I must confess to being ignorant about the accomplishments about the only man in history who has a 2006 Final Four basketball team named after him. I felt pretty safe in assuming that he was dead and white, but that was about all I knew.

So I looked it up, browed around Wikipedia and a few other places, and I put together a list of facts that you can use to impress your friends at your Final Four basketball get together. Enjoy.

• He was majory influential in getting the Bill of Rights added to the constitution. In fact, Bill of Rights itself was based on his Virginia Declaration of Rights, which he wrote earlier. The Bill of Rights is that thing with all the amendments, including the first one about freedom of speech, which is why I’m able to have this blog and say things like, “Bill Romanowski is a dirty cocksucker.”

• The reason George Mason isn’t as well known as some of our other forefathers is because he pissed off George Washington when he refused to sign the original constitution because it didn’t contain a Bill of Rights. Mason kept pissing and moaning about it after the fact until George no longer wanted to hang out with him. But George Washington didn’t even make the Sweet 16. George Mason’s in the Final Four. Scoreboard, you cherry-tree chopping son of a bitch.

• He did own slaves. Much like many of our other celebrated forefathers, we’ve named a bunch of shit after him, and he purchased black people. We might as well put some shackles and a bull-whip on the Mason jersey.

• He also argued vehemently that slaves needed to be freed, and that if the government was going to be all about liberty, then we needed to put an end to the practice of slavery. I don’t know his motivation for such arguments, but considering, you know, that he did actually own hundreds of black people, they were probably less than 100% altruistic.

• There’s a George Mason Memorial in D.C., though it isn’t nearly as popular as the giant phallus named for George Washington. The Memorial is really just a bronze George sitting on a bench with his legs crossed. Here’s a picture of it.

• Also, he was the first man in recorded history to ever give someone a Dirty Sanchez.

And if you’re really looking to impress people with your Masonly love, here are some George Mason quotes you can break out:

•”Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure.”

•”I begin to grow heartily tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city.”

•”The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”

I mentioned it on Deadspin on Saturday, but I wanted to bring it up here, too… UConn can suck me. The way Jim Calhoun whined and cried during the Washington game was a disgrace. He spent the entire first half acting like the referees were all conspiring to sodomize his wife. You’ve never seen a coach bitch so much… particularly considering that they got the benefit of a bullshit missed goaltending call that might have turned the game in Washington’s favor.

And then afterwards, at the press conference, he starts complaining about having to play a “road game” against George Mason.

“I just hope we have enough time to recover. It’s going to be nice playing an away game, too. I’m really looking forward to that. That pod system is really working out to protect the 1s, right?”

Hey, maybe he was right. Maybe it was unfair to the 1-seed UConn to have to play in such a terrible environment. Maybe that was too much to ask of UConn and their six-or-more future NBA players. Or maybe the players took a cue from their coach and started listening to his pre-made excuses, his whining, his crying, and they didn’t play like the champions they could have been. It was probably one of those things.

The behavior of a coach has a lot to do with the behavior of a team. And I don’t mean to slight George Mason at all, because I think very highly of their basketball team, but Jim Calhoun didn’t do his own guys any favors. Obviously, his track record is beyond reproach, the last two games were not his best work.