allowed unrestricted free agency for players and imposed a salary cap on team owners — was set to expire March 3.

There were encouraging signs in negotiations leading up to that day, including a federal mediator’s involvement and a deadline extension, but commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith ran out of time to forge a new deal.

After the owners started the lockout, the players decertified their union, clearing the way for anti-trust litigation against the NFL. In preliminary court hearings in St. Paul, Minn., a federal judge told both sides to go back to a mediated negotiating table. After initial disagreement on where those meetings would take place, the court appointed a judge to oversee them in Minneapolis starting Thursday.

For the most part, the public has ignored the labor unrest, focusing instead on draft talk. The draft will continue as planned from April 28-30, but players won’t be able to sign contracts until the labor issues are resolved.

Once it’s over, though, fans will be facing a football-less wasteland, devoid of mini-camps and free agent movement.

I want to be optimistic that the season will start on schedule, but it’s hard when workers file anti-trust lawsuits against their bosses. Hand your boss a fake court summons one day and see what happens. It’ll make for a good story at the unemployment office.

And it’s hard to stay optimistic when the two sides are so far apart in their demands.

However the $9 billion in revenue is divvied up — owners claim players get 60 percent, while players say it’s more like 50 percent — owners say it isn’t enough to cover the growing expenses they face. Their employees want to see numerical proof, but the owners have repeatedly told them no. Transparency is evidently overrated in this workplace.

The league also wants the players to play two more regular season games without an increase in annual salary, another profit-maximizing ploy for the owners.

With the two sides so out of touch with fans, the only side affected by these negotiations that has no voice at the table, it makes things that much more incomprehensible for those who love watching the game.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like hearing rich guys bickering over percentages of billions of dollars when the national unemployment rate pushing 9 percent. And rarely do people who are not millionaires or billionaires benefit when millionaires and billionaires negotiate with each other.

Players and owners alike are taking the league’s popularity for granted. They think that no matter what they do, people will continue to watch and the money will keep rolling in, either through ticket sales (the average cost for an NFL ticket in 2010 was $76.47) or the billions of dollars league makes through TV deals with Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN.

That doesn’t have to be the case, but it probably will be, meaning more money for the people who act like children that don’t know how sharing works.

At some point, the players will be back on the field after one side strong-arms the other into submission.

However it works out, it’ll be fans who lose the most. And unlike the owners and players, they’ll have no way to recoup those losses.

On his old stomping grounds in Gainesville, Fla., police stopped the former Florida Gator shortly after midnight Sunday for blasting his music too loud in his Escalade. Apparently, Murphy thought it’d be more exciting to walk away and get arrested for failure to obey a police officer than produce the identification the officer asked for.

And why let just one cop cuff him? Might as well get two other officers in on the action, right?

Once he was detained, Murphy consented to a search of his vehicle. How much worse could this situation get?

In the car, the cops found an unmarked prescription bottle, adding a drug charge to what probably would’ve been a simple request to turn his music down. When the drug turns out to be Viagra, well, Murphy reached a whole new level on the embarrassment scale.

Murphy said he took the label off the bottle to keep his “illness” from his girlfriend, which makes sense. He already plays for the Raiders, which is one strike against him.

Any other signs of softness would make Murphy undesirable in every way.

After the Cincinnati Reds swept them out of Ohio over the weekend and yesterday’s 2-1 loss against Atlanta, they’re already 0-4 and 3.5 games off the division lead.

With a mere 158 games remaining to get this tail spinning season under control, there’s only one solution: fire new manager Ron Roenicke.

Four games might be a quick hook, but let’s face it: Baseball is a results-oriented business, and if a guy isn’t getting results, he shouldn’t be in the business.

Sure, new managers usually get a year or two to massage the kinks out — and lord knows there were plenty after the Ken Macha debacle — but it’s obvious Roenicke is content with letting familiar problems plague the 2011 Brewers, like dependence on the home run.

