I swear, I’m never watching college basketball again. Ever.
OK, so I say this about a lot of things (I’m done writing columns; I’m only going to focus on the good things in life; I’ll never eat anything with mayonnaise on it again, etc.). I say it about college basketball every year around this time and, even now, my stupid brain is starting to numb over the emotional wounds dealt by March Madness, an event I can’t believe I used to look forward to every year.
March Madness? Isn’t that still happening? Yeah, maybe for a few people. My alma mater, Purdue University, now has the distinct dishonor of becoming the second team in NCAA history to lose in the first round as a No. 1 seed to a 16 seed, courtesy of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Knights, who were darlings for a day and then were obliterated in the second round by Florida Atlantic.
With Purdue riding high much of the season and getting that anticipated top seed, a few people asked me what the pitfall game for the Boilermakers was in their bracket. My answer? All of them. It probably sounded like I was kidding, but I wasn’t.
The last time Purdue had a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament was my sophomore year, the 1995-96 season. They did everything they could to become the first team to fall to a 16 seed in that tournament, barely defeating the Western Carolina Catamounts. With the Boilermakers up by two points, the Catamounts got off a decent three-point attempt that clanged off the back iron and out as time expired. Those of us watching in a friend’s dorm room exhaled with nervous relief. Two days later, we eyed each other grimly as the Boilers were utterly destroyed in the second round by that college basketball powerhouse ... (checks notes) ... the Georgia Bulldogs.
(A brief aside about college mascots, because people often ask me what a Boilermaker is, other than a guy in a fiberglass head wielding a sledgehammer and riding a train. It was applied to the university’s football team by a sportswriter in the late 1800s after Purdue roughed up Wabash College. It was meant as an insult — a general reference to any blue-collar railroad worker — implying the team had superior athletes but inferior intellects. The team turned the insult on its head and embraced the nickname. Oh, and a Catamount is someone who mounts the empty, business end of a catapult, says “Hey y’all, watch this!” and is never heard from again. You all know what a Knight is. One of them used to sing in front of a group called the Pips.)
I was actually relieved in 2018 when the University of Virginia became in the first No. 1 seed to fall to a 16. At least Purdue, whatever happened in the future, wouldn’t be the first. Turns out, being the second doesn’t feel much better.
I know it’s just a game and I don’t have anything to do with how well my alma mater performs in athletics. I know I should be optimistic, instead of fearing the worst. But, come on, all you Mountaineer and Thundering Herd fans who are reading this and couldn’t care less about where I went to college; you know how it is.
Someone was recently talking about how great March Madness is, and how it provides an escape from everything else going on. I realized that it might have done that for me at one time, but it really doesn’t anymore. Maybe it never did.
I grew up in Kentucky, where college basketball is a religion. I can still recall my dad, a perfectly reasonable, professional man — an Army vet and a doctor — yelling all sorts of things I can’t repeat here at the television during Kentucky basketball games. One time, he even threw his shoes at the TV. Things like the Laettner shot that are celebrated annually around this time of year still sting Kentucky fans more than three decades later. “Hey, remember that time we killed your dog and everyone cheered? You want to see that again? No? Well, you’re gonna.”
College basketball is stressful for me. Sure, I get wound up by and am infatuated with a lot of other sports, but I don’t sit down to watch a college football game with a nagging sense of dread that I have to repress. The problem is that hope springs eternal and, by next season, that sort of optimism will have eclipsed the memory of my pierced heart.
I know this is an unhealthy and perhaps backward approach to sports fandom, but I don’t think it’s entirely unusual. Some of us were raised pessimists in regard to some sports, and we kind of expect the worst while chiding ourselves for hoping for the best.
Oh, before I forget, I’m sorry my school destroyed your office pool bracket. But at least most of your casual wardrobe doesn’t have the school logo on it and you probably don’t have a Purdue sticker in your car window either. Lucky bastards.
