Dr. David Mazel
Adams State College
March Madness is almost here, so it’s time to think about the Big Tournament as a difference machine — a machine built to create differences.
A difference machine doesn’t discover differences that already exist, no more than a lawnmower discovers a nicely trimmed lawn. It produces differences. Just as a sausage factory turns a bunch of unruly squealing pigs into neat rows of plastic-wrapped sausages, the factory known as the NCAA tournament takes 68 potential winners and produces a neatly ordered set of one-and-dones, two and throughs, semi-finalists, finalists — and, finally, a champion.
The fact that there will be a champion does not depend in the least on the performance of the teams, much less the hard work and grit of the athletes. It depends on the structure of the machine. As long as it is structured as it is, the tournament could consist of teams of fifth graders coached by lizard people and it would still produce a national champion.
Alternately, the tournament could feature 68 teams of the finest quality, perfectly matched in every conceivable way. But however evenly matched the teams might be when they are fed into the machine, they would come out sorted into one-and-dones, two and throughs, semi-finalists, finalists, and a champion. Again, this result is guaranteed by the structure of the machine.
This is pretty obvious when you think about it. But we tend not to think about it, because American culture teaches us to think about individual merit rather than the structures within which individual merit operates.
We have all been taught to think that what makes a champion a champion is some combination of qualities possessed by the champion – hard work, talent, desire – and we thus tend to forget that those qualities cannot produce a champion unless there is first a suitably constructed difference machine to feed them into. To make sausage takes more than just a pig; you need a meat grinder as well.
We also tend to forget the relativism embedded in the process of manufacturing, say, a collegiate basketball champion. It might seem at first that the existence of the intrinsic qualities that supposedly makes the champion a champion – and in whose existence our culture encourages us so strongly to believe – is a self-evident, objective fact. We are trained to think that a team either has those intrinsic qualities or it doesn’t. We are likewise trained to think that the champion’s possession of those qualities is ratified by the mere fact that the champion is the champion.
But, as I noted above, the structure of the machine guarantees a champion regardless of the qualities possessed by the teams. Each team’s performance is judged not in comparison to any external standard, but only in comparison to the other teams in the tournament, in fact in comparison only to the other teams it happens to play in the tournament. And what determines which teams the eventual champion will happen to play? As the tournament proceeds, these opponents are determined less and less by the future champion’s own performance and more and more by the performance of all the other teams.
In other words, the forces producing the champion are not wholly intrinsic to the champion, but rather are dispersed throughout the machine. It’s tempting to wish for a “real” champion, a team whose superiority could be objectively ratified and whose success we could wholly and honestly attribute to its own talent and pluck. But the machine we call the NCAA tournament is incapable of producing such a champion.
Of course, it could be worse. Just look at the BCS.
Have a great Spring Break, everyone!
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