Final Fours I've attended have provided the best moments in a 41-year sportswriting career

Covering Tennessee football took me from Pasadena to Miami to Boston. Thankfully, we bypassed Shreveport.

Vol basketball was even more expansive, from frozen Alaska to balmy Puerto Rico. I was never so far off the beaten path as that August night in Switzerland when Charles Hathaway rearranged a Croatian nasal passage.

I attended national championships in track and tennis and survived a tornado in Oklahoma City on softball duty.

The Kentucky Derby allowed me to pretend to be a horse-racing expert. At the Atlanta Olympics, topics ranged from synchronized swimming to a bomb.

But of all the assignments in 41 years of writing about athletes and their games, college basketball’s Final Four might be my favorite.

I made it to five women’s Final Fours. No surprise, there, in Pat Summitt’s world.

Being the beat writer for Tennessee men’s basketball, however, meant watching the ultimate weekend on TV from your couch. Yet, there was a time when newspapers, even in Knoxville, had flush travel budgets and covered big national events.

Thus, I landed courtside at four consecutive men’s championships (and had the rare experience of watching 16 schools).

Here’s a memory that stuck from each one:

1984: My first year in Knoxville, the Lady Vols took me to California. Not bad. UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion was the host. Bob Kesling and I caught a baseball game at Dodger Stadium. Tennessee beat Cheyney in the semis but couldn’t handle Southern Cal and Cheryl Miller in the title game, losing 72-61.

1988: Coming off Summitt’s first NCAA title in ’87, the Lady Vols were ranked No. 1 and led the nation in scoring when they arrived in Tacoma, Washington. No party there, though. Louisiana Tech stymied lethargic Tennessee 68-59 in the semifinals.

1990: This Final Four came to me. Thompson-Boling Arena hosted. One problem – the Lady Vols got upset by Virginia in the regional finals. Summitt willed the Tennessee fan base to support the event. They did, the 16,595 in attendance nearly doubling the previous women’s championship mark. And Oak Ridge’s Jennifer Azzi was the MVP for victorious Stanford.

1998: The apex of Lady Vols basketball? Tennessee capped a 39-0 season in Kansas City to win its third consecutive national title. Chamique Holdsclaw & Co. destroyed Arkansas in the semis and outgunned Louisiana Tech 93-75 in the finals. The unexpected star of the championship game – and the subject of my column – was point guard Kellie Jolly.

2007: An eight-year title drought ended in Cleveland. It wasn’t necessarily pretty. Tennessee squirmed by North Carolina 56-50 in the semis, then throttled Rutgers 59-46 in the title game. Candace Parker was the best player in the building.

Now, the men, briefly.

In New Orleans in 2003, I witnessed Rick Barnes’ only Final Four (with Texas) and Jim Boeheim’s only national title in 47 seasons at Syracuse. In ’04 in San Antonio, Emeka Okafor led UConn past Georgia Tech. Duke and Oklahoma State also attended.

The best basketball was in 2005 in St. Louis, with a Who’s Who of coaches: North Carolina’s Roy Williams; Michigan State’s Tom Izzo; Louisville’s Rick Pitino. Williams’ Tar Heels beat Izzo in the semis and then Illinois 75-70 in a terrific title game. I spied Vince Vaughn and Bill Murray in the stands.

My favorite Final Four moment came in Indianapolis in 2006. Returning to the court from a bathroom visit moments before tipoff of the title game, I was stopped by security as a gaggle of tall VIPs was hustled into the arena. It was Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and their families come to watch UCLA. Royalty.

But they watched Florida cut down the nets after a 73-57 win.

Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Final Fours provided best moments in 41-year career