When I watched my first NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament as a student at Gonzaga, I was in a freshman dorm, with hundreds of other freshman watching and rooting for the same outcome.
My friends Brian, Jake, Spencer, David and I gathered in Jake's room, catching the action on a 12-inch TV that was perched on a bed. We sat on the floor and on chairs, huddled around the TV while Papa John's pizza and "cheese sneets" fill the air with the aroma of greasy, flex dollars-purchased goodness.
It was through that experience that I first truly felt like a college basketball fan.
Sure, I would always follow the games and fill out a bracket, but this was the first time that I felt invested in it. Those Zags on TV were our Zags - we were bonded to them through our months of support, our Bulldog-emblazoned paraphernalia, our rickety dorm hall rattling with excitement with each big play.
It was our team, my team. We were connected.
That experience was in 2006, and over the next four years I and every other Gonzaga fan felt that connection.
Fast forward to 2010. I'm coming up on one year removed from being a student at Gonzaga. The Zags, of course, are in the tournament once again. Only this year, things feel different.
It's not that I'm supporting the team any less, it's just ... different. As an alumnus, all of the sudden my perspective on the Zags run through the NCAA tournament feels slightly off.
I'm not quite sure how to adjust.
For four years, college basketball fans are right there in the middle of the frenzy. We watch the games on TV with friends and pizza. We pack the arena, screaming our heads off for 40 minutes. We track our teams progress, predict the games' outcomes, try not to miss a single second of the excitement. After all, we were students fans, that's what we're supposed to do.
But as a student fan at Gonzaga, I really noticed two types of alumni that stood out because of how strange they seemed.
The first was the older generation who filled the rest of the seats not populated by the student section. They were quiet, they would clap occasionally, but more often than not they were seat-fillers wearing school colors. It seemed like they didn't really care one way or the other, and if they did, they rarely showed it.
But by contrast, the other type of the alumni was on the opposite end of the spectrum. This type would graduate, then show up at the student section the next year, acting like nothing had changed. They would be wearing a Kennel Club t-shirt, be slightly intoxicated, while screaming at the referees and chanting "Defense Bulldogs Defense!" While the older generation struck me as sad at how much they changed, this group was pathetic at how much they refused to change.
I didn't want to be either one of those types of alumni. And yet, here I am, hours away from Gonzaga tipping off their 2010 tourney run, struggling over the type of identity I want to take on.
Right now it's a struggle to find that middle ground. I want to cheer enough to tell myself I haven't turned my back on my alma mater, but I also don't want to feel like the guy who is still wishes he was a college student, nearly a year after the fact. I don't want to sit on my hands with a ho-hum attitude, but I don't want to punch a wall after a heartbreaking loss.
It's an adjustment many of us 2009 graduates are facing right now.
Some people will choose one path or the other.
But for others, I suspect that middle ground will be found at some point. And that moment will come after Gonzaga tips off tonight.
It's hard to no longer be fully a part of something after dedicating your heart and soul to it for so many years, and we all wish that things would always stay the same. But at some point, everyone realizes a way to cope.
It's like the end of a long relationship. You had great times, but at some point, circumstances force you to part ways. For a while you reminisce about how good things were, and struggle with the prospect of a life outside of the relationship. But down the road, you bump into that person, and you see that each of you are doing well on your own, and that encounter finally gives you the closure to move on in your next chapter. You have the good memories to indulge you, but you realize you don't need it the way you did when you were younger.
Tonight, Zags fans get to bump into Gonzaga, and we'll realize what parts are important to let go, and what parts are important to hang on to.
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