A Short Theology of Busted Brackets

The data doesn’t lie. A Number One seed has won 22 out of the past 35 championship games. While a handful of teams are dubbed “giant killers” each year, Goliath still wins nine times out of ten. Truth be told, one’s bracket can make it pretty far when it’s based on probability. Then again, while you’re better off betting on higher-ranked teams, there’s something fun about rolling the dice on teams like Oral Roberts or Grand Canyon University.

We depend on absolute, universally comprehensive schemes for a sense of order in life. But the NCAA Tournament makes a mockery of all of that. Our brackets are metaphors for the plans we make. We pretend to have a bird’s-eye view of reality as if we had the power to orchestrate our outcome — we expect the Dukes and the UNCs of our lives to play each other in the championship game every year — but experience shows that there are surprises at every turn. We had a plan, but from the opening jump ball, it dawns on us that we have much less control than we had thought. Three-pointers, the occasional slam dunk, double dribbles, and technical fouls all happen to us in real time, barely giving us a chance to adjust to the new normal. Likewise, strangers become spouses. Life goals are thwarted only for new ones to come unexpectedly. An unexpected loss leaves us feeling cheated. There is joy and heartache in every round.

In real life, success is usually achieved by way of sound decisions and good sense. In order to provide for our families, we need to be responsible adults. At the office, reckless behavior is rarely rewarded. March Madness is one of the few remaining places in life where we can throw caution to the wind. We can dare to hope for the absurd to come true without suffering the consequences of actual defeat.

In that sense, we get to live our lives through the 20-year-old boys running up and down the court. Marco Iacoboni, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, once explained our love affair with March Madness on a neurological level in the Washington Post, and the article points directly to the theological doctrine of vicarious atonement. “When we watch the players battling on the court, cutting across the defense with a no-look pass,” Iacoboni explains, “mirror neurons make us literally feel what the player is feeling (to a milder degree, of course). Our brains are reenacting internally what we watch. It is as if we are almost playing the game ourselves.” If this sounds far-fetched to you, then you have never laid awake at night reliving the wonders of a victory or the horrors of a bitter loss. When our teams play, they play on our behalf. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,” we tell our teams at the beginning of each game.

Of course, I have overextended the metaphor here. There is only one “who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 2:2), but I have only gone so far to prove the madness. To be honest, the feeling I get knowing that Christ has given us victory over sin and death is not too far from the feeling I had when my team won the national championship two years ago. How exactly did I feel? In a word, “lucky.”

At the risk of sounding trite, the NCAA tournament is really just an allegory for life with its upsets, perennial powerhouses, Cinderella stories, and epic failures. It’s pure chaos with just enough predictability to trick you into thinking your bracket might be a winner. Of course, all of our brackets ultimately fail. Whether we don’t pick any winners in the first round or pick three out of the Final Four, we all fall short. Thanks be to God, however, that a perfect bracket was written out on our behalf. The absurd did come true on that blessed Easter morn and we are free to celebrate the victory that was won for us. It may have looked like the greatest upset ever, but it was a victory set in place from the very beginning.