More on the demise of the Cinderella

While I would love to pontificate regarding baseball's real Opening Day, I feel as though I need to revisit my thoughts of last night, just to add some clarity.

First of all, I was at church during the Davidson/Kansas game last night, so I did not see. If I had, I would have, in all likelihood, been rooting for Davidson to pull off the upset. I totally get the urge to root for the underdog, and Davidson's run through the tournament was absolutely compelling and interesting. I was certainly sad to see it end. Secondly, I really believe that, had Davidson won, they would have stood a legitimate chance at making some noise in the Final Four. They may not have won a game, almost certainly would not have won the championship, but I don't think they would have been run off the floor by UNC. Though it's seed, size, and relative unknown status coming into the tournament fit the idea of Cinderella team pretty classically, in many ways Davidson was far from your traditional Cinderella. They played an absolutely brutal non-conference schedule, and fared quite well. In fact, after the loss to Kansas, Davidson has now played 3 of the 4 Final Four teams, faring extremely well, with a 12 point loss at UCLA, a 4 point loss at home against UNC, and the 2 point loss to Kansas yesterday. They also hung with Duke, who despite their end of season collapse was among the top 10 teams in the country for most of the year, falling by only 6. This team was battle tested and unafraid.

I'm not lashing out at the Cinderella story, nor would I suggest for a second that Davidson having made the Final Four wouldn't have been a terrific story. It absolutely would have, and it would have been exceedingly compelling, though possibly providing a lesser caliber of basketball at the Final Four. I get all that, and I even buy into it. If Davidson could have somehow finished the run and won the title, it would have been one of the greatest stories ever. What I found ridiculous was this idea that absent the underdog story, this Final Four would be somehow lackluster, and somehow lacking drama.

That couldn't be farther from the truth, in my opinion. What you lose by not having an underdog/Cinderella in the Final Four is not drama, or a compelling storyline, but rather the easy storyline. I think I've mentioned in my previous critiques of the media that I find the media to be lazy. This is a prime example of that. And to be honest, I have a hard time being too hard on them for that. Having run this blog for several months now, wanting to put something up everyday, and having days when I just don't find anything particularly interesting to write about, I understand the temptation to gravitate to the easy story. However, it creates problems. In effort to create mass appeal beyond hardcore sports fans, the sports media often emphasizes storylines much more strongly than the actual game itself. It's the phenomenon that's led to the constant shuffling of the Monday Night Football booth for a more entertaining combination - the idea that we need to find ways to get people to pay attention to sporting events who aren't terribly interested in the games themselves. That means that these easy storylines get beaten into our skulls as sports fans. As a result, they are the things that we expect and look for, and so when they are absent, it can be easy for the fan to feel like something is missing.

The real fallacy here is the idea that this lack of a Cinderella story at the Final Four is in any way new or different. Sure, this is the first time that all the 1 seeds have made the Final Four, but I could give you a number of years prior to this one where the Final Four didn't contain any teams that could be described as Cinderellas, or even underdogs. In fact, last year would be a perfect example, with 2 1 seeds and 2 2 seeds. Of course, there was the easy storyline of Florida's quest to repeat to keep anyone from noticing that. Honestly though, I think what some people, fan and media alike, are expressing is more about disappointment with the end of Davidson's run than the composition of the Final Four. And to be completely fair, I don't think it's a majority sentiment, or even that close to being one, but there is an undercurrent that is clearly there in both entities.

Despite my general criticism of the mainstream media, I have really been enjoying listening to Dan Patrick's radio show over the last several months since it came on the air in Harrisburg. I think he's a fair journalist, and a great entertainer. However, I have to admit to taking some perverse pleasure in listening to him seemingly grope around trying to get his head around the story of this year's Final Four. "Who do I root for? Who is the underdog? There isn't one." To which I say, exactly! And that's a great story in and of itself, one that will in all likelihood lead to incredible basketball, since we're left with 4 teams who are, and have been all season, championship caliber.

Fortunately for the media, they've quickly found another easy storyline, that being the matchup of UNC coach Roy Williams, with his former employer, Kansas, in the semi-finals. Quite frankly, I'd rather they had a Cinderella story to beat into the ground.