Speed of lightning, roar of thunder, Fighting all who rob or plunder: Underdog, Underdog.

Hi y'all, sorry about the hiatus, but work has been keeping me busy for the past week (no need for sarcastic comments about working hard, hardly working, etc.). Anyway, I had to weight in on something eventually, and certainly one thing is at the forefront of my mind: the NCAA basketball tournament, and why I'm a Democrat. Yes, those two are related. We'll get to the latter in a second or two.

First, the Big Dance, which as a 64-team single-elimination team sports tournament shares what has to be the most exciting format in all of Sports This is not American triumphalism or some such, I just mean the format itself, which is shared, for example, by the national cup tournaments in European soccer, the FA cup being perhaps the most famous, especially to readers of Nick Hornby. The key to the format is that there are never 64 really evenly matched teams in any sport, so you end up with numerous underdog vs. favorite matchups, especially in the early going, which then morph into Cinderella stories in the middle round. Typically, midnight strikes eventually, leaving us with a bunch of good but often surprising teams presenting us with the cognitively dissonant fact that all you have to do in order to win the whole thing is to win six straight games, yet only one team manages the feat. Needless to say, it's also the best format for gambling pools nationwide, since you need virtually no inside basketball knowledge whatsoever to fill out a bracket. I usually pick some possible upset picks from the #2 and #3 seeds, since everyone picks #1 seeds and it lowers the marginal value in betting with them, and then hope that they'll go far. I should mention this virtually never actually works. Still, it makes it more fun to root for underdogs throughout the entire tournament. That way, I've successfully hedged my bets. When favorites win, my bracket looks better. When underdogs win, I'm happy on a personal level. As a side note, since I'm really not alone in these rooting interests, it explains why debates over who should be in the tournament (aka "Who's on the bubble") are essentially meaningless. The Illini were one of the last teams in, making fans in Champaign and several counties in Central Illinois happy. The rest of the nation, not so much. Had Drexel, or Missouri State, or Bradley, or a smaller program made it, everyone not from Virginia Tech would have been rooting for the upset. Instead, no one cares.

Rooting for the underdog goes to the heart of my liberal political beliefs, of course. Up until 2006, being a Democrat we very much like rooting for a mid-major program. They show some promise, but you just know that they're going to lose in the end. Thankfully, sometimes Cinderella makes the final four, like George Mason last year, and sometimes those in power fall, like Duke this year in the first round (to Virginia Commonwealth). Anyway, back to actually making a point. The democratic party, in its ideals, certainly appeals to those who root for underdogs (in practice, politicians are politicians first and people second or third, and appeal primarily to deep-pocketed donors). Unions over corporations, the poor over the rich, the right of people to vote over the right to suppress it, etc. Seriously, for those who speak badly of unions, WTF? I'm not suggesting that they are perfect, but you have to be seriously deranged to believe that corporations needing protection from their workers is a more pressing issue than the reverse. On the death penalty, what does it say about your very soul if you are more comfortable seeing an innocent man murdered by the state rather than a guilty man go free? Karl Rove, the man seemingly behind the US Attorneys scandal (there's a shock!) wanted certain people fired for failing to investigate "voter fraud", which in practice means anecdotal evidence of some trace amount of illegal voting by non-citizens. The favorite republican tool to stop this: odious voting registration requirements that suppress minority turnout. Seriously, if you don't like the rules of the game, just change the rules in order to keep the other side down (see Bush vs. Gore for more of this kind of policy).

At heart, I really dislike people who root for the big guy over the little one (no height-related comments from the peanut gallery please). It basically means that you are picking your sides based on who you think will win, rather than who should win. It's like being a Yankees fan, only toward life, rather than just baseball. We're not kids anymore, crying because we lost a little league game, or a talent competition, or something like that. Especially in cases where the big guy is a combination of corporate interests that value profits over people, along with their theocratic allies who value profits over prophets, and a scattering of macho bullshit idiots who think that war is a game not much different than basketball, but for the traumatic injuries, deaths of soldiers and civilians, millions of refugees, etc....well, let's just say to root for the little guy.

More tomorrow night when I'm in the mood to be a bit coherent. Until then, here's hoping for Upset City, baby!