The people who go the extra mile, or thousand, for college basketball

While his coworkers sit in an office or a home office, Aaron Margelofsky often works from his car, a rental car, an airport, or another mode of transportation. And the moment that he clocks out from his day job as a financial analyst – what he himself calls “boring spreadsheet stuff” – he transforms into perhaps the nichest of the niche internet micro-celebrities on the college basketball internet.

But Margelofsky didn’t start this intending to become a social media star, and he still isn’t. At the end of the 2025-26 college basketball season, Margelofsky has but 1,799 followers on Twitter, where he shares most of his journeys. But those who do follow him see Margelofsky in a new place just about every day, watching college basketball in a cool place.

Entering Margelofsky’s red Toyota Prius is like finding your way into a whole new world. It’s filled to the brim with bags and clothes strewn all over the place, whether old, trustworthy clothes or the many that he picks up on the road. The back seat is flattened and covered with blankets to make a makeshift bed. There’s just enough space on the driver’s side of the car for him to climb in and drive in comfortably, and just enough space on the passenger seat to drop off whatever he had in his hands.

The 2023 Butler University alumnus rides out from his home in Carmel, Indiana, content to listen to the History Daily podcast or a playlist of songs from the FIFA games as he drives for hours and hours on the highways mostly east of the Mississippi. When he stops, he’ll text his friends, whom he met in high school, college, or whatever odd path his life has taken him since then, to update them on his travels. But even as he falls asleep in the hybrid car he put over 40,000 miles on during the college basketball season alone, he is excited for the next trip.

In 2025-26, he upped his tally of arenas attended to 109 of the 365. He attended 116 games in over a dozen states, starting the season at 8 a.m. in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and finishing at the national championship in Indianapolis.

“I’ve never felt super lonely on my travels,” Margelofsky told Basket Under Review. “I’ve felt a little bit like, I don’t want to say a loser because this is all something I’m choosing to do, but I don’t ever feel too lonely.”

Coleman Crawley’s Twitter header is a picture of a Saint Louis Billikens warm-up shirt from the 2022-23 season. He’s not an SLU fan, and he has no connection to the school. He’s not even the one wearing the shirt. But he was struck by a line on the back.

“The journey is the reward,” it reads.

Before Margelofsky started on his travels, Crawley was the man who left it all on the line for the sport. Unlike Margelofsky, Crawley actually had to quit his job to go on his travels, which he began at the end of December 2022. The Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, native fell in love with basketball through his father, a high school coach, and watching Tulsa teams coached by Bill Self and his dad’s mentor, John Phillips. Seeing those teams come out of the WAC into the NCAA Tournament made him a mid-major lifer.

He knew he wanted to find a way into the sport, whether through media or coaching, but instead went into the corporate world after college. But he never stopped watching, and that’s when his idea hit him. Crawley saw crowds dwindling after COVID and wanted to do something about it.

“God, if I attended a lot of these games,” Crawley told Basket Under Review. “I feel like I could get good content, good footage of high-level basketball being played. And some of these teams end up being our Cinderellas.”

But he still had to take the leap of faith and quit his job to execute that mission. And for Crawley, that involved difficult conversations with his wife, his boss, his mentors, and others he respected.

“Hey, am I a complete jackass for this crazy decision?” he asked.

He didn’t know how long he’d be able to do it for. He hoped that somebody would hire him to do it full-time, but he decided to run with it independently.

By it, I mean driving his Honda across the eastern half of the country to all corners to find a way to go to a college basketball game. Every single night. From December 2022 until the end of the 2022-23 season, he put himself in a new place, watching a new game.

Social media was a big part of his process from the beginning. He’d hoped to be picked up by Barstool or an outlet similar to do this long-term. Crawley said that he regrets making gambling such a big part of his posts early on. He soon learned that the end result – whether for his wallet or his life – wouldn’t be the part that he remembered.

Sure, his social media presence made him a super-niche microfigure that got him in some doors. But he found himself highlighting different things than he expected.

A few weeks in, he made a trip to Fordham, where the Rams – in the midst of what became the program’s best season in over 30 years – were hosting Dayton. It was a rare night that year when Fordham got blown out. And while Crawley’s content centered around the games, his memories certainly don’t.

He saw a group of Rams fans standing the entire game, going nuts, with one of them even wearing a Fordham football helmet. They were rowdy but respectful, and Crawley wanted to let them know he noticed. He told the group that he appreciated their enthusiasm, and they told him that they were already fans of his content.

The fans invited him over to their house, where they showed Crawley all of their Fordham gear and even let him stay the night.

He had a similar experience at Columbia a few years later, when he met an older gentleman in his 70s who kept score by hand for Lions games that he’d been going to for decades. He hasn’t seen Columbia make the NCAA Tournament since 1968, but he still keeps showing up.

