Late-Stage College Sports (1985)
Can our shared disgust with the capitalistic creep of college sports help unite America?
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I.
Every so often, a group of ineffectual bureaucrats stumble upon the perfect idea. In this case, I am thinking back to the spring of 1985, when, after years of slow and creeping expansion, a 64-team men’s basketball tournament was born. That very first year, Villanova defeated Georgetown in one of the most shocking upsets in college basketball history, and one of our nation’s most brilliant concepts was born out of the maw of one of our most comically inept directorates, the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
This was the ideally-sized bracket, with an optimal ratio of meritocracy to randomness. And do you know how we all knew it was great? Over the next three decades, even as the tournament incorporated in a micro-expansion to 68 teams, the overarching entity still held its general shape and form (those early games did not affect the balance of the overall field, but have served as a pleasant amuse bouche).
I mean, look at this thing—it’s like a Mondrian painting:
And yet in 2024, something very strange is happening. In 2024, 64 teams plus four is no longer good enough. Why is this happening? Because the very bureaucrats who graced us with this concept now fret that if they don’t mess with perfection, then perfection will no longer exist. And if you’re wondering what the hell that’s supposed to mean, allow Dana O’Neil of The Athletic to explain:
College basketball administrators fear that, if the tourney is left untouched, it will inspire power conference schools to at least consider their own postseason. Fox already is creating a counter to the NIT.
“The NCAA has to be proactive,” (a) source said. “Expansion — modest expansion — may be the only way to keep the tournament we all know and love alive.”
So, to summarize: The NCAA tournament, in its current dreamlike form, may get expanded once more, in order to satisfy the whims of a radically altered economic system and the capitalistic demands of its practitioners.
If this sounds insane, it totally is. But then, maybe we’re all on the verge of losing our minds anyhow.
II.
You hear the term “late-stage capitalism” quite often these days, but as someone who is not particularly schooled in the ways of Marxism and does not regularly consume 700-page tomes by French economics professors, I realized I was not entirely sure how to define it myself. So I did what one does when one wants a complex idea to be boiled down and simplified enough for a state-school graduate to understand: I looked it up on Google. And here is what I found—and if your eyes begin to gloss over, at least humor me and read the last sentence:
The term “late capitalism” regained relevance in 1991 when Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson published Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Drawing on Mandel’s idea that capitalism has sped up and gone global, Jameson expanded his analysis to the cultural realm. His argument was that late capitalist societies have lost their connection with history and are defined by a fascination with the present.
In Jameson’s account, late capitalism is characterised by a globalised, post-industrial economy, where everything – not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts and lifestyle activities – becomes commodified and consumable.
III.
Now, perhaps I am neither intelligent nor pessimistic enough to believe that we are necessarily in the death-throes of capitalism. I tend to believe that our society veers out of balance and then draws itself back to the center again, often in ways we cannot anticipate or comprehend. But I think—I hope—that someday we will look back on this moment in history and regard the ruthless commodification of college sports as a metaphor for the extremist moment we were suffering through.
And if the pointless expansion of the NCAA tournament is not enough to convince you of that, consider college football, which may expand its playoff from 12 teams to 14 teams before it has even contested its currently expanded playoff, which is already making the considerable leap from four to 12. And why are they doing this? Because they are also under threat by nakedly capitalistic forces, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel and Heather Dinich:
One high-ranking official involved in the discussions told ESPN on Wednesday that the presidents and chancellors in both the SEC and Big Ten are having conversations about whether to continue their NCAA membership.
“Those conversations are happening,” (a) source said, adding some feel “pretty strongly about pulling away. I'd say very strongly.”
As proof of how undeniably insane this idea is, I’m going to do something I wouldn’t otherwise do: I am going to link to an article from the normally execrable website Outkick the Coverage, which declares in its headline that “money and power are the true motivation behind a 14-team playoff.” And given that this website is overseen by perhaps the most vile far-right charlatan to emerge from the sportswriting universe since Westbrook Pegler, I think we’ve reached a point of consensus here: Everyone, from Marxists to reactionaries, thinks that college sports has completely lost its way amid the shift of its economic model.
Maybe that’s not a terrible thing. Maybe this blatant commodification of small pleasures can unite us at a moment when we can’t seem to agree on anything. I continue to believe that college sports, a uniquely American concept, are a reflection of the evolution of the American experience. And when you start to screw around with one of the few things that still feels connected to a shared history—something that feels like an island of perfection in a wildly imperfect world—maybe people will finally rise up and tell you that you’ve gone too goddamned far. Maybe our shared indignation over something so immaterial can help us pull back from the brink.
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