In two nights, in two aftermaths, in vivid images of victory and defeat, the wonder and pull of sports was bared right in front of us, personified by the Wisconsin Badgers.
One evening at the Final Four in Indianapolis, the Badgers are conquerors of mighty Kentucky, the ones who slay the unbeaten Wildcats. Fans in red jump around and rejoice. Fans in blue are tearful, inconsolable, and the players are devastated beyond rational thought.
Fast forward 48 hours. Those same Badgers, and those same fans in red, are the ones in grief, a dream season dashed by Duke in the last minutes of the last game. And like Kentucky before them, the weeping, and the lashing out, gets seared into our memory bank.
Such is sports at its highest level, the line between ecstasy and despair so thin, but worse yet, the line between getting called a hero and getting called a loser just as thin.
And when you cover this stuff for a long time, as I have, you learn, or you ought to learn, that labeling anyone with those extreme labels, based solely on the result of a single game, is so wrong and misleading.
When 38-0 Kentucky fell, I felt no pleasure. The chance at the first perfect season in 39 years was an amazing story, and the fact that the young Wildcats kept it up for that long, sacrificing individual numbers for a greater team good, was quite admirable.
Yet more than a few labeled Kentucky as failures, or worse. The snark and potshots were plentiful, the barbs at John Calipari and his players pointed. Never mind that Wisconsin was a great team – better to kick people when they’re down than elevate.
Two nights later, the Badgers found itself mirroring Kentucky’s shock after the defeat to Duke. Bo Ryan’s questions about the calls, echoed by players in the immediate aftermath, found plenty of life in the Duke-hating cosmos.
To be fair, though, it was rooted in the deepest pain you can imagine. For two years, Wisconsin was wondrous, twice getting to the Final Four, defying modern college basketball convention by relying on older, proven players like Frank Kaminsky to get close to Everest, only to get pushed back a few steps short of the summit.
Here’s where our obligations as media members, and common sense, violently clash. Losses like this hurt for a lifetime, and we insist that, after this instant trauma sets in, we get them in front of microphones 15 minutes later, when processing the defeat takes a whole lot longer. Give them a little more time, and you’re bound to see a lot more perspective and class.
Let’s get back to the main point, though. College basketball, in American sports, most closely mirrors the NFL, in that the games you lose at the end define you far more than all the games you won to get close to the top.
Having seen, up close, the way the Buffalo Bills were treated in the early 1990s, I’ve always cringed and bristled at similar treatment toward teams and/or individuals who met that same fate. It almost is preferable to be really bad than to be really good and not quite make it.
What’s worse, we do this knowing that it’s inaccurate and unfair. Follow a great team throughout its journey, and you know they’re special long before the resolution. The facts of the outcome should be noted, for sure, but it should not overshadow the rest of the story.
Just look at the way the Kansas City Royals were handled at the end of its epic 2014 run. End a 29-year post-season drought, reach the seventh game of the World Series, only get denied by a boiling-hot Giants pitcher on a historic run? No one trashed the Royals much when it was over.
Or if you’re going to get beat at the end, as the Seattle Seahawks did in the Super Bowl, at least win the year before so the blow is cushioned. Can you imagine the uproar, the criticism, the marking of Russell Wilson for life for that interception without the triumph of those same Seahawks the last time it was held? It was loud enough with that previous glory in the books.
At least, if you last long in the NFL, you get a chance each fall to start again. In college basketball, the math is much colder. Most great teams get one chance at the title – think Illinois in 2005, Memphis in 2008 – and if they falter, especially if it’s close, the shadow stays for a lifetime.
Sports are compelling theater, with people to cheer on and boo against. So it is and so it always will be. Wisconsin, at a Final Four few will ever forget, felt an enormous high, and then sank to an equally enormous low. But to call them, or Kentucky, losers, cheapens us more than it does them.
