Evaluating the quality of a sports story is one of the 19,847 reasons why being a sports fan is so much gosh-darn fun.
The arguments we’ve all had with parents, siblings, school classmates, office colleagues, and people we meet at the ballpark or on the street have lent so much color and passion to our lives. The debates we have about sports are the debates many of us treasured in our childhoods, because such debates often (though perhaps not always) found the safe space politics and religion could not provide.
On the night of another NCAA tournament national championship game, it’s a time to think about the enormity of the moment as the Wisconsin Badgers prepare to play the Duke Blue Devils at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. It’s a time to weigh one national champion against another, and to put this title fight up against other matchups from the sport’s history… or other matchups that could have occurred on this April evening.
Yes, Duke-Kentucky would have been a blockbuster event and a ratings bonanza for CBS. Duke-Kentucky is the matchup that rose to the forefront of most minds when the brackets were revealed on Selection Sunday. It’s also unquestionably true that Kentucky’s pursuit of perfection was and is — and always will be remembered as — the story which defined the 2014-2015 college basketball season. No one can possibly dispute any of that.
However, Wisconsin-Duke really is as great a story as 40-0 Kentucky would have been. As soon as the Badgers’ win over Kentucky went final on Saturday night, that’s the first thought that came to mind. A day and a half later, it still seems like the right thing to say.
Disagree? By all means, you’d have ample and legitimate reason to do so. What’s being advanced in this column is not a matter of scientific fact or numerical certainty. However, hear the argument first and then let me know what you think on Twitter — either at @TheStudentSect or my personal college sports account, @SectionMZ.
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The quality of a story is shaped by circumstances — on this point, no one would ever disagree. An event takes on a larger life or carries a greater weight because of the many episodes and twists in the path which preceded it.
With respect to the notion that only 40-0 Kentucky could be considered the greatest possible story in play for the 2015 national title game of college basketball, one has to realize that while Wisconsin-Duke is — on the surface — a less electric and attractive game, the circumstances surrounding it are what elevate the matchup to an all-time-great story.
Taken by itself, a Wisconsin-Duke game is unremarkable in comparison to a Kentucky quest for 40-0, especially had the Wildcats faced Duke and Mike Krzyzewski on Monday night. It is obvious that Duke-Kentucky would have contained more historical resonance than any other matchup anyone could have imagined on Selection Sunday. Yet, the WAY in which Wisconsin-Duke has come to pass is what elevates this game as a story. The paths taken to Monday night — especially by Wisconsin — imbue this game with supremely profound, personal, and local dimensions of historical significance.
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Jim Nantz lives his best 10 days of the year at this time on the calendar. From Final Four Friday through the night of Masters Sunday in Butler Cabin, Nantz gets a front-row seat at the Final Four and The Masters for CBS (and parters Turner and ESPN). Plenty of people make fun of Nantz for his planned calls of NCAA championship moments, and he’s not quite the stand-alone intellect Bob Costas is, but Nantz is — all told — a very fine broadcaster who has been the signature voice of his network ever since Pat Summerall left CBS in 1994 to stay in the NFL game over at FOX.
Give Nantz credit for this: He loves sports the way a broadcaster should. He is and has been captured by the moments when human beings experience the greatest thrills of their lives. His reactions convey the magnitude of the occasion.
One such example emerged in 2004. After the initial explosion from the crowd when Phil Mickelson sank a putt at 18 to win his first green jacket, CBS replayed the putt by showing Mickelson’s face alone, following the ball into the cup. Nantz’s call of that replay sequence was as memorable as his call of the live putt itself:
“Watch his life change, right here,” Nantz intoned.
This is the essential summary of why we love and watch sports. These are — on the face of things — trivial events. These are, in one unescapable sense, games people play. On the other hand, these things which are inescapably games are — at the same time — the escape for so many of us from everything that’s depressing or discouraging about life. Sports, as mentioned at the very beginning of this essay, have given and still give many of us the safe space in conversations and relationships that we couldn’t find elsewhere.
We can share in the joy of seeing an athlete’s life change for the better, and feel uplifted — something politics and current events rarely bring to us anymore.
It is this celebration of a life kissed by sunshine, of a career transformed and no longer possessing any kind of gap or deficit, which makes sports so powerful.
We live for the moment when a Phil Mickelson wins his first Masters… or when the Boston Red Sox win their first World Series since 1918… or when the New Orleans Saints, a few years after Hurricane Katrina, win their first Super Bowl.
If the Chicago Cubs can make their first World Series since 1945; if the Cleveland Cavaliers can win their first NBA title in a title-starved and snake-bitten sports city; and if Northwestern can make its first NCAA tournament in the coming years, we’ll see lives change for the better. Catharsis, happy tears, and the end of wilderness journeys — these are the most powerful stories sports can give us.
They’re the stories Wisconsin-Duke gives us on Monday night. What adds to the moment is that while Wisconsin is the emotional centerpiece of the story, the Blue Devils are looking in a mirror when they see the Badgers across the way.
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It is the stuff of a great novel, or an unforgettable movie.
In a life where we’re lucky if we get 90 good years, a 24-year period represents more than one-fourth of a long run in this human form. It’s true that Kentucky was trying to do something that hadn’t been done in 39 years, but 24 years really isn’t that short a period of time.
