The sports teams I root for are a reflection of where I grew up and what teams were on my television for me to watch. So, I root for New York teams (excluding the ‘ets’* and Islanders) because I grew up in the New York media market. Of course, I also grew up in the Philadelphia media market and I rooted for Dr. J’s Sixers and the Broad Street Bullies. And, in the 1970’s the Steelers were both great and on television nearly every week in Philly. So, I liked them too and still hope they do well. In any case, I like to root for the hometeam, not pick and choose based on some random set of factors. But, if you make me watch a basketball game between Michigan State and Oklahoma, I will confess to having Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe in the back of my mind. I’m not likely to start cheering for the Sooners. So, I can kind of understand where David Brooks was coming from when he chose to root for Duke over Butler in the NCAA championship game because the Duke kids are ‘privileged’ and work harder than the schlubs that go to shitty schools like Butler. (I root for Princeton’s basketball team, but for a different reason. I grew up there). For a guy like Brooks, the Duke players and (particularly) the students that cheer for them are his kind of people. It validates his worldview that elites are where they are because they work hard and deserve everything they’ve got. Never mind that you don’t work hard to become a 6’11” human being or to be born into the Johnson & Johnson fortune, Never mind that the kids at Butler are more likely to have already exceeded the educational level of their parents, while the opposite is the case for the kids at Duke. Never mind that a lot of the Duke student-athletes come from extremely modest circumstances, too.
Brooks could have chosen to root for Duke for no other reason than that he was once a visiting professor there, but instead, he tells us:
David Brooks: A few hours after that atrocity of opening day, Duke went on to beat Butler the national championship. You should know that Duke is one of my alma maters. I am very generous in my definition of alma maters. I claim that affiliation with any school I went to, taught at, lived near (Villanova and St. Johns) or parked at.
Unlike 90 percent of America, I was rooting for Duke last night. This was widely cast as a class conflict — the upper crust Dukies against the humble Midwestern farm boys. If this had been a movie, Butler’s last second heave would have gone in instead of clanging off the rim, and the country would still be weeping with joy.
But this is why life is not a movie. The rich are not always spoiled. Their success does not always derive from privilege. The Duke players — to the extent that they are paragons of privilege, which I dispute — won through hard work on defense.
And in case you’re not sure what he’s getting at, he made it clear in the next exchange with Gail Collins:
Gail Collins: I’m sorry, when the difference is one weensy basket, I’d say Duke won neither by privilege nor hard work but by sheer luck. But don’t let me interrupt your thought here. I detect the subtle and skillful transition to a larger non-sport point.
David Brooks: Yes. I was going to say that for the first time in human history, rich people work longer hours than middle class or poor people. How do you construct a rich versus poor narrative when the rich are more industrious?
So, in other words, Brooks was offended that the Butler kids were considered the scrappy hard-working underdogs when it is the Duke kids who have a far more demanding course load and who had to work harder to get into the university in the first place. Not only that, but elites actually put in more weekly hours than regular folks, so who’s more industrious and deserving anyway?
It’s my impression that Duke does have higher academic standards for their college athletes than most schools, although I don’t know that for certain. I’m not trying to denigrate the very accomplished young men on Duke’s championship-winning basketball team. But it is very odd to root for them not because you’re from North Carolina or because you admire their style of play, but because you think they’re elites, just like you. I mean, isn’t that strange?
* The ‘ets’ are the Jets, Mets, and Nets. The Islanders go with them…all teams that originally played on Long Island.