Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Those unknown Patriots from Fairfax County

From this Cox news service story:

"If not Cinderella, just who or what is George Mason?

That's the question basketball fans across America were asking after the Patriots defeated top seed University of Connecticut in overtime Sunday to advance to the Final Four. On Saturday they'll play the University of Florida for a shot at the national championship.

Like its namesake, who has been dubbed "the forgotten Founding Father," the commuter university in a suburb of the nation's capital has long been overlooked among Virginia colleges. The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, and the College of William and Mary, where Jefferson was educated, have garnered the academic glory. Virginia Tech became a national football powerhouse.

Who knew that George Mason --with 29,600 students -- was the largest university in the state?

Who remembered that George Mason helped write the U.S. Constitution, then refused to sign it because it didn't initially contain a Bill of Rights?

Indeed, alone among Virginia universities, George Mason has two Nobel Prize winners on its faculty: James Buchanan in 1986 and Vernon Smith in 2002, both for economics."

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