Take second baseman Rickie Weeks. He hit 29 out of the park last season, a spectacular number for a second baseman. Except lead-off men aren’t supposed to hit home runs. And alarmingly, Weeks already has three, including a season-opening shot on Thursday.

Instead of praising Weeks for his power stroke, Roenicke should bench him and tell him to forget the dingers and focus on stacking up the singles.

It’s hard to play small ball when one of the fastest guys on the squad is trotting around the bases. And with sluggers like left fielder Ryan Braun and first baseman Prince Fielder in the lineup, small ball is definitely the way to play.

The Brewer offense is troubling enough — look up last year’s numbers to see how bad it can be — but what about the deplorable pitching staff?

The team’s high-profile winter acquisition, 2009 AL Cy Young Award winner Zack Greinke, broke a rib playing a pick-up basketball game. I want to know why Greinke wasn’t getting hourly calls to ensure he wasn’t putting himself in risky situations. Is it too much to ask a professional team to keep tabs on a 27-year-old player? I think not.

After Roenicke cleans out his desk, it would only make sense to show general manager Doug Melvin the door, too.

I know I’d much rather lose 100 games a year with also-rans like Junior Spivey and Royce Clayton all over the diamond than watch legitimate All-Stars like Braun and Fielder, but I guess that’s a matter of taste.

Maybe if Melvin put effort into addressing team needs, he’d deserve to stay, but trading for two former opening day starters in Greinke and Shaun Marcum this past offseason just isn’t good enough.

Brewer owner Mark Attanasio, who seems oblivious to these organizational problems, likely won’t read this column or heed this advice. Instead, he’ll probably let this guy Roenicke continue running the team deeper into the ground.

Greinke will rejoin the team sometime in May, and starters Corey Hart, an All-Star right fielder (but what difference could he possibly make?), and Jonathan Lucroy, the team’s starting catcher, should be back before April is over.

But at this pace, which is sure to hold up, the Brewers could be more than 20 games out of first and pondering pennies-on-the-dollar trade offers for Fielder by that time.

Either that, or they’ll put together a winning streak or two and be off on a long race for a playoff spot.

I wouldn’t bet on that, though. The bad start to this season is simply too much to overcome. Keep in mind the 2010 Green Bay Packers, who started their season at a pitiful 3-3. I trust I don’t have to tell you what became of them.

Before the game started, arena staff barred James and his entourage from parking in the private garage before the Heat’s shootaround, before eventually letting James in. Life on the road can be tough.

Then, a reporter asked James how he’d feel about having his jersey number retired by the franchise he left at the championship altar after seven exciting-but-fruitless seasons. Such discussion is bizarre for a few reasons: First, he’s still playing. Second, he’s playing for another team. And third, the LeBron-Cleveland relationship is colder than an Antarctic beach day.

Then during pregame introductions, with the sold out Cleveland crowd ready to let “the king” hear what they think about him now, James was suspiciously absent from the Miami sideline. Under the cover of darkness during the home team’s introduction, James finally slunk his way onto the court to join his teammates. His excuse? A bathroom break. Even if you don’t like him, you have to admit he’s pretty crafty.

Finally, the game started and James took solace between the lines as beleaguered athletes always do. Behind his triple-double and 27 points from Dwyane Wade, the playoff-bound Heat easily dispatched …

What’s that? The Heat lost? By 12? To the Cavaliers? So much for those seven or eight championships teammate Chris Bosh predicted, huh?

The bow on the package was a tweet from Cavalier owner and unintentionally-hilarious letter-writer Dan Gilbert, who taunted “Not in our garage!!” alluding to the arena staff’s rejection of LeBron’s crew. It’s always nice to get the last laugh, especially on a guy who publicly humiliated your entire business operation.

As easy as the North Carolina Tar Heels made the pounding look, that’s how difficult characterizing this season is. It’s like trying to eat clam chowder with a steak knife.

