“I Hope the White Team Wins”

Mom sits in her chair with a focused, tense look. Why is this? [*Asks why this is*] Illinois is down by a certain amount of points in their basketball game. A basketball aficianado who embraces the brackets and knows her stats is my mom…in NO way. Yet she goes about asking the score, and if it is on while she is in the kitchen, she will keep an eye on the television (Lord knows what goes in dinner then :)). In fact, she just now asked what UK stood for and muttered something about United Kingdom. Indeed, this is “madness.” I have yet to watch a game despite the fact that I actually know a little about basketball, thanks to my sophmore year doing girls’ basketball stats. So I pondered this, as I usually have a habit of pondering the wonders of life for hours on end. Mother laughed when I inquired as to why “March Madness” makes her care about this genre that does not tickle her fancy anyother time of the season. She said, “Might as well get excited about it, especially if one of the Big Ten teams win.” The later part of the blog prompt, concerning Jessica Fishman’s insight on genre, got me thinking. Using Fishman’s ideas on what genre tells us about institutional status and popular ideals, the mystery can be unveiled, to the extent at which the pyschological factors then come into play. It is not enough that a team is labeled conference champs; we want to see who is the best of the best. This institution of being champion reminds me of “survival of the fittest,” how all the weak teams will be cast away. However, the ideal of the underdog proving what they are capable of and overcoming their setting is embraced. Putting store into a team and then beliving that they can win (wearing the underwear that you don’t wash because you wore it the last time they won) gives a sense of loyalness that makes us feel good, even if the team goes through a losing streak.
Though it doesn’t matter much to me, for mom, it provides an emotional roller coaster of high and lows. I'm sure she feels the losers' pain.