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Athens, GA (Mar 24, 2009) - Ted Gangi has lived in different spheres of the sports media world throughout his career. He has been with CBS Sports, supporting talent and production teams from the research department. He has been a writer and assistant sports editor for the Dallas Morning News. He is now the webmaster and coordinator for the Football Writers Association of America. the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association, and the United States Basketball Writers Association. He also has a business, collegepressbox.com, that helps smaller schools manage their sports information needs.

Ted has graciously allowed us to reprint this article he published on Facebook. Thanks Ted!

My first Final Four (with CBS Sports)
by Ted Gangi

Twenty years ago, at age 23, I attended my first Final Four with CBS Sports in Seattle. I had been a volunteer on the host committee of the 1986 Final Four in Dallas as a college junior.

This year, upstart Seton Hall defied the odds and made it to the title game before dropping a heartbreaker to Michigan in overtime. Here is what I recall from that eventful weekend in the great Northwest.

My first real Final Four venture, some 3,000 miles from home. I paid for the plane ticket myself with a $99 "recent college graduate" voucher from Northwest Airlines. Not knowing any better, I then took a city bus to the hotel from the airport. Later, I found out that CBS would have paid for me to rent a car and given me per diem (which I did eventually get). They even reimbursed me for the bus fare.

I worked on the opening animation for the championship game with the very talented Danny Forer. What I remember most is our self-induced parking fiasco at the hotel. Danny had forgotten that he had self-parked after a late-night editing session (which was Sunday, I believe). The next morning, when we came out to get his car to go back and finish editing, the valet could not locate it. Until I sheepishly had to remind him that we self-parked the night before. It was kind of too late as he blasted the poor valet. Oh well.