One thing I was looking forward to in 2020 was paying more attention to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Now, I haven't watched 'March Madness' closely in years, and I guess Corona intervened to make sure this didn't change, but trust me I was only going to follow certain statistics about the event, not necessarily watch any of the games. Reader, my interest was purely intellectual, sparked by a statistical anomaly from last year's tournament, and I sensed an opportunity to reprise my popular role of Sourpuss Contrarian, using an eloquent blend of fact, logic, and long sentences to ruin everyone's fun with a post or two here on TOA.
My curiosity grew from a moment last year, just a few hours after the tournament committee released the 2019 schedule, when the betting odds defied the expert determination of the committee. While the talking heads rattled on with their storylines and office workers around the country started filling out brackets, something odd happened in the betting market - #12 seed Oregon briefly became the favorite over #5 seed Wisconsin. By the time the game tipped off the bettors had restored a two-point edge to Wisconsin, but there was no chance I would forget the line movement, particularly after Oregon rolled to an 18-point victory. Now, one of the four #12 seeds beating a #5 is hardly unusual in March Madness, in fact those who follow the tournament know that history suggests at least one #12 will win its opening game. It always seemed like the #5 was jinxed - up until just a couple of years ago, the #6 seed had a higher first round winning percentage than did the #5 seed. Others have looked closely into this phenomenon and reached various amusing conclusions.
However, I have yet to see anyone say what I think is obvious - the tournament committee does a lousy job. They are supposed to rank the teams, yet it always seems like they get a few things wrong. I know it's really tough to do the whole ranking perfectly, there just aren't enough regular season games, but I'm not suggesting they need to have a perfect record, or even close to perfect. I just don't think it's too much to ask that a #5 always be favored over the #12. At minimum, such a result throws the competitive integrity of the tournament into question. You'd think that last year's Oregon-Wisconsin farce would have become a major story, but in the ESPN recap I link to above there isn't any mention of Oregon having been favored earlier in the week. So why wasn't the most interesting aspect of an uninteresting game featured as part of the story? I had a hunch about what was really going on so I went straight to the source. And sure enough, NCAA.com makes it loud and clear, presenting the story in big lettering - OREGON UPSETS WISCONSIN (1).
I can't really blame the NCAA for jumping on the upset headline. The tournament is admittedly much more fun to watch with these 'upsets' and the 5-12 games are arguably the most anticipated of the tournament's first weekend. If people are enjoying the games, even if they are anticipating an 'upset' under false pretenses, well who am I to blow bubbles in the punch bowl? The last time I went out of my way to watch a tournament game was in 2018 when I heard that #16 UMBC was leading #1 Virginia - a #16 seed had never beaten a #1 in tournament history, so I walked down the street to catch the historic moment. Upset alert! I know it for a fact, upsets generate ratings, so it's natural to expect more talk of 'upsets' come tournament time. But if someone had told me after the game that contrary to the seeding the markets had favored UMBC over Virginia, well, I guess I would have been upset, too.
This raises an important question - what is an upset? My idea is that an upset is when a competitor beats a more skilled, talented, or accomplished opponent. This is a compelling concept for audiences and it seems to extend far beyond sports. The problem is the upsets we often celebrate in sports don't necessarily meet the definition. By all accounts, in the above example Oregon was a competitive equal to Wisconsin, but because a few powerful people formed a poor opinion everyone else got excited about an 'upset'. It seems like each time we have a real upset, we have three fake ones to go with it, mostly based on ill-informed experts and their predictions. Gradually, we are cheapening the idea of an upset. Instead of the usual talk - OREGON UPSETS WISCONSIN! - we might benefit from a more honest assessment about the outcome - why would any expert suggest Wisconsin was so much better than Oregon? And why did a bunch of us pretend we agreed with them?
One of the subtler benefits of such an approach might be for the mental and emotional health of those supporting the losing side. It's bad enough to lose in any sense, but to have the added surreal feeling of I can't believe this is happening feels a little like unnecessary salt in the wound. The passive curiosity a neutral observer enjoyed during the Oregon-Wisconsin game came at the cost of those Wisconsin fans whose emotions were cleverly exploited by the attention seekers in charge of marketing the game. Was it worth it? I'm not going to suggest that we don't have some control over our reactions, particularly to sporting events, but in any other context when a large, powerful group manipulates the emotions of powerless individuals, you'd have to at least think about it as a possible case of bullying.
