Making Mom proud

I was in Daytona when my mother died a week before the 1999 Daytona 500. She cared about sports because I did and she followed the North Carolina men's basketball team because that's where I went to school.

A couple of years before she passed, she was in the hospital after surgery and they still had monitors on her to check her vital signs. Those signs were being watched at a central nurse's station on that floor. Mom was watching a Carolina game on television and it was a close one. She was getting worked up.

All of a sudden people start crashing into the room, pulling in equipment and scrambling to address a crisis. Mom was so worked up that she'd set off alarms at the nurse's station. They thought she was "coding." She and I laughed about that for the rest of the days she was with us.

I thought about her Monday night when I watched Tyler Hansbrough and his teammates celebrate their victory over Michigan State in the NCAA men's basketball championship game. Whenever Mom saw anybody as happy as Hansbrough was in a circumstance such as that, she's always say something like, "And don't you know his mama is proud of him?"

I remember that statement whenever I see somebody accomplish something that's as important to him or her as a national championship was to Hansbrough and his teammates. I hear Mama Sue saying it, for instance, every time somebody wins his first NASCAR Sprint Cup race. There's always a great story about what it took for a driver to reach that goal, and there's almost always this stew of joy and relief and happiness that's remarkable to see.

I've seen it when a golfer wins his first tournament and his first major. I've seen it in NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball locker rooms. I've seen it after state championship high school games.

I believe it's one of the biggest reasons we all love sports as much as we do.

I know it's one of the biggest reasons I do.