March Madness, Worship, and Perspective

           Since 1979 one eight seed, and two six seeds have won the NCAA tournament.  That means that 88% of the time, the winner has been a four seed or higher (interestingly, no five seed has won during that time).  So who cares whether the A-10 has six teams in the tournament or not?  Only two are five seeds – VCU and St. Louis – the rest don’t matter (neither VCU nor St Louis likely matter, either).  SMU didn’t get in?  Cry me a river – SMU wasn’t going  to win, anyway because SMU would not have been a four seed or higher.

            ESPN and other media outlets make gazillions of dollars over-analyzing all this nonsense, when the simple reality is that the Weber States, the Woffords, the Harvards, and the Manhattans simply are not going to win.  Is it possible?  Sure, and Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama will be having a beer at the Rose Garden tomorrow to talk about Vlad bailing out of Crimea.  Yes, it’s possible, but history says otherwise:  no team below an eight seed has even played in a national championship game since 1979, let alone won the thing.  We know the odds are that Florida, Virginia, Wichita State or Arizona is the likely winner (one seeds win the thing 60 percent of the time).  This doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to watch the inevitable upsets that happen during the first round but we don’t need Seth Greenberg obsessing over ball screen defense, or Jay Bilas acting as if the world will collapse if the ACC doesn’t get a number one seed. (Seth is looking pretty good right now, though, after Virginia Tech fired his replacement). 

            I live in Kentucky where it is virtual heresy for me to suggest basketball doesn’t matter.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not knocking sports.  I’ve always been a fan.  Played lots of playground football, baseball, basketball, foursquare, you name it, when I was a kid – if there was a ball handy, I was in.  I like the team-building that happens in team sports.  I like the discipline that both team and individual sports require.  I admire the dedication folks give to honing the physical and mental toughness it takes to play a sport well.  What I have come to dislike intensely is that we have become obsessed to the point that March Madness really is just that: madness.

            I mentioned the statistics above so we could get some perspective.  Whether people like it or want to admit it, the NCAA selection committee does a pretty good job of getting this thing right.  The top four seeds comprise 91% of the tournament winners over the past 35 years (32 out of 35) and have made up almost 83% of the final four teams over the past 35 years.  Realistically, the tournament could be just the top 16 teams every year and the results would be almost the same.

            Why do we obsess, then?  We are born worshipers.  We love to find an altar where we can bow down and lay our alms.  So we gather with others, we put on our jersey, colors, whatever, we have a meal, we watch the game.  We’re up, we’re down.  We cry if our team loses, maybe we cry if our team wins.  We really engage.  For a moment we think we’re part of something, even if only by extension. 

            But then, perspective.  The day after comes, win or lose.  We’re back to the job, back to school.  Within a day or two life sets in and even the glory of the team having won starts to fade.  Who was it that hit that last second buzzer beater in the second game, anyway?  Within a week or two whatever investment we made has lost its effect. Life is back to normal and our efforts have made no difference.  The temporary emotion was just that, temporary.  Our worship has not brought us satisfaction;  if anything, there is an emptiness where the March Madness was.  Seth and Jay can’t help us now.  We’ll have to fill ourselves up again with something else.  Football is so far off – no one really watches MLB . . . what then?

            When we find our satisfaction in such things, we find ourselves leaping from event to event, from happening to happening, looking, searching, but never really finding a way to fill ourselves up with something bigger than us.  We want to find that something, but our efforts simply seem to fail.  So we plug into our job even more, we plug into our hobby even more.  Still, it can’t seem to fix what ails us.  It won’t.

            We worship because we were made that way by a perfectly holy and righteous God who must demand our worship of Him or find Himself guilty of idolatry.  Our efforts to worship other things inevitably lead to a dead end.  That is why March Madness is truly mad.  The irony is that even for most of the players winning the tournament won’t matter in any significant way within a very short time.  Yes, “no one can take it away” but what would they be taking, anyway?  A temporary euphoria?  Every single player, every single coach, every single manager, every single towel boy will fall off the euphoria mountain at some point within a very short time.  What will be left?  Only a memory.

            You see, we try to fill our lives up with this stuff because we are convinced, sometimes by ESPN, sometimes by our friends, most often by ourselves, that if we just had this feeling, or that something that our lives would be complete.  It’s madness.  We were created to worship by a God who cares about what we worship.  So who is more rational: the one who worships at a temporary, man-made altar which will lose its power almost as soon as it’s put up, or the one who worships the almighty creator of the universe whose power never ends? 

            Yes, enjoy the NCAA tournament for the sheer  joy of watching young men working hard and having fun.  Shout when your team wins.  Shed a brief tear when your 14 seed loses (as they inevitably will).  But put it in perspective.  Despite Seth Greenberg’s insistence, ball screen defense just won’t matter in eternity.