"Clean forgot what day it was," Skeletor said to Sherri, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out back stacking wood," Skeletor went on, "and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running." She dried her hands on her apron, and Sherri said, "You're in time, though. They're still talking away up there."
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. DeLoss cleared his throat and looked at the list. "All ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the names and conferences come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?"
...
"Big Ten.... Big 12..."
"Get up there, DeLoss," Skeletor said, and the people near her laughed.
...
After all conferences were read, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. DeLoss, holding his slip of paper in the air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saying, "Who is it?" "Who's got it?" "Is it the SEC?," "Is it the Pac?" Then the voices began to say, "It's DeLoss. It's Big 12," "Big 12's got it."
...
People began to look around to see the Big 12. DeLoss was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Skeletor shouted, "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Skeletor, " The SEC called, and Pac 10 said, "All of us took the same chance."
"Well, everyone," the NCAA said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "DeLoss," he said, "you draw for the Big 12 family. You got any other households in the Big 12?"
"There's the teams we left to rot when the SWC folded," Skeletor yelled. "Make them take their chance!"
"Teams draw with their new conferences, Skeletor," DeLoss said gently. "You know that as well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Skeletor said.
"How many kids, DeLoss?" the NCAA asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said. "There's Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State, and little Baylor. And OU and me."
"All right, then," the NCAA said.
"I think we ought to start over," Skeletor said, as quietly as she could. "I tell you it wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that."
The NCAA had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Skeletor was saying to the people around her.
"Ready, DeLoss?" Mr. Summers asked, and DeLoss, with one quick glance around at the rest of the Big 12, nodded.
The others opened their slips of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as they held them up and everyone could see that it was blank.
"It's Skeletor," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper. DeLoss."
DeLoss went over to Skeletor and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot the NCAA had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office. DeLoss held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks," the NCAA said. "Let's finish quickly."
Although college athletics had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. TCU selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to SMU. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."
SMU had small stones in both hands, and she said. gasping for breath, "I can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already, and someone gave little Texas Tech a few pebbles.
Skeletor was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.
Old Man Texas A&M was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Oklahoma State was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with OU beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Skeletor screamed and then they were upon her.
Originally Posted by Skeletor to the media after Big 12 tourney championship last year
alas, we lost by one that day. One of the absolute most fun losing games I've ever witnessed at LNC, because loses aren't supposed to be fun.