“It seemed like everywhere I went,” Crawley said. “I had a conversation with somebody who clearly cared a lot about their team. That was the favorite part of the journey, just connecting with people.”

Especially at the mid-major level, he found a romanticism in it.

“I saw how much fans care, especially the diehards that have been going for 50 years, and then ultimately, I think the message of mid-major college basketball (is like) a metaphor for life,” Crawley said. “These teams know that they’re facing inevitable death. Maybe the Final Four is the absolute height of their potential, but they aren’t winning a national championship, even in the best-case scenario. So for them to go to war, every single night, knowing that they’re not going to win it all, I just think it’s a beautiful metaphor for life.”

He snagged that picture of the Saint Louis warmup shirts when the Billikens came up to play against Fordham later in January 2023, and later made it his header.

The godfather of what he calls “high-volume game travel” is Michael Barker, who goes on the College Football Campus Tour each fall and has been to each and every FBS stadium. He’s not quite a household name, but he has appeared alongside household names, with profiles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and ESPN.

Originally from California, Barker was never much of a traveler. In fact, he said that he started because he’d never been anywhere. Unlike Crawley, social media was not a factor at the start. He didn’t get on social media until he’d already started going to games. An impromptu 2017 trip to Colorado and Colorado State’s campuses on the way to a hotel in Lake Estes, Colorado, as part of a rare trip, made famous by a Stephen King movie, gave him the itch.

At a game between San Diego State and Boise State in San Diego that fall, he met a Disney executive who recommended that he get on Twitter. It wasn’t an immediate hit, but over time, he’s built up a loyal following of nearly 60,000.

Some of those 60,000, like Margelofsky, who called Barker an inspiration, have started their own journeys.

“If you make something look fun,” Barker told Basket Under Review. “Other people want to do it.”

Barker is always on the go during college football season. And he’s always running into people who see his content.

“I’ll meet a husband and a wife, and they’re there with their kids, and the husband is telling me, ‘I live vicariously through you,’” Barker said. “I’m a regular person. I think what happens when you do something at a high volume is that people get interested in it, and they become wrapped up in it.”

“But I think it’s awesome,” he continued. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen their bio on Twitter, and they set it up the same way that I do, talking about the venues they’ve been to. I’ve seen people making flyers that have their schedule for the week. It’s amazing, man. It just shows you the reach that social media can have when you bring something unique and different that people like.”

At the beginning of the 2025 season, Barker traveled to Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States. It also happens to have the northernmost high school football stadium in the United States.

Now that he’s been to every FBS stadium and most of the FCS stadiums as well, Barker has to find new ways to satisfy his travel itch to see new places. His planning grows increasingly unhinged each year.

He has to descend more and more into sicko madness in order to, as he puts it, produce a TV show.

“I call what I do a TV show,” Barker said. “You need to get people interested. You know, there’s certain things that social media reacts to. You’re thinking about U Sports in Canada. I’ve looked at the Japanese college league, there’s a Mexican college league. You want to lean into the sicko stuff. You want to find unique experiences.”

The greatest mark of true college basketball sicko is Itta Bena, Mississippi. Mississippi Valley State University has been dead last in KenPom for three consecutive years. The program hasn’t won more than five games in a season since 2019, and hasn’t won more than 10 since 2012. The Delta Devils don’t draw big crowds in the small town of about 2,000 people, about 2.5 hours from any other Division I school. But this town was nirvana for Margelofsky, and for any sicko who dares make the trip.

As non-conference schedules poured out for the 2025-26 season, one game stood out. On December 16, Mississippi Valley State would play a home, non-conference game against a Division I opponent, taking on Tarleton State.

Margelofsky couldn’t miss it.

“This never happens,” he said. “When else are they going to do that? I gotta go down to that.”

So he started planning. As he builds his schedule, Margelofsky has benchmarks in mind. He knew that he was going to the Jimmy V Classic in New York City on December 9, which set the guide points. Find a way to get from New York to Itta Bena in a week. But it’s not as simple as a straight shot drive.

He had to be back in Indianapolis for work for a few days – yes, work. While he works remotely as often as possible, Margelofsky still does need to be in the office a fair amount. It’s why much of his travel early on radiated out from Indianapolis.

Instead of driving back home, he parked at Newark Airport on Wednesday morning, flew back to Indianapolis, worked two days in the office, attended IU Indy against Green Bay on Thursday night, and flew back to Newark on Friday morning.

He picked up his car and began carving his way down the East Coast. He went to UMBC on Friday night, then did doubleheaders the next two days. First, it was Maryland and George Mason, then it was Virginia Tech and Radford. That brought him within seven hours of Alabama A&M on Monday. From Huntsville, it was just under five hours to Itta Bena.

