Welcome to Indiana

 Tonight the 2021 NCAA men's basketball tournament begins, sort of, although not really if you consider tonight's games the play-in games, which they are no matter what the NCAA says.

In any event, it's gonna be all kinds of different this year, thanks to the Bastard Plague. All the games will be played in Indiana, which is right and proper and the way God intended. This is because basketball was invented in Indiana, or at least high school basketball was, because when the harvest was in and spring planting was a ways off Hoosiers needed something to do.

And so they started a high school state tournament in 1911, and Crawfordsville won, and then a couple years later a little dot on the map called Wingate won because they had a muscle-y farm kid named Homer Stonebraker, who was the state's first Damon Bailey. And off Indiana went.

And now, you're here, America.

Welcome. And as a public service, the Blob presents a handy guide to stuff you should experience while you're in Indiana if you want to get the full Indiana experience:

1. Find an out-of-the-way diner somewhere and order a giant breaded tenderloin.

Indiana's famous for the giant breaded tenderloin. The biggest ones are the size of Bulgaria and are served on a regulation hamburger bun, which sits on top of it like the batting helmet used to sit on top of Oscar Gamble's luxurious Afro. It's kind of Indiana's idea of a joke.

Also, breaded tenderloins are delicious. Also-also, they will slam your arteries shut faster than you can say "myocardial infarction." 

Assuming you can.

2. Drive over to Knightstown and make a layup in the gym Jimmy Chitwood made famous.

Perhaps nothing so enhanced Indiana's reputation as a basketball mecca as "Hoosiers," that cinematic love letter Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh composed in 1986.  The old Knightstown gym was the home gym for the mythical Hickory Huskers. It's where Jimmy played and Rafe and Strap and Ollie, and where Shooter ran the picket fence at 'em before he started hitting the booze again.

In any event, it's in Knightstown, which is 38 miles east of Indianapolis in Henry County. Just a hop, skip and a jump, really.

One thing, though: If you take a shot there, you gotta use the glass. Jimmy did.

3. Swing by Chrysler Arena and Crispus Attucks High School.

The former is the home of the New Castle Trojans (and Steve Alford!), a few miles down the road from Knightstown. It was for a long time the largest high school gym in America. New Castleians used to brag about that endlessly, which provoked an epidemic of eye-rolling from everyone else in the North Central Conference. 

After all, the NCC had its share of iconic gyms: The Wigwam over in Anderson, the Muncie Fieldhouse, Bill Green Arena in Marion, the Berry Bowl in Logansport, Memorial Gym in Kokomo.

And Crispus Attucks?

Located on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street in Indianapolis, it's where Oscar Robertson played, and where he led Attucks to back-to-back state titles in 1955 and 1956. That made Attucks the first all-black high school to win Indiana's high school tournament.

Contrary to what some Hoosier bumpkins believed at the time, hell did not immediately arrive in a handbasket.

4. Visit Crown Hill Cemetery in Indy and say howdy to John Dillinger.

He's buried there, you know. One of the guys who ran with him, Homer Van Meter, is buried in Fort Wayne. We're famous for our outlaws and psychopaths.

Jim Jones grew up in Richmond, 73 miles east of Indy. Charlie Manson spent some time in Terre Haute as a boy. Al Capone and the boys used to hang out at the Barbee Hotel up in Kosciusko County. 

Oh, and, Dean Corll, who briefly held the title of Worst Serial Killer In American History when he murdered 28 young boys down in Houston in the early '70s, was born in the Fort Wayne suburb of Waynedale.

Something in the water, perhaps.

5. Wait, come back. Don't be scared. There's lots of other stuff to see in Indiana.

Seriously, most of us are quite friendly, and aren't looking to kill or rob you. So you'll be perfectly safe if you're looking to venture away from Indy for a day trip or two.

You can drive down to tiny Milan in southeast Indiana, where ... well, you know about Milan. Bobby Plump, The Shot Heard 'Round The World, all that. Someone made a movie about it.

And while you're in southern Indiana, you can always celebrate Christmas early and visit Santa Claus. It's the hometown of former Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, aka the Sourest Man In Football. Which is hilarious if you think about it.

Also in southern Indiana is Lincoln's boyhood home. He grew up in Indiana, mostly. Kentucky claims his birthplace and Illinois calls itself the Land of Lincoln, but screw them. We own him, too.

Headed north?

Well, Fort Wayne was once the Native American metropolis of Kekionga, the most important trading center in the old Northwest Territories. It was the capital city of Little Turtle and the Miamis, and Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet lived there for awhile, and William Henry Harrison was there a few times. 

There's a statue of Little Turtle in Fort Wayne, but it's hidden away in a secluded glade in Headwaters Park. On the other hand, the statue of Anthony Wayne, for whom the city was named after he ran off the Miamis and the other native peoples in the region, sits in Freimann Square on Main Street downtown. 

Which is pretty much American history in a nutshell. 

Now grab yourself a giant breaded tenderloin and root for that 16-seed. Because we like our underdogs in Indiana.