I remember sitting in the library in college once when Andy Salverda came up with a wonderful idea. See, Andy was pretty tall and could dunk a basketball, if I remember correctly, and he felt bad for people like me who didn’t have a chance in hell at throwing down a tomahawk slam, unless I happen to be playing with a Little Tykes hoops set.

So Andy took a notebook of mine and drew up a crude sketch of a game he called “Rampball.” The area around the hoop would be surrounded by the ramps so that short people could get that boost to dunk the ball. Of course, the idea died that day.

The first time I saw “Slamball,” I was pissed Andy and I never followed up on the scheme.

Slamball aired on Spike TV a few years back and featured a basketball-like game between four-man teams. The big difference was that the court had several trampolines near the net so guys could get wicked air like this.

Five years have passed since viewers could get a Slamball fix, but that’s about to change. A new season will be filmed this spring with franchises settling down in several cities in 2009 for a real league feel.

Apparently, they took Slamball to Italy over the past year or so, and it did amazing on TV so they decided to give the US market another shot. I don’t know if I like our sloppy seconds in Italy serving as the focus group, but I’ll look past that to see guys soaring 14 feet in the air to dunk the ball. As long as they do better than this guy.