NCAA Tournament Time or Why It's Hard to Root for Marquette or Wisconsin

The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament is one of my favorite events in the entire sports year. I don’t follow college basketball very closely throughout the regular season, but come tourney time it gets my full attention. And believe it or not, gambling isn’t a reason for this.

Under most circumstances, I don’t pay a lot of attention to collegiate athletics – I went to a D3 school where no one gave a shit about the sports teams – but there’s something about the one-and-done, do-or-die nature of the tournament that has sucked me in for the better part of the last 10 years or so. The Cinderellas. The “5-12” upset special. Mid-majors. “One Shining Moment.” Gus Johnson. A 16 seed coming thisclose to beating a 1. All these things and more go into putting the “mad” into March Madness.

It’s sort of easy to root for an underdog. I think it’s something deep in the American psyche to want to see David topple Goliath, especially when David is a small-town school with no athletic scholarships and Goliath is a national powerhouse. There’s something about seeing fresh-faced kids playing under the bright lights, unfazed by the pressure but sitting with arms locked on the bench, living and dying with every shot that makes it difficult to look away.

A few years back, 16-seed Albany almost took down 1-seed Connecticut. In fact, Albany was leading by ten with 10 minutes to play. Now I don’t know anyone from Albany, NY, but as the minutes wound down and it became more apparent that the Great Danes would fade away into the gentle night, I felt like one of their students must have felt – shellshocked, bummed, yet proud that their team took a perennial contender to the limit.

Besides rooting for obvious underdogs, I will always wish my home teams well. Most years, these are Marquette and Wisconsin. I’m not going to wish ill will on either of them, but I’m not going to cheer outright for them either. You can mark this down in your file of reasons Kevin is a spiteful son of a bitch if you wish, because my reasons have nothing to do with the style of basketball they play. (Their styles and personnel, by the way, will get neither past the second round in my opinion.)

It was 2003, and both Wisconsin and Marquette has pretty damn good basketball teams. Wisconsin had Devin Harris and others, Marquette had soon-to-be superstar Dywane Wade and Travis Deiner, who embodied the work ethic of Wisconsinites everywhere. It was the best of both worlds; I could root for both teams to make it far and if one lost, the remaining team was just as good if not better.

The tournament started and both squads made deep runs. Good for Wisconsin, bad for me. You see, I didn’t have cable television at the time, and antenna reception was spotty at best so when it came time to watch the later rounds I had to watch the game at my roommate’s friend’s house. I didn’t mind the friend so much; it was his girlfriend that bugged the shit out of me. She is the reason that I can’t put much effort into cheering for a Wisconsin-Madison basketball team.

She was all about Wisconsin to begin with, being from Madison and all (which is strike number one in my book) and then she went on to say how much Marquette sucked and wanted them to lose. This was fine, I guess, but her personality grated and grated on me with her stupid fucking Mac Book and her terrible taste in music. If I heard her describe Dave Matthews or Jason Mraz or whatever-the-fuck pseudo-hippie bullshit was popular at the time as “amazing” one more time, I was going to punch her in the throat. Now I know that not all kids from Madison are like that, but I was fully prepared to embrace the newly-evident stereotype and disown Wisconsin-Madison basketball forever.

Marquette eventually surpassed Wisconsin on its way to a Final Four berth, where they promptly got blown out. Oh well, I still had the smug satisfaction from picking the right team.

(An epilogue: I don’t hate Wis-Madison so much now. I think that’s because, last year, the media’s lips were placed firmly around Greg Oden’s cock. I was quite happy yelling at the TV when Wisconsin beat Ohio State in Madison.)

So why don’t I like Marquette anymore?

It’s really quite easy. I work not for, but on, Marquette’s campus. I see the students every goddamned day waiting for the bus. You want to talk about a smug sense of self-satisfaction, take a look at these rich, privileged kids. Most of the guys look like typical rich, frat-boy douchebags – and stupid, rich frat-boy douchebags too because I’ve seen them walking down the street with cases of Natural Light. If mommy and daddy are paying for school – and it’s true that I can’t say for sure whether or not they are – don’t you think you could at least spring for a Miller product? And the girls - don’t even get me started. Let’s just say they look down on me with disdain.

I know it’s a very shallow reason not to like a team, but that’s really all there is to it. It’s hard, though, because I think Tom Crean is a great coach and Dominic James is fairly exciting to watch. Maybe one day I’ll grow up and not be so concerned with what college kids are doing.

I guess I’ll just have to sit back and wait until UW-Milwaukee gets a good team again.