No, it’s not just a game
I will never forget the first time I walked into a locker room of crying athletes.
The silence was disorienting.
Doors closed behind me, shutting out a noisy, crowded gym still buzzing from the big game and bringing pure devastation into focus. Light sobs and hard sniffs were the only sounds in the room. I’ve never felt more awkward and out of place than I did in that moment.
Raw emotion is exhilarating when jubilant.
That’s why we love March Madness and its many One Shining Moments. That’s why we can’t stop watching INSANE replays like this.
Malik Monk!
Luke Maye!
UNBELIEVABLE!#FinalFour #GoHeels pic.twitter.com/egIlS5nmP1
— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 26, 2017
But raw emotion sucks the life out of you when it falls on the other end of the spectrum.
Watching another human experience unfiltered anguish creates it’s own kind of discomfort that cannot be easily described.
In sports, these two scenes go hand-in-hand. Every euphoric celebration is paired with a locker room of heartache. Sure, we are all familiar with “the thrill of victory and agony of defeat,” but it is much more real than that — on both sides. And the brighter the One Moment shines, the darker the despair is for the losers.
The commentators in Florida’s stunning win over Wisconsin made brief mention of this after the final-second floater found its way through the net. It came into clear view on Sunday when this video of crying Kentucky players came out.
The key comment: “This isn’t a locker room that looks like guys don’t care.”
De’Aaron Fox was referencing how fans and media accused this Kentucky team of not caring earlier in the season as it struggled through a losing streak. Suffice to say no one is accusing them of that now.
That pit in your stomach you get while watching that video is actually the hard evidence of what makes sports so great.
There are few things in life that produce such raw emotion at such heightened extremes. All of them, including sports, have this one thing in common: we care.
No, it’s not just a game and yes, there is crying in basketball.
PS I saw this earlier in the week and meant to blog about it. Since it is kinda-sorta related, I’ll just leave it here.