LeBron's breakup with Cleveland is personal

Gerald Patnode, chair of the Business Administration Department, was quoted in this story, which went national on the AP wire:

The elimination ceremony boiled down to a single sentence, uttered by the most coveted bachelor of them all.

And it ended, as such endings always do, with tears — and the self-righteous fury that inevitably follows being rejected live on national television. Millions of Americans glued to their television screens watched in anticipation and curiosity as LeBron James handed that coveted final rose to the Miami Heat, eliminating his remaining suitors in one cruel instant.

In Cleveland, grown men cried into their beers. And for crestfallen viewers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the moment of truth stung like a personal betrayal.

But isn't this what America asked for? We wanted the show, the spectacle, the slow build-up to the big reveal. We love watching contestants get mercilessly booted into oblivion in front of the cameras — but we certainly don't want to be the rejects ourselves, thank you very much.

And that's exactly what happened Thursday night. The morning after, people are wondering: How did a decision by one basketball player jump clean out of the realm of basketball and become an American cultural moment that will be talked about for years to come?

That's called masterful marketing. James played coy for weeks, dragging out his decision as the frenzied speculation went into overdrive. Rather than leave his home turf, he invited teams from various cities to come visit him instead. Meanwhile, hope and anxiety built like a balloon about to pop.

Preliminary Nielsen Co. ratings showed more than seven of every 100 homes with TV sets were tuned in to the ESPN special. In Cleveland, the attention was extraordinary: one in every four homes watched James announce he was leaving his hometown. Nielsen's estimate of how many people watched nationwide, expected on Friday, was delayed until Monday.

"It built suspense. It kept sequencing or ratcheting up what would the choice be," said Gerry Patnode, who leads the school of business at York College in York, Pa. "Everybody started to speculate what it would be like if LeBron came to my city."