Alabama Fans Must Realize This Big Different Between Basketball and Football - Or Be Perpetually Disappointed.
The first four days of March Madness is one of the greatest sports days of the year, and I say that as someone who typically couldn’t care less about it. Normally, my interest in March Madness is minimal, other than an occasional bracket pool some years. However, as Alabama quickly rose to the top of the ranks this season, I naturally became more interested in basketball and finally did a bracket. After finishing the first day in the 99% percentile of ESPN, my bracket, like everyone else’s, quickly fell apart. And you know what? It was still a TON of fun. Watching Furman beat Virginia on a wild, last-second play to satisfy one of my first-round upsets was pretty amazing. To the casual fan with a bracket, you can see how easy it is to have fun. Then, Alabama got really good this season. And things changed.
Alabama became the first team since 1965 to knock off a number-one team twice before the end of December. Then, Alabama became the number-one team for the first time in twenty years. Clearly, something was different this year.
Flashback to the 2008 college football season. Preseason-ranked #24 Alabama opened the season with a thumping of Clemson in Atlanta. A few weeks later, Nick Saban’s second-year team proved it was no fluke with the blackout funeral in Athens over Georgia. If the Clemson game didn’t convince you, the Georgia game did: Alabama was here to stay, and it was time to make postseason plans.
Alabama would go on to lose an epic SEC Championship game against a historically-good Florida team led by Tim Tebow. The following year, both teams returned many of their key players and a collision course was charted for Atlanta at the start of the season. As any Bama knows, the Tide got their revenge in a dominant fashion. It was the beginning of a dynasty.
Throughout the Saban era, Alabama has entered most seasons as the team to beat and fans have had expectations of going to the playoffs. Are these expectations unrealistic? No, only because of the track record Saban has produced. For fifteen straight seasons, Alabama has been number one at some point during the season. Will that ever be replicated anywhere again in history? That seems highly unlikely. As an Alabama fan, it is completely normal to block off the calendar and make January travel plans months in advance. For a Georgia or Ohio State fan, it’s pretty reasonable to do the same. These are the blue bloods of college football, and their odds of making the college football playoff are at least 50% in any given year.
Now, what about college basketball? Which teams could be characterized as a near shoo-in for the final four? The answer is no one. And this is where college basketball differs from football. In the last ten seasons, only two teams (Villanova and North Carolina) have made the final four three times. Both of these two advanced to the championship game twice, with North Carolina winning one national title and Villanova winning two. By the way, both teams completely missed the NCAA tournament this season. Top teams just don’t dominate in college basketball as they do in college football. The best programs and teams often fail to make it to the finals. Why? It’s the nature of the tournament. For the casual fan, it is a ton of fun watching game after game, but for a favored team in the tournament such as Houston or Alabama, it’s very difficult to win a series of winner-take-all games without one bad game.
The World Series and NBA finals have a best of 7. The College World Series has double elimination. March Madness has… a bunch of games. In all of these sports, some of the worst teams have a decent shot at knocking off some of the best teams on any given day. Some of the worst teams in MLB history will win in excess of 50 games. Some of the worst teams in NBA history will win over 10 games. College basketball fans have to realize that just because they have one of the best teams in school history, the odds of them making the final four and winning a national championship are still low. That’s a paralyzing reality but it’s backed by math. However, understanding this reality makes it easier to rationalize so that you can set the right mental expectations. I admit that I made the mistake of getting my hopes up and making plans for the final four. There’s nothing wrong with making some plans just in case, but I honestly EXPECTED to go to Houston too because Alabama was, after all, better than any team they’d see along the way to Houston. And that’s the wrong mindset for a college basketball fan.
The best analogy, from a football standpoint, might be this past college football season. Alabama shouldn’t have lost to LSU and certainly shouldn’t have been watching a second-tier team like TCU playing for the national championship, but that is exactly how things played out. How often are we blessed/cursed to see a team like TCU make it all the way to the big game? About once every 10-20 years (TCU, Georgia Tech/Colorado in 1990, BYU in 1984). In college basketball, that’s just another cinderella story that happens every couple of years (Loyola-Chicago, South Carolina, Wichita State, VCU, Butler, George Mason, Auburn, etc.). Just look at the final four this year: FAU, Miami, and San Diego State? If you’re rooting for the underdog next week in Houston, you’ve come to the right sport.
This season was not a failure. Nate Oats is an awesome coach. Brandon Miller is still a great basketball player. Alabama just lost in the sweet sixteen on a day when they were not very good. This team won the SEC regular season title and dominated the SEC tournament. They played really well in every game since the start of the SEC tournament and finally had a bad day. You have to focus on the positive, see the reality for what is, and embrace the madness. Then temper your expectations. Or focus more on football :)