But does 'upset culture' have an application beyond the sports world? I think so. The idea to write this post in the first place came a few days into March, not because the tournament was approaching or that the pandemic had cancelled it, but because I was getting sick of hearing about Joe Biden's big 'upset'. It just seemed like at the root of the story must be a sloppy premise - primary elections are a pretty easy competition to predict, you just need to do the hard work of finding out who people are going to vote for before they cast a ballot. Although I'm sure some people genuinely don't know who they are voting for until election day, for the most part I feel someone doing their polling job correctly should be able to predict an election outcome. And yet, it felt like March Madness all over again - #12 BIDEN UPSETS #5 SANDERS! It's just a gut feeling, but I think a better headline would have been - lazy polling fails to correctly predict election result.
I'm sure the political pundits out there, the true experts, are shaking their heads - don't you remember 2016? Upsets are nothing new, kid. I do remember it in fact, I remember it like it was yesterday. In fact, I was just thinking about a conversation I had in November 2016 because an amusing result of the pandemic has been a chance to speak more frequently with neighbors, just as was the case with the election almost four years ago. As I chatted with one neighbor early in lockdown while we both stood just outside our doorways, I remembered how I had talked to her predecessor in the days after the election while we had stood in those same positions. Four years ago, my neighbor was stunned, he was just flabbergasted, the polls had said otherwise, and he was right, the record backs him up. I found it really interesting how close the polls were to the final score. They demonstrate clear evidence that the pollsters were working hard at their jobs, gathering the best available information in the weeks preceding the election. As the polls approach early November, you can see the results drift toward the final tally - around 48% for Clinton, 46% for Trump. He knew those numbers and he just couldn't wrap his head around the result - what happened? Surely, this was a true upset? It seemed to me like he forgot that the final score is calculated a little differently, like judging a basketball team on made shots without accounting for three-pointers, or using yards to assess helmet football teams while ignoring touchdowns.
The most upsetting thing about upset culture is that it sows resentment, often conjuring it out of thin air. Think about it - if you lose fair and square, your reaction is so much different from when you lose but feel like you should have won. You might feel anything across a broad range of emotions - embarrassment, regret, disappointment, anger - but I think these are all roads that lead to resentment. You become resentful toward yourself, questioning the effort you didn't put in and lamenting the opportunities you let pass. You become resentful toward your opponent, dismissing his or her skills while explaining away the result due to some degree of luck. You become resentful toward the competition, picking out flaws in the rules to which you originally agreed and openly questioning the integrity of the outcome. Instead of finding the mental toughness to do the next right thing, you become ruled by bitterness, anger, and spite.
The lasting image I have of the 2016 election was that conversation and my realization that although my neighbor was right to be upset, he had chosen his feelings. He had allowed the media to tell him a story about the election and he had gone along with it, dutifully sowing the seeds he had accepted because they came from the experts. He had laughed on cue in September and had looked up the precise definition for 'margin of error' in October. On November 8, there was a favorite, which meant there could be an upset, so he settled in with his bracket and watched the results. I'm not sure what's happened since our conversation. He moved out within the year, and left me a very nice note along with a recommendation to download a liberal financial podcast. I bet he's good at picking #12 seeds when he is supposed to, and gets really excited if it wins. I hope his blooming resentment is directed toward policy decisions and not influenced by expectations generated through polling. It just seems like a stupid way to live, almost as pointless as posting essays into the endless void of internet nothing. A podcast that doesn't lean much at all said it best - I tell everybody, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you're not going to win... now what? If no one wins, then someone is taking a cut, but for some reason the news isn't revealing the identity of the house.
I'm starting to feel the air changing a little bit around me in the context of this pandemic and resultant lockdown. I don't think it's going to be back to normal anytime soon, in fact personally I think normal is over, but of late we are obviously starting to look a little more at the big picture. At some point, the focus in 2020 will turn to the election, and I'm sure it will be delightful. We can choose either an elderly man who thinks he doesn't have to do anything to win black voters, or we can choose Trump. We can choose a candidate who remains defiantly unapologetic regarding multiple allegations from women about inappropriate physical contact, or we can choose Trump. We can choose the man who feels having been in the White House before is good enough to get him back in there, or we can choose... ah, you finish this one, reader.
Anyway, there will be endless opportunity this year to be manipulated by media outlets big and small, our emotions yanked and pulled until our blood pressure is permanently elevated. We can choose to be upset or we can stay calm until we know the real story. I think it's vital to keep something in mind about the rest of the year - there will be an election, which means we have a choice. But I'm not referring to the act of checking a name off on the ballot, I'm referring to our reactions. For most of us, our vote won't change the final outcome, but we should remember that every day is an election day, and a new opportunity to make the right choice.
Footnotes / The Real Reasons
1. TOA is amateur as well, but that doesn't stop me!
I actually think the 'real reason' ESPN would not mention the line might have to do with the NCAA and amateur status, but anyone who really believes March Madness has nothing to do with gambling is probably still excited about Oregon's big upset... I'm going out for a walk.
