Five Reasons To Be Glad You Went To College In Long Beach and Not Knoxville

Long Beach is ready to party -- their basketball team is the trendy bracket-buster pick to knock off Tennessee in the first round of the NCAA hoops Tournament. Long Beach students are pumped, ready for a big party at the Acapulco Inn. (Well, they'll party at the AI either way.)

But we want to pass along a friendly note to Long Beach students: Regardless of what happens with the game, just remember that things could be worse -- you could be going to school in Tennessee. Let’s compare:

1) You could join the Long Beach State’s Surf Club and then drive 3.6 miles with your new buds to the waves in Seal Beach. If the University of Tennessee even had a surf club they’d have to road trip 465 miles (near Wilmington, NC) to catch a wave.

2) The biggest current musical star out of Long Beach is Snoop Dogg (as well as Warren G and Nate Dogg, who all got together in Long Beach). In Knoxville you’d be forced to brag about Kenny “Renne Zellwegar who?” Chesney. And as an added bonus, compare the biggest defunct musical acts -- Sublime vs. Ava Barber.

3) A 30 minute drive from Long Beach gets you to Hollywood one direction or Disneyland the other direction. A 30 minute drive from Knoxville gets you to Pigeon Forge, home of Dollywood and other “entertainment” best described as a poor man’s Branson.

4) Average annual temperature in January: Long Beach 56, Knoxville 36.

5) The Beach Boys didn’t sing “I wish they all could be Tennessee girls” for a reason.

AP photo by Chris Park