Hello Internet!
Happy March Madness and Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hopefully your bracket is being carried by the luck of the Irish. Or if you don’t care for Men’s College Basketball or Non-Irish people appropriating Irish Culture as an excuse to drink green beer, ummm…Happy Sunday! No matter if you are hung over from too many parties or hung over because Virginia was your champion for your bracket, I thank you for stopping by to read my Weekly Blog today. I hope you are having a wonderful week. I know mine was pretty good. This week’s Poem was all about the gray March weather and the Writing Prompt Piece was a girl with special DNA so if you didn’t get a chance to read those, make sure you give them a read. Also I want to mention that we are quickly approaching 200 pieces published on the website! (YAY!!) I have a few ideas what I’m going to do for the 200th piece, but I do know that it will be special. Next week will be normal with a new Poem on Wednesday, Writing Prompt piece on Friday, and Weekly Blog next Sunday. That Weekly Blog will be piece number 199 so the next piece after that will be 200. My plan is for it to come out on Friday. So nothing will be published on Wednesday, but to make up for that, there will be a special piece on Friday to commiserate piece 200. I’ll remind you next Sunday as well, just so people aren’t disappointed by a lack of Poem on Wednesday March 28th. Then we’ll start April with the next chapter which will be our goal towards piece 300. Exciting stuff all around!
Now I considered making this Weekly Blog all about St. Patrick’s Day because yesterday was the famous green-wearing holiday, but I wasn’t sure where to take it. I could make font green, but I really didn’t have anything else to say on the matter. It’s kind of like Valentine’s Day, in which it’s named after a Catholic Saint, but no one outside of the Catholic Church celebrates it, and Cinco De Mayo in which Americans celebrate it and use it as an excuse to drink even though they probably have no connection to the actual culture. Also St. Patrick’s Day is not Ireland’s Independence Day and Cinco De Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day. Just getting that out of the way. I also considered making this post about March Madness and College Basketball. However, I really don’t know that much about Basketball and I know for sure that you don’t come here to the Blog to learn about sports. Sports aren’t really my thing; although, I do believe that you really don’t need any sports knowledge to do well filling out a March Madness bracket. Seriously, it seems like the people who study every statistic and know the game inside and out do about as well as people who don’t even know what a Basketball is. You can seriously go off how cute or awesome a mascot is and choose teams that way, and you would probably do decent at guessing who is going to win. I chose Arizona to go all the way and win and they lost to Buffalo in the very first round, so my bracket is already busted. Last year I did alright picking Oregon as my champion, but this year my luck ran out. Oh well. There’s always next year.
I don’t want to focus my entire Weekly Blog around the NCAA tournament, but I did want to talk about it a little bit in terms of Underdogs and Upsets. Now if you don’t follow College Basketball at all and/or don’t care about March Madness, you might have missed that on Friday, March 16th, The University of Virginia (UVA) and The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) played each other in the first round. Now Viriginia was the number 1 seed (the best) and UMBC was the 16th seed (the worst). However, this did not stop UMBC from playing a fantastic game. They beat Virginia and now by a last-second buzzer beater either. They won by 20 points. To give you some context, a 16 seed had NEVER beat a number 1 see in the history of March Madness. There had been some close games in the past, but the number 1 seed always ended on top. Well not this year. This year UMBC played a fantastic game and beat Virginia in a dominant game. UMBC became the first 16 seed to be a number 1 seed and therefore became the first 16 seed to reach the round of 32. Also I should mention that Virginia was ranked the highest among the number 1 seeds. Many people expected them to win the entire tournament. Seriously crazy stuff that messed up over 90% of people’s brackets.
So what does this major upset have to do with people’s life outside of basketball? Well many times in our lives we hear about these underdog stories. They are prevalent in sports movies as well as other movies where the unlikely hero must go up against a large, overpowered foe. Now in movies, usually the underdog wins. They are able to overcome their differences, come together as a team, and through a last minute, final effort defeat their enemy. Sports movies like to end with the final goal, basket, field goal, etc. to win the game. It’s great to see our team of misfits win over the [bad guys], but it doesn’t seen to happen that often in real life. Again, this is the only time in the history of College Basketball where a 16 seed has beat a number 1 seed. No amount of friendship or hard work or quirky characters change that. Everyone loves a good underdog story, but how common are they. Looking at last year’s bracket, the championship game was played by two number 1 seeds. Not much of an underdog story. And what about outside the world of sports and movies? Are underdog stories really that common or does the smarter/stronger/more dominant individual always win? I mean we hear about the Bible story of David taking on Goliath with nothing but a sling and a few stones in the context of a successful underdog story, but David did have the power of God on his side. Like the literal creator of the universe so maybe David isn’t really the best example of an underdog overcoming obstacles to achieve victory.
Anyway, now that I’ve brought you down, its time to raise you back up. To answer the question, “does underdog stories happen in real life,” I’ll have to say.. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it has to happen sometimes but how often is a mystery. It’s hard to know because we don’t have nice brackets like we have in sports. It’s hard to say who is the underdog and who is the fan favorite without some kind of ranking system. Maybe there are some upsets. I mean there has to be, right? I know there are moments in my life where the thing I think is going to happen, doesn’t happen. I think A is going to happen and then B blindsides me. Maybe I think I did really well in a job interview, but don’t end up getting the job or the opposite happens where I think I bomb a job interview, but actually I did really well. That is an example. Sometimes when you’re out there trying to obtain your goals, someone else gets in the way because that is also their goal. In life, you are sometimes the fan favorite who ends up getting beat by the underdog and sometimes your the underdog with the upset. I don’t have any inherent proof of that happening, but I like to think that it does. Just remember that every time you lose or something doesn’t go your way, that someone else won. And remember when you win, that there is someone else out there that lost. It’s important to learn how to win gracefully and lose gracefully because life is full of these up and down moments. Remember that just because you’re the underdog, that doesn’t mean that it’s over and remember that just because you’re the favorite to win, that doesn’t mean that victory is certain. Both still need a lot of effort behind them before you can achieve that goal.
Thank you again for reading this week’s Weekly Blog. I hope that you can win and achieve whatever goal you are currently work on. If you have a classic underdog story that either went your way or didn’t, feel free to leave it down in the comments. I’d love to hear your story either way. Also if you really liked this Weekly Blog, feel free to give it a like or share it. It would really mean a lot to me. I really appreciate all your support no matter if it comes to me in the form of views, likes, comments, or shares. Also feel free to follow Allen_The_Writer on Twitter and Facebook. Having more followers on our social media platforms helps grow the website and make this a better place.
I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
Header Photo Credit to NCAA
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/bracketiq/2018-03-16/printable-ncaa-tournament-bracket-heres-official-march
Allen The Writer 