March Madness: Lessons for uniting America
“Let’s win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here.” — Quote from the basketball classic “Hoosiers”
We needed this. After a year of lockdowns and isolation, depression and anxiety, heartaches and headaches, we desperately longed something to lift our spirits. We wanted something, anything, that would jar our memories about what “normal” life was like. Above all, we craved to “let it all out” by laughing, screaming, and cheering — celebrating that which so many had taken for granted: Life itself.
We’re certainly not out of the woods. But for the last few days, we were granted a reprieve: The return, after two years, of March Madness. And how mad it has been:
• The underdogs reigned with record success, with more upsets in the first two rounds than ever before.
• Small schools, non-basketball powers and long-forgotten conferences have proven that odds are just numbers, and that you still have to play the game.
Rutgers won its first tournament game in three decades. Oral Roberts became just the second 15th seed to win two games, whipping powerhouses Ohio State and Florida. And Oregon State’s improbable run would be too far-fetched even for Hollywood: Picked to finish last in their conference, they proceeded to win five straight (and counting) elimination games. According to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, they had less than a thirty percent chance in each contest, equating to odds of 1-in-2800 for winning all five. Yet here they stand, while so many high-andmighty have been sent packing.
Embarrassingly, the Big 10 — the “top” conference, which sent a Tournament-best nine teams to Indiana — has but one survivor. Ditto for the vaunted Big 12, with the ACC and SEC not faring much better. Yet the PAC-12, disparaged as nothing more than a glorified high school league, proudly sports a whopping four of its five Tournament teams in the Sweet Sixteen, proving that there’s nothing sweeter that watching your critics eat crow.
March Madness. It is, without a doubt, the best sporting event on the planet.
For a few weeks, Americans suddenly become blind to their prejudices. Political partisanship and the management-labor caste go out the window. And the only colors we care about are those worn by our favorite teams. We experience the unbelievable moments, sometimes forgetting to breathe, as seniors, some destined for the NBA, but most for an “ordinary” life, play their hearts out, knowing that one misstep will end their collegiate career. And just as often, we see 18-year-old freshmen step to the foul line with the game in their hands, as an entire nation watches.
Alma maters and home teams notwithstanding, most Americans always pull for the underdogs, the teams that the “experts” don’t give a snowball’s chance to win. And in an instant, the entire nation fell in love with the Oregon State Beavers, the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles (it’s in Oklahoma), the Ohio Bobcats (definitely not “the” Ohio State), and the Abilene Christian Wildcats. Only in America!
We find this endearing not just because it’s fun, but because it personifies who we are as Americans. From our very beginnings, the odds have always been stacked against us:
Defeat the British, the most powerful nation the world had ever known? Impossible. But we did, making the dream of liberty and freedom a reality, on an unprecedented scale, for hundreds of millions. Put a man on the moon? Save the Apollo 13 astronauts? Beat the Soviet Union and defeat communism? End segregation? Elect a Black man to the presidency? The list goes on. And yet despite America’s track record of beating the odds, the naysayers are still out there, predicting gloom and doom.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe America really is in its twilight, as the country’s seemingly insurmountable problems, and the politicians’ inability to solve them in a civil manner, attests. Maybe. But no matter how many times America has stumbled, and how often its back has been to the wall, it has always prevailed.
For the record, my money is on America coming through in the clutch, and finishing the game stronger than anyone else. It’s what we’ve always done, and it’s what we must do now. Why? Because it’s what true champions do.
As the Tournament continues in Indianapolis, let’s remember what March Madness teaches us. And in the words of Gene Hackman’s Coach Dale in “Hoosiers:” “Welcome to Indiana Basketball … I love you guys.”