March 24, 2014
While I admit that I’m not a big fan of college basketball, I can’t help but get caught up in the spirit of March Madness. I never fill out a bracket or enter a pool for the simple reason that I don’t want to put myself in the position of cheering against my favorite teams, but I did watch a lot of the games this past weekend. To me, what is unique to the NCAA Division I basketball tournament is not the madness, but the sadness.
The end of every game means the end of a season, the end of a dream, for the losing team. So at the end of every game you see players and fans crying, weeping, wailing, sobbing, moaning, or just gazing into nowhere with a glazed-over look in their eyes.
The enormity of the sadness became clear to me toward the end of the Kansas vs. Stanford game on Sunday March 23rd. Stanford was in the midst of pulling off the big upset when the CBS cameras zeroed in on a little boy all geared up in Kansas blue. The boy was crying, in an extreme state of distress. Kansas made a brief comeback, and then the boy looked hopeful. But Stanford won at the end and the boy was bawling again.
Young Kansas fan weeps to know it’s all over. Gotta feel for the little guy.
Of course, CBS was tugging on our emotional heartstrings by making a spectacle of the little boy. But still, that boy serves as a sort of symbolic representation of how our culture is one in which our personal identities are tied in to the performance of our favorite sports teams. And the tournament, more than any other major sporting event that I can think of, allows everyone to feel that they have a chance to win it all. So the emotional tumult is intense and severe.
The only thing I can think to compare it to in track is the feeling of being a coach at a major championship meet. You’re living and dying with every heat of every race. One minute you’re on cloud nine feeling like all the hard work has paid off as an athlete wins an event, the next minute you hear a “clink clink” on the ground and realize that your relay team has just dropped the baton.
Even though I live in North Carolina, I was born in Philly and raised in the Philly suburbs, so I follow the Philly teams in the NCAA tournament. As a result, I rarely experience significant heartbreak, since the Philly teams rarely get very far. This year, St. Joseph’s and Villanova made it to the tournament. St. Joseph’s got bounced early and Villanova bricked their way to a loss against a determined UConn squad. Oh well.
Meanwhile, the professional Philly basketball team (sixers, sick-sers) is sad in another way. They just lost their 25th straight game earlier this evening as they continue their mission of gaining the NBA’s worst record and (hopefully) the first pick in the 2014 draft. But despite losing 25 in a row, we still don’t have the worst record in the league. The Milwaukee Bucks are two games below us (or should I say ahead of us?) in the tanking sweepstakes. How do you lose 25 straight games and still not have the league’s worst record?
Trust me, I’d rather be that Kansas kid bawling in the bleachers. At least his team is good enough to cry over. In Philly, it’s gotten to the point where we’re not capable of heartbreak. We’re just numb. We’ve given up. We’ve fallen asleep.
If you had to pick one image to summarize the 2013-14 76er season, this would be the one.
