The Look on Their Faces

Ahhhh, March.  Is there anything better?  I think not.  The month itself is okay, but what happens in March on the basketball court is quite literally, epic.  Every year there’s another incredible storyline, another Cinderella run – Virginia Commonwealth in 2011, George Mason in 2006, Florida Gulf Coast this year and always yet another heartbreaking upset – Davidson over Georgetown in ’08, Richmond over Syracuse in ’91.  I submit that there is nothing more compelling in all of sport than the NCAA basketball tournament.  I know, I know – I grew up in the south, but the blood in my veins is red (Indiana Crimson to be exact!).  I get how important we all like to think college football is and yes, it is just that important.  But it’s not the same.  The tide can’t turn as quickly in football as it can in basketball.  One kid can’t put a team on his back and carry them to the promised land in football like he can in basketball.  It’s a team sport but it’s mano y mano at its core – pure human competition.  Plus, in football, you can’t see their emotion; you can’t see their faces.

One of the most vivid memories in my life is the look on Keith Smart’s face after he hit that baseline jumper with :07 on the clock to beat Syracuse and give IU the National Championship in ’87.  Every game, there’s always a hero – Jim Valvano running around the court looking for somebody to hug in ’83. Or Christian Laettner sinking that ridiculous turnaround jumper at the buzzer as Duke beat Kentucky in the greatest college basketball game ever played circa 1992.  There’s always a villain – Michigan’s Fab Five in the early ‘90s.  Darth Vader / Michael Corleone in the vestige of John Calipari (every day of every week, always).

Legendary figures: Bobby Knight, John Wooden, Danny Ferry, Patrick Ewing, Elgin Baylor, Magic, Lucas, Maravich, Oscar Robinson.

Tradition: Indiana’s awesome (ridiculous) red striped warm-up pants, the Cameron Crazies, Vanderbilt’s weird-ass court, Midnight Madness, Rock Chalk Jayhawk – the list could go on forever.

What we as basketball fans forget, or at least I do, is that these rock star athletes, these stud ballers, these blue chip prospects…they’re just kids.  Do you remember what it felt like to be 18, 19, 20 years old?  It was weird as hell right?  Could you have handled the pressure that these kids face?  I know that I couldn’t.  I forget that these finely tuned athletic machines are just kids until the game ends.  Until I see their faces.  Win or lose, that’s when we see how important this little game is to them, to us.

Maybe it's a mid-western thing.  I grew up listening to stories of French Lick Larry Bird greatness.  I remember seeing hoops on every static surface when I was a kid.  Every barn had a goal right atop the doors for summer and a second in the hay loft for the winter.  My first memories are of basketball exploit stories – dusty Belleville Tuesday nights in front of my grandpa's garage, Uncle Charlie's jumpers in early moonlight. 

My beloved Hoosiers fell tonight to Syracuse – payback’s a bitch, even (26) years after the fact.  (Can I add Jim Boeheim to the villains list, btw?  His team was better than mine tonight but he’s still a sleaze ball.)  That said did you see the look on their faces?  Every member of both teams fought, bled, died and they either won or they lost based on their individual and / or collective effort.  They were every one completely in the moment.  Both sides knew exactly what had to be done next to win.  Pure concentration.  Pure adrenalin.  Pure commitment – and that's true of every team in the tournament, every year.  My team didn’t win, but maybe there’s a lesson here.  I have to believe that in life that if you dive for every loose ball, if you always play hand-in-your-face defense and are always fundamentally sound in everything that you do, eventually you will win.  That’s the Indiana coming out in me, but I think it’s legit.

These young men that play this game have so much to teach the rest of us.  I don’t often draw comparisons between sport and life – I think it’s too easy of a clichéd trap to fall into – but I fall into it tonight.  Witnessing the effort with which these young men compete to achieve their goal is incredibly inspiring to me, makes me want to try that much harder at the largely unimportant game I play. 

Bright eyed in jubilating victory or with a towel over your face in humiliating defeat, if you can see and accept the look on your own face at the end of it and be proud?  That’s a win in my book, every time.  It shouldn’t take sport to illuminate the fragility of the human condition, but it does.  Every March, I see triumph over insurmountable odds and I see overconfidence destroy possibility.  If that’s not a life lesson, I don’t know what is.  If you doubt me, at the end of the next game, take a second to notice the look on all of their faces…

…in the meantime, Go Florida Gulf Coast University!!! Stick it to the MAN!!! And thank God for College Basketball – it really is the best show in town.  And if your team doesn't win, there's always next year.