Finding the Poetry in March Madness

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/poetry-march-madness-basketball.html

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CHICAGO — Last Thursday night, Loyola University Chicago tipped off against Nevada at 6:07 p.m. in the Sweet Sixteen of the N.C.A.A. tournament. The weekly two-and-a-half-hour poetry workshop I teach at Loyola was scheduled to start at 7.

As I crossed campus, raucous cheers rose from the student center, hundreds of yards away. Lake Michigan crashed into the rocks behind the library, frothing like victory champagne. There was no one outside. Apart from a lone rabbit, nothing moved on the quad.

Two of my students had emailed earlier in the day to say they’d be absent due to March Madness. Loyola hadn’t made the N.C.A.A. tournament in 33 years. I didn’t know if a single student would show for class.

As I approached our building, the roar from the student center grew louder, as did the mixed feelings I’ve had about college sports. I’ve loved basketball since I was a boy and played varsity for my high school. Most of my friends in college were athletes, not poets.

But over the last two decades, college sports have become big business. In 2016, the highest-paid state employee in 39 states was a college coach — not the governor, not the state university’s president. Each year, N.C.A.A. Division I athletic departments generate billions of dollars in revenue. To keep the money pouring into their programs, and into their own pockets, coaches have to win.

The student-athletes at these big-time schools become in-house professional athletes, without the paychecks, but often with plenty of valuable perks. Their training, practice and game schedules leave little time for class, let alone studying. Many don’t get diplomas, which they’ll need because the majority of them won’t play pro.

Loyola, of course, is not one of those big-money schools. Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the team’s chaplain, was the only person involved with the team whose name I knew before the tournament began. I’d never even seen a student wear a Loyola basketball shirt on campus. When the team upset the highly ranked Florida during the regular season, my excitement was met with genial indifference.

The evidence that sports fit into life at Loyola was that they were largely invisible. After class each Thursday, I’d cut through the halls by Gentile Arena, past faded black-and-white photographs of earlier teams and inspirational quotations on the walls. A few student-athletes would be returning from the training room. Just another night for them, pursuing sports, as the N.C.A.A. Core Values state, as “an avocation.”

But now the basketball team was in the Sweet Sixteen on national television. Barack Obama was tweeting about Sister Jean. However briefly, Loyola athletics had entered the big time, which didn’t bode well for academics. As I crossed the campus, I saw that the only classrooms with lights on had the game playing on large screens.

Eleven of 14 students, all women, showed up for class (there is only one male student in our class). We talked about the Nick Flynn poems they’d been assigned. But cheering surged from down the hall as the second half began. At the students’ urging, we watched the rest of the game together on the large screen in the classroom. During the commercial breaks, I tried to think of a way to justify the decision pedagogically (the uses and abuses of alliteration: March Madness versus Elite Eight; or maybe, why sportscasters love clichés).

But as we watched, that need felt less and less urgent. One student did mention the power of juxtaposition, how at the end of the previous game the coverage cut between a beaming Sister Jean and a bawling Tennessee fan. Another student, after the game concluded with Loyola beating Nevada, said, “We should write a poem — it felt like my heart was beating outside my chest!”

But after a short break, we returned to the syllabus. To my amazement, the spirit of the game, the sense of all being on the same team, carried into our discussion of a student’s poem. Comments, which usually last for about 10 minutes, went on much longer. The poem, about a student missing her native Nigeria, drew encouraging consideration from her classmates.

When class ended, I figured everyone would rush off, but no one seemed in a hurry. Camaraderie had entered the room. Three students approached me — one about a poetry fellowship, another about a poem about trampolines and the Nigerian student about a poem she was writing on womanhood.

As she and I left the building, the campus thrummed with celebration, cheers rising from dorm rooms and passing cars. Another student from class, who lived on the South Side and had an hour-and a-half commute ahead of her, crossed the quad with us. She said the victory felt like the Cubs’ World Series victory in miniature.

We walked slowly, absorbing the night, its unlikely rhyme of poetry and basketball. I asked the student from the South Side about her commute, what route she took. The Nigerian student asked her what she did with the travel time. They talked about reading on train rides, and about the desire to observe others without being seen. They talked about making a T-shirt that said, “I’m a writer — please don’t mind if I watch you.”

The basketball game had come and gone, but its energy was still carrying them.

This Saturday, during the Final Four, I’ll be rooting for Loyola — for the team to win, and, more deeply, for the balanced role of sports at the university not to change. For both to happen, it’ll take a miracle.