The “what have you done for me lately?” axiom further complicated matters because Marquette had been playing impressive basketball until arriving in Newark, N.J.

Against Xavier, senior forward Jimmy Butler put Tu Holloway — the Atlantic 10’s Player of the Year — on Alcatraz-style lockdown, allowing the stocky junior point guard only five points and one field goal.

The team effort in holding Syracuse standouts, senior forward Rick Jackson and junior guard Scoop Jardine, to a combined 13 points and seven rebounds was equally impressive.

With those two wins, Marquette reached the Sweet 16 for the 14th time in school history.

My initial compulsion is to declare 2010-’11 a success, and there’s probably plenty of people prepared to do the same. As great as the ending was, I think it’s important to take lessons from the tough times the team endured.

I think we can all agree the Marquette express offered a bumpy ride these last five months. Drifting into open waters with Chuck Noland and Wilson on their driftwood raft in “Cast Away” probably would’ve been less nauseating.

There were incessant grumbles about free throw practice, time-out strategy and potentially playing in the National Invitation Tournament.

Sometimes the grumbling was muted, like after the Notre Dame and Connecticut wins. Other times, it was fierce and noisy, like an empty stomach during an exam. Remember the Louisville and St. John’s losses?

Regardless of volume, there was always a palpable frustration among the Marquette faithful that stemmed from too-high preseason expectations.

It’s time to admit something that’s as hard for grown-ups to do as it is for 4-year-olds: We’ve been spoiled.

For the first time since 2001 — I was in sixth grade then — the team finished the regular season with more than 10 losses.

Despite the losing, Marquette still made the NCAA Tournament for the sixth straight year with arguably the least-talented players the program had during that span.

That’s not to slight the current team at all. It merely speaks to the quality of former players like Jerel McNeal and Lazar Hayward.

Would I have liked to see junior forward Jae Crowder step in and, in the same No. 32 uniform, fill all the voids left by Hayward? Or see junior guard Darius Johnson-Odom shoot 47.5 percent from three-point distance again? Or see freshman guard Vander Blue make an immediate impact in his first year? Of course. But things rarely happen as one hopes.

Instead, I learned just how great a Golden Eagle Hayward was. And how difficult it is to maintain a good shooting percentage. And how not all players can contribute right away in college like Derrick Rose or John Wall.

With those lessons in mind, I can relish the more immediate past.

Marquette was a Sweet 16 team. Coach Buzz Williams is a hot commodity on the coaching market, despite regular season calls for him to be fired. And senior forward walk-on and fan-favorite Rob Frozena hit the second 3-pointer of his Marquette career in an NCAA Tournament game.

All things considered, it was a good year for Marquette basketball. It might be too early to say, but 2011-’12 will probably be another.

Especially those making rookie and veteran minimums. Six-figure salaries can only stretch so far, you know?

One player, though, isn’t going to sit idly by as one of the unemployed. Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco, never one to shy away from media exposure, decided to take Major League Soccer club Sporting Kansas City up on its offer for him to try out for the team.

Before he took the pitch yesterday, I figured the try-out would be a production even worse than his VH1 show, The Ultimate Catch.

But when he set foot on the field in his No. 85 warm-ups, he seemed to be taking it seriously, participating in calisthenics, passing and dribbling drills and an 11-on-11 scrimmage. All without his own entourage or camera crew following him around.

Ochocinco might be the focal point, but seeing an NFL player try his hand (or feet, as the case may be) at soccer could generate the kind of interest soccer has been trying to grab in the United States since the 1970s.

As unlikely as it is, I hope he somehow makes the team. Can you imagine what kind of celebration he would unleash in a league that doesn’t care about outlandish self-promotion nearly as much as the “No Fun League?”

My bracket is more busted than Yao Ming’s metatarsals, so what I’ve been writing all year may have been nothing more than the incoherent ramblings of a madman.

But, as they say, there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.

