The Wisconsin Badgers beat the Kentucky Wildcats in a wildly entertaining Final Four game. End column… or not.
Despite the game itself being as pretty and fun a semifinal as anyone could ask for, the Internet predictably became an ugly place immediately after it was over.
We have been down this road before, too — the road traveled by members of one tribe when they take to Twitter to call a separate group a bunch of failures, or whatever else fits their particular idea of wrongdoing at the time. Thanks to Saturday night’s game, multiple instances emerged in which people on the outside criticized the ones actually participating in Wisconsin-Kentucky. All of these discouraging moments have unfortunately become way too predicable in modern times, to the point where they’re almost expected.
A note going forward:
Remember to hold all people you see on TV to a much higher standard than you do yourself or people you know in real life. This is especially the case if you don’t like them for reasons that would put non-sports fans on insanity watch.
As it became clear that Wisconsin was headed to the national championship game, the inevitable “Kentucky is overrated” or other uneducated phrases started to appear. Ignoring the reality that viewing any team’s success through the vacuum of a single-elimination game tournament is rather silly, people decided that Kentucky’s season was a failure.
There was not much credit given to Wisconsin, either. It was more the lazy approach of calling John Calipari and his players chokers and frauds. Those types of phrases can only make one assume that the people who tweet such nonsense would like their individual successes and failures viewed through that same microscope.
Top salesman of the month for a eight months running? Great! Too bad you came in third in November, though. You are obviously a wretched seller of your company’s product and should probably be canned.
My belief is that Kentucky’s season might have not been a total success, but it certainly wasn’t a failure. The idea that a team could go 38 games before its first loss and be seen as a failure seems counterproductive.
If we literally viewed all of sports through that sort of vacuum — you either win the championship or you don’t, regardless of what you did over four or five months — there would be no reason to watch, pay to attention to, or even comment on any other games throughout the entire year other than the championship games of those sports. I mean, why bother if every single team in the world is a failure other than the one standing at the end?
It’s okay, too. I swear it. It is as though we are punishing Kentucky for its own success. Had the Wildcats lost a game or two in the regular season, would this then be viewed as less of a failure? How does that even make sense?
I get that losing out on history that close to the end is all sorts of heartbreaking for Kentucky. However, using your own personal idea of what this team was before it lost, and using the “L” as a way to reaffirm your previously unproven objections toward them, is about the worst way to go about living your life. If you’re that person, well, the rest of us will just assume the worst about you, then use one of your lesser moments to define you as a person, and make our thoughts factual.
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Speaking of defining people on individual actions or occurrences, removed from many months of excellence in one’s field or class as a person: When did we decide the proper time to get on our pedestals and demean people was to capture them in their weakest moments?
Andrew Harrison was asked a question right after losing a game, which finished his season, and cost his team a chance at college basketball immortality. Basically, in the most upsetting time of Harrison’s basketball life, he was asked a question and didn’t respond in the best of ways.
Guess what? It is okay, if not expected, that he didn’t give some artful answer. Was his word choice the best? Not at all. I certainly wasn’t bothered enough by it to muster some fake outrage. However, if you are deeply disturbed by the new nickname given to Frank Kaminsky, you may have the actual issue — not Harrison.
Sadly, it wasn’t how Harrison acted or what he said that bothered people. It was that he couldn’t say it — which is less a sports conversation than one about privilege, hypocrisy, and the racial divide that still exists in this country.
A rational discussion could not even be had about Harrison’s comments after the game. It quickly went from “I can’t believe he said F- Kamkinsky” to “Could you imagine if so-and-so said that?”
If a politician in a presidential debate said, “F- you, [insert candidate here,” that would genuinely rate as a major story and represent an important failing on the part of the speaker. Politicians aspire to attain power and guide the policies that affect many lives. We rightly expect self-control from those who seek elected office, and a presidential debate is not itself a sporting event, as much as political types might define it that way. It is itself an event in which we expect words to be carefully chosen. When elected leaders or religious leaders use inappropriately incendiary speech, we should be upset.
A 20-year-old kid mumbling (not directly stating, but mumbling under his breath) poorly-chosen words of frustration after a shattering loss in a supremely public setting? Are we really going to make sweeping declarations about Harrison’s quality as a person or Kentucky’s level of class based on THAT?
Come on.
Do I care that Harrison said what he said? Nope. Why would I? He’s a kid who lost something very important to him being put under a microscope. Not only has he already personally apologized to Kaminsky; many people (particularity white privilege) didn’t even understand the context of it because they’re more concerned about where they think the word should be placed (namely, Harrison).
This sucks. It does. A beautiful game was played last night. Wisconsin should be celebrated for beating a previously undefeated team. Kentucky should be as well for having such an incredible season. Yet here we are, taking away from those things because (a scarily large number of) people are just furious over things that have not a single thing to do with basketball, but every single thing to do with their own misplaced desires and disproportionate hatreds.
It’s the ugly part of social media, revealing that dimension inside human beings which revels in the fall of successful athletes and teams more than it ever celebrates the beauty human beings create.
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The well-lived human life is precisely built on celebrating the beauty which exists in ourselves and others, all while working to make things better. Vicious criticisms of Kentucky and Andrew Harrison might feel good for many in the present moment, but if it’s that easy for members of the Twitter mob to lash out at others, do realize that others can say the same things in return. Lashing out at Harrison or Kentucky doesn’t celebrate beauty, and such actions certainly don’t make our world better, either.
The whole human person — the person who is comfortable in his or her own skin — doesn’t have to worry about what 20-year-olds mumble into a live mic after a crushing loss. The person who can look at Kentucky’s season and see beauty in it will not gloat or call the Wildcats failures. Wisconsin’s excellence can be celebrated instead.
There’s a rich and fulfillling way to live… then there’s the divergent path followed by those eviscerating Kentucky and Andrew Harrison.
Please choose wisely… and if you went down the wrong path, Easter Sunday’s a pretty good day to reflect and seek interior transformation.