But for a moment, he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to go to the game at all. Tickets weren’t listed on the MVSU website or anywhere that he looked.

“It turns out, that’s because it’s free,” Margelofsky said.

He estimates that he was one of 50 to 100 people at the game, which saw the Texans dominate MVSU 88-64, dropping the Delta Devils to 0-10 against Division I opponents. But if you’re going to Itta Bena, you’re not expecting to see Mississippi Valley State win. You’re going for the experience.

“They had a nice little facility,” he said. “You walk around, check everything out. I was trying to take advantage of being at Mississippi Valley State, just try to show how cool and awesome this is.”

This also brought on a moment of reflection for Margelofsky.

A month earlier, he opened Snapchat and saw a memory from November 2023. It was his first trip to Assembly Hall, just his sixth college basketball venue. He surpassed 100 venues during the 2026-27 season. One trip turned into two, then three, then four, and they never stopped.

What started as a way to find cool things to do at night when his girlfriend was at rehearsals during his first year out of college became a lifestyle unto itself.

He’s become addicted to the college basketball travel. New experiences, new things. But he’s never been shy of an interesting travel day. When studying abroad during college, his friends went to Venice and Spain over spring break, but he had a different idea.

“Everybody else is doing kind of big touristy things, what if I go to Liechtenstein?” he said. “I just kind of walked around and checked everything out. It was this dumb, absurd thing, but it was really cool.”

“I feel like that’s always been my kind of thing,” Margelofsky continued. “I don’t necessarily do what’s most popular, but just try to find things that are fun for me that nobody else would find fun and do them.”

He said that he had the same feeling in Liechtenstein as he did in Itta Bena.

“What I value most is the memories, those experiences,” Margelofsky said. “When I see that place on a map or when I see Mississippi Valley State on TV, I can be like ‘hey, remember that time I was there’, and that’s a cool thing for me to always draw back on that absurd thing that I did.”

For some people, it becomes a sustainable way of life. Barker has essentially been trying to out-sicko himself for a decade. Margelofsky actually ventures that he has a strong work-life balance. He still maintains a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend, who graduated a year after him, and now lives in New Jersey. She’ll even come along to games with him sometimes when he’s in the area.

And she supports the travel.

“She likes that I have something that I’m very passionate about,” Margelofsky said.

He says that his travels will eventually slow down, but it’s not in the direct plans. He wants to visit every single Division I arena, and will do it “even if it takes me decades.”

Crawley, too, wants to hit every venue, but his journey came to a hard stop after about two full years of attending as many games as he could. He and his wife moved to New York during the 2023-24 season, and he started a new job that allowed him to find his way to games all across the northeast on his free time. He thought that would give him an avenue to sustain this lifestyle, but it did the opposite.

“It just started to get really taxing with going into the office on a daily basis,” Crawley said. “And then having every single one of my weekends booked from December all the way through April, when you’re not getting compensated very significantly for going to all of these games.”

“I started to look at it realistically, and it was… a little unfair to my wife if I plan on doing this for a long time.”

He still goes to a game around New York every once in a while. He’s a fixture in LIU’s Reef doing ‘Fins Up’ alongside the creators of the movement, but he’s not traveling very far. He still keeps in touch with many of the friends he made along the way and is planning a new way to stay in the college basketball space.

Through his insanity, Margelofsky has met friends who rip on him for not having a job, but he claims that he actually gets good remarks at work thanks to his “desirable employment traits,” but it’s hardly a secret that he’s not enthusiastic about it. After all, most people aren’t enthusiastic about their jobs. He saves up PTO for his biggest trips, but can usually find a way to work wherever he is.

His brother, Brett, coaches high school basketball in their hometown of Bonduel, Wisconsin, but says that if he had the time available, he’d join his brother on these journeys. In fact, the two did travel together in the summer of 2025 to a bunch of different minor league baseball stadiums. But it’s in that small northern Wisconsin town where Margelofsky’s love for college basketball was born, and he’s spread it across the country.

After going to Itta Bena, he had to find his way back up to Wisconsin for Christmas with his family. He made a schedule, and hit games along the way, but spent a few days at home. Shortly after, he was back on the road, going to Nebraska and the Dakotas over New Year’s.

“I’m not sleeping in my car on New Year’s Eve,” he said. So one of his very few hotels on the trip came in Fargo, North Dakota.

When he’s driving, he feels like it’s just another day. He looks back now and realizes that a five-hour round-trip day trip to Mercyhurst vs. LIU in Erie, Pennsylvania in 2025 was an insane idea, but at the time, it was just what was on the schedule.

If there’s one thing that Margelofsky will never do, it’s take himself too seriously. He’s caught up in the bit and made it his life.

“I feel like in general, I’m a very normal person with a normal life,” Margelofsky said. “I just do this one ridiculous thing.”