Before the season, I predicted Marquette would make the “Sweet 16” in the NCAA Tournament. When the men finished with 14 losses and a .500 conference record, I found myself landing in the insane column.

I learned Sunday it can be pretty comfy in the cuckoo’s nest.

If you didn’t hear Gus Johnson screaming from Cleveland, junior guard Darius Johnson-Odom drilled a crunch-time 3-pointer against Syracuse, clinching a “Sweet” spot for the Golden Eagles for the first time since some guy named Dwyane Wade strolled this campus.

Finally, the rest of the class of 2011 and I get to experience a real tournament run.

As long as we’ve been here, it’s always seemed like the Golden Eagles were packing their bags for the trip back to Milwaukee before they even arrived at their opening weekend location.

Three years ending in three disheartening losses. Needless to say, that’s not what I signed up for.

Guys who departed as four of the best players in program history — Lazar Hayward, Dominic James, Wesley Matthews and Jerel McNeal — seemingly had Marquette on the precipice of greatness when my classmates and I were jamming our things into our tiny McCormick closets freshman year. The college basketball world was ours for the taking that 2007-’08 season.

That year in the tournament, though, Stanford center Brook Lopez sent Marquette home in the round of 32, scoring the go-ahead basket in overtime with 1.3 seconds remaining for the 82-81 Cardinal victory.

Despite the loss, it still felt like a big run awaited this group in 2008-’09.

But it never came. James, the team’s point guard, broke his foot against Connecticut on Feb. 25, 2009. He tried to return in the round of 32 game against Missouri, but could only give 17 scoreless minutes.

Still, Marquette had a chance to advance, down two points with five seconds remaining, but it went up in smoke when Hayward stepped on the baseline trying to inbound the ball.

Last season, after Marquette’s fifth straight 20-win campaign during what was supposed to be a rebuilding year, Washington guard Quincy Pondexter left then-junior forward Jimmy Butler in the dust on a last-second layup to give the Huskies a first-round 80-78 win.

Serious doubts swirled around this year’s squad as to whether it would make the expanded field of 68. With more scrap than a destruction derby, it got in. But just barely.

Had it not taken down West Virginia in the Big East Championship tournament, it might have been playing another game at the Bradley Center in the National Invitational Tournament.

But the way it stands now, this rag-tag group of three-goggle wearers that includes a handful of junior college players, a Canadian, a man with one eye and the only four-year walk-on in school history, have gone where three former-Marquette players who have played in the NBA haven’t. The Sweet 16. Delicious.

Beating the second-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels won’t be easy, but this group of players and its coach are accustomed to difficulty. They’re the gritty, battle-tested players needed to pull off the upset. And I think they’ll do it.

Go ahead. Call me crazy.

About 70 miles away in New Haven, Conn., an unlikely priority No. 2 will be the one-game playoff to determine which team will represent the smart kids and social elites in the NCAA Tournament.

For the first time since — well, ever — the Harvard Crimson earned a share of the Ivy League Championship, splitting the title with traditional Ivy powerhouse, the Princeton Tigers. Imagine Northwestern playing for the Big Ten championship against Michigan State.

And for the first time ever, I’ll be pulling for those haughty jerks from Cambridge, Mass.

If Harvard pulls it out, it’ll be its first NCAA Tournament appearance since the Truman administration, back when there were only eight teams in the tournament.

The fact that Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium is serving as the “neutral” site for the biggest basketball game in Harvard history adds an interesting wrinkle.

For those not privy to the history of collegiate athletics, Harvard-Yale is the oldest rivalry in the country. They like each other about as much as Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi likes freedom.

As such, I want to see how Yale supporters react. Will they respect Harvard’s once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment? Or will their Bulldog pride make them boo lustily and openly cheer for the Tigers for the sole purpose of watching the tears stream down the brilliant faces of the Crimson faithful? I’m betting on the latter.

It’s sure to be a great sports atmosphere. And the winner will be rewarded with a first-round beat down in the big dance. Congratulations, Ivy League!