You know how I know hoops season is close? The videos

The anticipation of the 2011-2012 season has been building up these past few days. The practices have finally began, and the first tip-off is not too far down the road. While the NFL and World Series occupy the majority of the public attention, die-hard college hoop-heads are starting to gear up.

In less than just 12 hours, we've been privy to not one, but two entertaining promotional videos to get us excited for the upcoming season.

First, Stanford University pulled out all the stops (i.e. Andrew Luck and Mark Madsen) to recreate one of the mid-90s most recognizable commercials:



Spoof-videos are becoming more and more commonplace in the college hoops realm, and I think we can all agree that videos like this are welcomed addition.

Unfortunately, not all videos are meant for everyone. More specifically, Not everybody likes Duke. In fact, most people either love Duke or they hate them, so producing a video titled "Duke Worldwide" is probably going to elicit some strong opinions.

Roll the footage:



Auto-tune went out of style in 2008, right? Didn't Jay-Z publicly call for an end to it? How much more official can you get?

Good or bad, videos like these help to bide our time until the first tip-off. And once the games do begin, more videos will surface providing us with filler-material between Big Monday and Super Tuesday.