Twenty-four years ago, I was a freshman in high school. Jim Nantz was in his first year as the Final Four’s play-by-play man on CBS television. Baseball hadn’t even initiated its awful use of the wild card… and was televised by CBS at the time.
A different war involving Iraq took place. Bill Clinton was not yet a household name. Michael Jordan won his first NBA title. Magic Johnson was still at his best, leading a Kareem-less Los Angeles Laker team to the NBA Finals, which turned in a tense Game 3 at The Forum… which was still the Lakers’ home. The year 1991 — 24 years ago — marked a very different time.
It’s also the time when an unbeaten team came to a Final Four in Indianapolis, intent on replicating the feat forged by the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. UNLV was set on etching its name in the record books, but Duke — a team UNLV crushed in the previous year’s Final Four — waited 12 months for revenge, played a brilliant game, and did the deed. After so many years as a Final Four bridesmaid, Duke beat Kansas two nights later to cross the threshold.
It is on that Final Four weekend in 1991 when Duke became DUKE, when Mike Krzyzewski truly established a legend which grows even today. It’s when Coach K’s life changed the way Phil Mickelson’s life changed when he won the 2004 Masters.
UNLV was the story entering that Final Four, but when that event ended, we saw the genesis of a hugely impactful story which continues to resonate in the present moment.
Duke became Duke — it’s a story as significant and momentous as anything else we’ve seen over the past quarter-century of college basketball, and what’s more is that Duke’s legacy will grow if it can win Krzyzewski’s fifth national title, the third for this program in Indianapolis.
It is in the knowledge of what Duke did 24 years ago that this matchup — Wisconsin-Duke 2015 — is such a powerful story, one on par with Kentucky going 40-0.
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In 2015, an unbeaten team came to the Final Four in Indianapolis, intent on walking in the footsteps of the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers — sound familiar? Kentucky, the team of the season in college basketball, looked the part of a team that would make history on a grand scale — the grandest possible scale, in fact.
Wisconsin — a team Kentucky beat in the previous year’s Final Four — waited 12 months for another crack at the Cats. The Badgers played a brilliant game, and they pulled out the victory. Laettner, Hurley, and Coach K in 1991 were replaced by Dekker, Kaminsky, and Bo Ryan in 2015.
Now, on Monday night, Wisconsin gets its chance to win that national title — to become WISCONSIN.
Duke was, of course, an excellent program with quite a lot of credentials on the morning of the 1991 national title game. However, it had to beat Kansas in order to make the conquest of unbeaten UNLV mean everything it could mean, everything it was supposed to mean. Duke became Duke against Vegas, but it sealed the transformation against Kansas on Monday night.
Wisconsin is trying to do the same thing Duke did, 24 years later. Lives are on the verge of being changed. A program’s reputation — solid and substantial for many years, but lacking that crowning moment of validation — is on the verge of reaching that next level following a long walk in the fields of frustration, of “almost” finding the mountaintop but losing oxygen during the steep climb.
This is powerful, powerful stuff. This is the drama of sport at its finest and most gripping.
Yet, to some — and with good reason — this still doesn’t seem to rise to the level of Kentucky going 40-0 as a story. Fair enough — you’d have reason to still question the size of this storyline.
Well, here’s the kicker, folks: It’s not just that Wisconsin is trying to change its reputation forever. It’s not just that Wisconsin just came through a Final Four semifinal against an unbeaten team, a specific circumstance necessarily included in the enormity of this story in 2015.
What makes Wisconsin-Duke the very best kind of sports story one can possibly offer — regardless of who wins — is that Duke and Wisconsin, like a parent and child separated from each other for 24 years, can relate to each other.
It is precisely Duke which can look at Wisconsin and say, with the knowing glance of a parent to a child, “Ah, when I was your age, I remember what it was like to take down that unbeaten team on Semifinal Saturday night. My life changed then. Good luck tonight, Badgers.”
It is precisely Wisconsin which can look at Duke and say, with the hope and tension of a child to a parent, “I look up to you so much. You are the one who showed me the way 24 years ago. You provided the example which taught me this was all possible. Good luck tonight, Blue Devils, but I hope we can complete the same journey you completed in this same city of Indianapolis.”
It is the stuff of a great novel, or an unforgettable movie, of human beings separated by a full generation.
Duke is the father who has done it all, who has undergone the full transformation from an almost-team to a championship-bearing colossus.
Wisconsin is the son, the talented up-and-comer which has already experienced its share of almosts but — following a legendary takedown of an unbeaten team on Semifinal Saturday — now wants to make itself known in a permanently different way.
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Wisconsin.
Duke.
One team wants to follow the path the other team walked 24 years ago in the same city.
Had 1991 UNLV or 2015 Kentucky not been unbeaten entering those years’ Final Fours, this game wouldn’t be as big a story.
Had Wisconsin beaten Michigan State in the semis and not Kentucky, this wouldn’t be as big a story.
If Wisconsin was facing a team other than Duke in this title game, it wouldn’t be as big a story.
Circumstances, though, affect the magnitude of a story.
Wisconsin-Duke really is as great as 40-0 Kentucky would have been. Twenty-four years of eerily similar circumstances tell us this.