• There was no shot clock, and no three-point line. Both came rushing into effect within three years after this game. While some would argue that Georgetown could have been more easily beaten with both, I tend to believe that a good three-shooter on the Hoyas would free up an unbelievable amount of operating room inside for Ewing.
• There were no "breakaway"-style collapsible rims, meaning the iron was extremely unforgiving. For Villanova to shoot 79 percent on those old rims was even more impressive.
• Gary McLain was a terrible shooter. Terrible! He had an unbalanced "push-loaded" shot that looked even funnier on the free-throw line. I am convinced that not a single Division I guard today has a shot as fundamentally unsound as did the eventual MVP that night.
• Every player was a jumble of legs and arms, with very little muscular upper torso. I seemed to recall Michael Graham as being a rough and tumble badass the year before when they won the title. But the highlights show he would never survive in today's game as a so-called "power forward."
• The shorts. My god, the shorts. Nut-hugging, crack-flossing, thigh-chafing abominations. It looks cruel and unusual in retrospect.

The special also has several priceless pieces of video that every sports fan under the age of 20 just has to see. Things like a packed house of rabid Villanova fans who greeted their team triumphantly just for making the Final Four! The sheer ferocity of Ewing's dunks and blocks, many of which hit the floor with such force as to bounce up over people's heads on the rebound.

And what could beat the 15-foot-tall handmade NCAA tournament bracket that ESPN's Bob Ley stood in front of while analyzing the tournament? You can literally see where somebody cut and pasted the names of the teams into the bracket like a high school art project.

The glorious victory was marred just two years later by McLain's admission to Sports Illustrated that he was a cocaine addict who played the national semi-final against Memphis State high on blow. A clip of a young big-haired Deborah Norville conducting the Today Show interview with McLain brought back another piece of priceless '80s pop-culture trivia -- NBC's ham-handed ouster of popular but aging morning host Jane Pauley.

In terms of a pure David-Goliath upset, some basketball analysts will say this one was hardly the greatest underdog triumph of all time.

The most famous and dramatic? Yes. But the biggest mismatch? No way. Ed Pickney and Harold Pressley were both first round NBA selections. And Villanova did play in the same conference as Georgetown, having fought the Hoyas tough in two losses earlier that year.

Furthermore, there was no great social or political implication of this win. It was not mostly all-black Texas Western beating all-white Kentucky. It wasn't Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics. It was hardly the Cold War proxy of USA-Russia at Lake Placid.

So if you expect the tear-jerking, jaw-dropping power of previous HBO sports docs, you won't find it here. This was just one helluva great game that reminds us of why we watch sports in the first place. Nothing more.

Still, children of the '80s like myself, will enjoy the time warp back to our days of (relative) innocence and be reminded of how much has happened in our lives since. For me, 20 years ago I was riding a bus in high school. Today, I happen to work at the same radio station as Thompson himself.

The coach I see and talk to briefly each day bears little if any resemblance to the guy who lost that game. He is easygoing, funny and anything but paranoid. Not exactly what most would expect from the legendary John Thompson.

But then nobody expected Villanova to win that night either. Life, and sports, can be unpredictable that way.