Despite the busted brackets, emptied wallets, disconsolate die?hards and the walking disaster that is my friend at Missouri who had to drink himself into a stupor during the Tigers' inexplicable loss to 15th?seeded Norfolk State, March Madness consistently boasts the most unpredictable and exciting competition in American sports.
That's why America came together on March 15 over what appeared to be a rigged first?round game between Syracuse and overwhelming underdog UNC?Asheville. Syracuse won 72?65 in the waning minutes - minute, really - of that game, propelled to victory by dismal refereeing.
Truth be told, most people don't really care who wins and loses in the NCAA tournament; more than anything, loyalty and alma maters included, it is usually money that begets vested interest. But the story of the underdog, immortalized first biblically with David vs. Goliath and subsequently revisited in events spanning all aspects of life, speaks to our sympathetic side.
It was but one year ago that the VCU Rams and Butler Bulldogs, 11th and 8th seeds, respectively, showed the nation that the sheer will of the little guy can - and will - topple the perennial powerhouses. Both teams reached the Final Four, before the Bulldogs fell to No. 3?seededUConn in a gritty, sloppy final that produced only 94 total points.
Here we are again, 12 months later, watching Ohio vs. UNC and praying to every God imaginable that Tyler Zeller slips and tweaks his ankle, or that D.J. Cooper (who is that again?) erupts for 40 points on 70 percent shooting to prolong the No. 13?seeded Bobcats' improbable run. Of course, now that UNC has proven too much for Ohio, winning that game in an overtime thriller, no one save Bobcat Nation still dwells on the loss.
Which brings me to my next point: Why do we care in the first place? The cynics among us - myself included - would cite the superficial appeal of a heartwarming story. Whatever emotions we feel are typically fleeting, and the results, unless there's a pool of money involved, are inconsequential.
But that sort of terse, unexamined response ignores the complexity of the question. And, while there isn't anything wrong with, say, letting the color of a team's jersey dictate which team you back, there must be an underlying motivation more profound than aesthetics. The underdog leitmotif resonates with us, I believe, because we have found ourselves in comparable situations, no matter how weighty; we see a sliver of ourselves in teams who defy expectations by taking adversity head?on.
Now that the lowest seed left in the tournament is Louisville, a No. 4, fewer people care about the tournament, although the quality of play will probably increase as the ratio of NBA prospects does. It certainly is a mystifying phenomenon how an abstraction like this - on the spectrum somewhere in between God and gravity - can compel an otherwise disinterested population to pull for a team and, by association, a school with which they have most likely never associated.
And oh how that phenomenon fades so rapidly when all the true underdogs have been ousted. With a veritable Cinderella story no longer able to be told, much of the ferment surrounding the tournament has evaporated. The casual viewer has withdrawn his attention from college basketball, and the world is once again rotating on its axis.
Now we wait. Not for the winner of this year's tournament - though fans like me look forward to who that will be - but for next March, when another Ohio or VCU or Butler makes a run deep into the tournament, amassing an overcrowded bandwagon along the way.
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Sam Gold is a freshman who has not yetdeclared a major. He can be reached at Samuel_L.Gold@tufts.edu.
