More to be proud of at Pitt than basketball

I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn’t care about March Madness…. I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn’t care about March Madness.

Really. I don’t care. I know that it must be shocking to think that someone who lives in a city like Pittsburgh, where every person and their mother is a sports fan, doesn’t care. But I don’t. College basketball has absolutely no place in my mind, what with it being filled with things that actually matter and all. But what’s annoying about this is that even though I honestly couldn’t care less about the tournament, everyone I even mention Pitt to automatically assumes I must be a fan.

Take spring break for instance. I went home, and while I was there I chose not to hide the fact that I’m a Pitt undergrad, although in retrospect maybe I should have. The first question out of anyone’s mouth who I mentioned Pitt to was, “Oh, well what do you think of the basketball team?” Now, I pride myself on usually being a civil person, so I couldn’t just follow my gut instinct to run away screaming obscenities.

Instead I had to actually explain my position.

“Well, I guess they’re doing pretty well, but I don’t follow them too much.”

This statement would usually be followed by some sort of stunned pause, and perhaps a suspicious stare from the other party. After all, how could I possibly not be interested? It’s the Pitt basketball team! I go to Pitt, therefore I’m pretty much automatically a huge fan, right? Because it’s perfectly logical to suspect that I would have an intimate connection to a bunch of athletes I don’t know at all. I mean, their actions definitely have a huge bearing on the course of my life, and my going to school at Pitt is basically like saying that I helped coach the team myself and draw them along their path to success.

Oh, wait, I’m sorry. What I did there was tell the exact opposite of the truth.

The truth of the matter is, just because I happen to be in college at a school that has a good basketball team doesn’t mean I care about the basketball team. For all the connections I have to them, they might as well be in Timbuktu. I know that it’s a source of pride for the University, but Pitt has quite a few sources of pride. And yet nobody seems to feel the need to ask me about nationality rooms, or how many Rhodes scholars the school has. It’s always a sport, and I really don’t care about Pitt’s sports any more than most people care about a room that looks like colonial America. Sure it’s neat, but so what?

The other thing that annoys me is that people seem to think that because they’re in the same basic geographic region, they have some right to personal pride when the team does well. I’m sorry, but did you personally play in the basketball game? Is your sweat on the court? I’m reminded of the Super Bowl riots last year, where the train of thought seemed to go something like “Yeah, we won! Let’s break things!” How on earth does someone else winning a sports game give you a blank check to cause property damage? I really just don’t get how worked up some people get.

This might be news to some people out there, but sports are entertainment. Unless you are an athlete or a bookie, they are not a way of life. They’re games, played to amuse the people sitting in the stands. Of course, they manage to do that quite well. CBS signed a $6 billion 11-year contract with the NCAA for exclusive broadcast rights, in an effort to reach the expected 40-plus million people who will tune into the games. But still, that doesn’t change the fact that 40 million people are watching a bunch of tall guys bounce a ball around. True, they’re bouncing the ball around with great skill and precision, but still. Whoop-dee-doo.

I guess basically what I’m saying here is that I wish people could concentrate on something that really matters for once. It’s a pretty sad fact that our sports idols make more money each year than our top elected officials, not to mention people like research scientists and educators. Do we really need to pay athletes millions of dollars each year to play games? I’m not saying that it’s not hard work; I’m just questioning why our priorities are so skewed toward entertainment. Maybe we should all take a step back and think about what really matters in the world today, and how the huge sums of money we give to athletes and advertisers could be better spent finding solutions for the problems plaguing the world. Don’t get me wrong, I just have a feeling that finding a cure for cancer is probably more important than giving sports stars bigger mansions and faster cars. Crazy, I know.

And in the meantime, stop asking me about basketball.

If March Madness truly and deeply matters to you, e-mail Richard at rab53@pitt.edu, if you can’t hear him laughing from where you are.