by Sena Hughes
If you are a basketball fan, it is holy season. It’s when we pay homage to the greatest game ever played by sitting in front of a television, for hours upon hours, rejoicing in victory, grieving with heartbreak, gaping in disbelief and swooning in the beauty of it all. There is something so utterly human and poignant about March Madness.
Republicans and Democrats hug in harmony. Atheists believe in miracles. Parents let children stay up past their bedtimes. Professors and students can all agree that class is “optional” perhaps, in the event something “historical” should happen. Even the President makes time in his busy schedule to proceed in the ceremonial bracket picks.
Sixty-eight teams load buses, board planes and inhabit locker rooms. It doesn’t matter how they got there, what matters is that they are there. For some, it was a fluke shot at the buzzer of the conference championship. For others it is tradition; the school calendar was cleared a year prior in anticipation of their team having higher obligations in March. Some schools have budgets larger than the gross domestic product of underdeveloped countries; others may have student bodies a tenth of the size of their opponent’s.
And then it becomes anyone’s game. It gives everyone a chance to go from rags to riches; gives every Cinderella a chance to dance at the ball. It’s really a wonder we haven’t figured out that basketball is really the answer to all of the world’s problems. In February, a Georgetown University fan club, known as the Stonewalls, hung a banner in the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. that read, “Basketball is our Religion.” The banner represents and sports the logos of St. John’s, Seton Hall, Marquette, DePaul, Villanova and Providence, in addition to Georgetown.
The Stonewalls website describes, “The tifo echoes Georgetown coach John Thompson III’s sentiments that while the schools forming this new league each value their Catholic identity, it is their long tradition of and commitment to basketball that will bond them together.” Indeed it is a point of unity, celebration, reverence, good and wholeness.
So here we are again. The procedural completion of the bracket; the sacramental halt on reality for three weeks. The sacrificial burning of the bracket when unpredictable upsets have prevailed. The customary yelling, jumping, hair pulling and nail biting. The ritualistic cutting of the nets. Let’s dance.
Contact Sena Hughes at shughes15@my.whitworth.edu