If you need any more reason to celebrate what some are calling the biggest upset ever in the college basketball tournament, 11th seed George Mason U. knocking off one-seed UConn to go to the Final Four, consider what it’s doing for the school’s image. In the ’80s George Mason was a hotbed of Northern Virginia conservatism, a thinktank for the supply siders of the Reagan Administration, right up there with the Heritage Foundation. As of this morning, George Mason is a symbol of the triumph of the overlooked, in this case underrecruited undersized black kids from the Maryland suburbs who play a swarming defense and an ice-cold three-point game. Once personified by underbrained Ed Meese, GMU is now personified by Tony Skinn, the smoldering guard who sat out a game after belting a Hofstra player in the groin.
