Party Like it’s 2004: The Streak is Dead

Last night, something amazing happened.

I don’t blame you if you were sleeping, or uninterested, or paying attention to TCU Baseball last night, and such missed one of the biggest college basketball moments of the last... say, decade and a half.

But, here we are, just days away from crowning the first champion or co-champion of the Big 12 conference since 2004 that doesn’t end with Kansas holding up the trophy. The Jayhawks have been unseated from the throne by Oklahoma, who blasted KU in Norman Tuesday night, ensuring that Bill Self’s squad won’t have at least a share of the conference crown for the first time since 2004. Instead, either Kansas State or Texas Tech - or quite possibly both - will be named regular season champions Saturday.

It’s been a long time coming, to say the least. To put into perspective just how long, it’s time we take a ride in the way back machine to find out just how different the world was the last time someone other than Kansas sat atop the Big 12 Basketball standings.

Get ready, this is going to feel weird.

In 2004...

• Usher and Lil Jon sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart with their hit single “Yeah”
• Shrek 2 was the highest grossing movie of the year
• Lord of the Rings - Return of the King took home Best Picture honors at the Academy Award, while Charlize Theron (Monster) and Sean Penn (Mystic River) had the year’s best performances
• Facebook was born
• Skype was introduced as the next wave of communication in the future
• There were three significant natural disasters: Hurricane Ivan (Grenada/US), Hurricane Jeanne (Haiti), and a 9.3 earthquake devastated Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia
• GMAIL launches on April 1st (no, really)
• George W Bush defeated John Kerry in the presidential election
• The Boston Red Sox came back from a 3-1 deficit in the ALCS against the New York Yankees on their way to their first World Series victory since 2918
• The United States lost for the first time in Olympic play since NBA players had been a part of the program (1992)
• Michael Phelps burst onto the scene with eight gold medals in the Olympic Games
• Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake execute the wardrobe malfunction heard round the world during Super Bowl XXXVIII
• Eli Manning was the first pick in the NFL Draft
• Friends goes off the air after a ten year run
• The TV show Frasier goes off the air after an 11 year run (it’s in the process of being rebooted in 2019)
• The TV show Lost premiered
• Nintendo released the DS platform
• Ken Jennings won over $2.5 million over a 74 game winning streak on Jeopardy
• “blogging” was the word of the year
• Bill Self was in his second year of coach of the Kansas Jayhawks

It’s amazing to think what was considered new and fresh and what had yet to be introduced the last time Kansas wasn’t the Big 12 Champion. Since then, they have won one National Championship, been to ten Sweet 16s, eight Elite Eights, three Final Fours, and two National Championship games.

The question for the Big 12 is, who’s next? Let us know your thoughts?