Titans and Tenacity

Why We Love Both Cinderella Teams and Top Seeds in March Madness

March is upon us, and that means the NCAA college basketball championships. The top sixty-four men’s and women’s teams from around the country receive invitations and a seeding. Arranged in brackets, they play a single-elimination tournament to determine a national champion.

In the round of sixty-four, the top four teams take on the bottom four teams, the number two seeds take on the number fifteen seeds, and so on. It means that the most heralded squads that have dominated sports-talk radio and television coverage match up against those from universities that you are not sure you ever heard of. It creates a real David vs. Goliath dynamic.

Why We Love the Underdog

In the Book of Samuel, Goliath is a man of superhuman proportions, a gigantic Philistine warrior with bulging muscles, armor, and a spear. At war with the Israelites, Goliath taunts the enemy—let us end this war right now, he bellowed. Send out your strongest warrior and face me one-on-one, a single fight for all the marbles. No Israelite wanted to take up the challenge, and King Saul did not blame them.

Then, a small shepherd named David stepped forward to face the giant. Saul offers his armor to David, who rejects it, taking his sling and a few rocks. As Goliath curses David’s God, David hurls a stone that hits Goliath between the eyes, knocking him out. David then beheads him, and the Philistines flee. The little David had won. It is a story that has resonated across the centuries.

March Madness has its version when a small, low-ranked team from a little-known university with limited money upsets a well-funded, highly-recruited group from a major program to unexpectedly move on in the tournament, the Davids of dribble are dubbed a Cinderella story, and the nation swoons.

In 2018, the top-seeded Cavaliers from the University of Virginia were defeated by the Retrievers of the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the first-ever toppling of a top men’s team by a last-ranked group. It made headlines on sports pages from coast to coast and dominated cable coverage. No one believed they would become national champs, but it was exciting to see how far these athletes from Arbutus would make it. You could not but root for them, hoping they make the Sweet Sixteen.

Image: Adler, menteasombrosa.com

Alfred Adler was a student of Sigmund Freud and a major psychoanalytic theorist who contended that to be human is to be insecure. The human condition is to be an individual with hopes, dreams, and desires in a big, cold universe that often crushes them. From the youngest age, we find ourselves inferior to the world in terms of meeting our desires. “It is the child’s helplessness, clumsiness, and insecurity which necessitate the exploration of possibilities,” Adler wrote in “Fictionalism and Finalism,” “the gathering of experiences, and creating memory to construct a bridge into the future where live greatness, power, and satisfactions of all sorts.”

The process of living begins with each of us as a little David, dwarfed by the world itself as your personal Goliath, but seeking to transcend it to make yourself into something more.

We love the Biblical tale and underdog stories of the little guy winning against all odds because we cannot but see these as allegories, metaphors for our lives. We must all cope with our fear of failure, our frustration from unmet desires, and the knowledge that in the ultimate showdown—the battle against our own mortality—we will lose in the end. But the lesson of David is that sometimes the longshot wins the race, and in our desperate desire for hope, that possibility allows us to meet the day and grind on.

Adoration for the Front-Runners

Image: Nietzsche, escuelapce.com

Yes, Goliath is the villain of the Biblical story, and we identify with David, but we are complex beings, resisting such a black-and-white way of seeing the world that desires only that “the first shall be last and the last first.” While we all love a good Cinderella story, no one wants to see a Final Four comprised solely of bottom feeders. We would leave feeling cheated by such a spectacle. The surprising rise of a small program may be thrilling, but ultimately, we yearn for the favorites to meet, a clash of the titans. Great heroes overcome great challenges.

The thinker who explains why is Friedrich Nietzsche. In his Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche contends that there are three types of history that we need to study. First, there is what he terms “Monumental History,” a celebration of the great figures and achievements of the past. These are important because they show us how far humans have been able to go. We exist by making our mark on reality through triumphant affirmation and conquering hurdles the world puts up. Honoring those who have done it best keeps before our eyes what humans are capable of.

The second is “Antiquarian History.” This is learning about your culture, its rituals, and ways of being. This generates a sense of cultural identity that can serve like the roots of a tree to anchor you and provide a strong foundation from which to grow. Be proud of who you are and where you come from, but do not idolize it and force it into a frozen idea, fixed, never evolving. Like the tree with the roots buried deep, it remains a living thing stretching ever-upward.

The final and most significant sense is “Critical History,” in which we understand that to make history, one must break history. You cannot establish a record without overcoming the previous one. We must look back to look forward, because that is where we can create ourselves. It is through the lens of critical history that we watch the development of the tournament each March. The top teams receive the ranking they do because they have shown in the regular season to be worthy of it. They have struggled against other top teams to come out victorious. They have pulled out close games and blown out opponents in others.

Likewise, they stand before us as potential legends, as possible creators of a new future. We remember the legendary games and have hopes that what is to come may be among them. We want to see the best of the best become the historically best. By watching that, we can pull inspiration from our struggles. By surrounding ourselves with the greatness of others, we can aspire to it in our own contexts. They transcended themselves. Maybe I can, too.

In watching March Madness, we not only find ourselves entertained by the athletic prowess of these fine athletes, but we can discover profound motivation for ourselves in contrary places, from both the top and bottom of the seedings, from the unexpected triumph of the low and the impressive play of high. We may struggle in a world that seems to block our every shot, but we can keep going, hoping that our next effort finds nothing but net.