This (Non) Sporting Life: Winning Matters

It's time for another edition of This (Non) Sporting Life, the blog post about sports by a guy who doesn't know much about sports. 

There is an expression in sports that goes, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose. What matters is how you play the game."

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Worf offers this response to that concept: "Why keep score?"  

In tournament play, there is no escaping that winning does indeed matter. There is no "We'll get 'em next time."  

You lose? You're done.  

As of Thursday night, the North Carolina Tarheels men's basketball team were done.  

There was no joy in Mudville or in Chapel Hill or here at the Fortress of Ineptitude as Carolina went down to Alabama by 2 points.  

My wife Andrea cares about this.

I mean, she really, really, really cares about this.

She had a day off from work on Friday which was a good thing because she needed the day to process her five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I don't think she's made it to acceptance yet.  

As I have wrote before, her fandom of the North Carolina Tarheels men's basketball team is deep, going back across generations of her family tree. 

And this year was supposed to be THE year! After a lot of set backs last year where the Tarheels did not even make it to the NCAA tournament, this was their year!  A #1 seed destined to make it to the Final Four and dare she dream? Dare she? Yes! Dare! DARE! Win the whole damn thing? YES! !

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, blah blah blah! Fuck that! Winning matters! It matters a lot of her.  

The game had been tough with lots of lead changes but mostly Carolina led Alabama and with only a couple of minutes to go, it looked like Carolina might win this thing. But Alabama closed the gap, pulled ahead and as the last precious seconds ticked away from the clock, they stayed there and Carolina's year, THEIR year came to a soul shattering close.  

Andrea was seriously bummed about this.

She cares.

Meanwhile, how was "my" team doing?

You know, the one I arbitrarily decided to follow because I like dark blue as a color?

The Duke Blue Devils got past #1 seeded Houston to advance to the Elite 8. 

Which put them on a collision path with the NC State Wolfpack. 

Some back story: the Wolfpack's season sucked. Based on their performance during the regular season, there was no way in hell they were going to get an invite to the NCAA tournament. 

But then the woebegone Wolfpack won 5 games in a row and won the ACC Tournament which got them an invite to the NCAA tourney. 

Where they kept winning, defeating higher seeded teams until they made their way to the Elite 8. 

If I was looking at this from purely a storytelling perspective, I would want NC State to win. 

But Duke is "my" team and damn it, choosing a team based only color preference should mean something. 

For a while there on Sunday, it looked it was possible that Duke might end State's miracle run but in the last half, State put a most definitive "No!" on Duke's aspiration for a win.  State put away Duke for a most decisive win. 

So neither Andrea's team or mine is in the NCAA men's tournament. 

But another team from our state is still in this thing on a most unlikely miraculous run.

Which means basketball is not quite done here in the Fortress of Ineptitude. Will the Wolfpack make it through the Final Four to the championship game?

Could they win the whole damn thing?

Could it be I might actually care?