Un. Be. Lievable.

Improbable as it may seem, the powers-that-be are going to have to make room for a suburban commuter school from Fairfax, Va., that was a dicey choice to make the NCAA tournament as an at-large team.

George Mason University is the local college in these parts (Fairfax County, VA), not a small or insubstantial school by any stretch of the imagination, but also not generally considered very high on the Virginia college totem. UVA and Virginia Tech are the big dogs by far, and there are many others who at least have DORMS for goodness sakes.

Mason has long been considered by locals a very good college that's not all that hard to get into and which Fairfax residents can attend while still living at home (or at least nearby).

The patronizing view of GMU has always been, in my opinion, a crock. Its outstanding faculty includes columnist Walter E. Williams:

Also, columnist and Volokh Conspiracy contributor David E. Bernstein:

In addition to the many GMU academic stars is, of course, namesake George Mason, CTU Director and martyr for the American cause:

Michael Wilbon puts today's win in perspective:

It was the basketball equivalent of a super flyweight Golden Gloves champ knocking out Muhammad Ali in his prime.

But there was so much more at stake here yesterday, which makes George Mason beating Connecticut the college basketball equivalent of Ali beating Sonny Liston, which changed the fight game as we came to know it. In eight days, we could look back and see that George Mason was good enough to win a national championship. But yesterday, the Patriots shocked the world.

Maybe -- okay, probably -- this is the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history.

I know a bunch of people who attended George Mason University, and I went to some home games back in the 80s and 90s (and a TON more concerts at the Patriot Center - and, really, most times I never thought once about this being the facility the basketball team used). The general feel of a Patriots game against the typical CAA opponents was strictly "minor league." The teams they played against were mostly from schools you never heard of unless you happened to attend one of them.

Tom Knott of the local paper of record says the reason GMU has gotten as far as it has is because so many players from the powerhouse colleges left early for the NBA.

I think that's not the case. If it were, there would be a plethora of larger and better-funded athletic programs that still could have filled the breach before GMU.

I think this is simply a miracle-on-ice-caliber sports story: 'Bad News Bears' and David vs Goliath and all the other heroic myths that, in essence, are what make spectator sports worth following.

When so many teams in the overall sports universe can simply buy the best players every year, none of the games are truly very interesting.

What made them interesting when we were kids - which, we all must admit, is the time when we developed the enthusiasm - was the notion that a ragtag group of players could, through hard work, become something great.

That is what the George Mason University basketball team has accomplished with their victory over the University of Connecticut. It is enough to make the jaded feel a renewed excitement. It reminds us why we learned to love watching the games.