Structure, History, and Culture (5)—Sweet-n-Sour Sixteen

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture."

[a] Tournament pause RF

This is the fifth in a series of posts dealing with a major set of theoretical concepts—structure, history, and culture. There is no better place to begin than the introduction to the series, and last week's posts on packing the car, driving across the country, and various aspects of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament give a glimpse of the way I teach about this concept in my classes. Even if you have not yet read the first few posts, here are the very basic ideas (if you find this to be simple, you either have a background in Sahlinsian structuralism or are not paying attention). We "negotiate" structures all of the time—and all kinds of them—physical, intellectual, cultural, and beyond. Each time we interact with a structure, we make choices. There is a great deal of individual choice in these matters. These choices result in an event—a particular set of choices intersecting one or more structures. Once that particular event is over, it is history. The particular negotiations of structure accumulate over time and become culturally recognized ways of negotiating those structures. 

I like to say that we are structure-negotiating animals. If you learn to think this way, it will change your life and ways of thinking...about everything.

 ***  ***

I know that I wrote a few days ago that I was going to save the rest of my NCAA basketball posts until next year. That is still more-or-less the plan, but one aspect of structure, history, and culture is just too sweet (and sour) to pass up, and I wish to cover it before moving on to other topics. This is the "concept" of the Sweet Sixteen team. This is one of the more ridiculous confluences of structure and culture, but you will be hearing or reading the term for the next few days if you watch or listen to media in the United States at all. I challenge you to check your regular web pages, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper and not see the term before Thursday.

[b] Real sweet (sixteen) RF

Sweet Sixteen? Why on earth would the NCAA (and various media types) have let that term stick? The sixteen teams that won both their first round games and this weekend's second round contests have been whittled from a structural bracketing of sixty-four* teams. In just four days of breathless events (forty-eight games in eighty-four hours), all of the hopes and plans and enormous institutional resources of many of college basketball's best programs have been pared down to just sixteen. Two rounds have structured the field. By early Saturday morning, there were thirty-two teams. As I write this early Monday morning, there are sixteen.
*Yes, yes. I understand that the field now has sixty-eight teams on "Selection Sunday." By the time the tournament begins in earnest on Thursday, however, there are sixty-four. I get it.

Sweet sixteen. I will editorialize briefly that I really dislike this stupid and inanely cross-gendered phrasing. It has at least four or five layers of fairly profound inanity that you can figure out for yourself—because I find even thinking about it annoying...except for the rich relationship between culture and alliteration. That is something I find fascinating. The words "sweet sixteen" flow out of the English speaker in a way that enhances rhythmicality even as it contributes nothing significant to understanding. That it is a term most often associated with a kind of patriarchal festival with highly questionable gender leanings seems not to matter in the face of syllabic fluency.

That's culture.

[c] Another measure RF

Structure is something else. Sixty-four become thirty-two, and then thirty-two is trimmed to sixteen. No amount of "event power" will change the structure. Even the best game in the history of organized basketball could not change the fact that sixteen (not seventeen or fifteen) teams advance.  

That's structure.

 Remember a few days ago when I mentioned that major universities with (seemingly) much better things to do are quite obsessed with the number of times that they are selected for the NCAA tournament? They keep records of these sorts of things and tell them to young recruits in the living rooms of America's 6'8" youth. Well, the South Dakota States and Harvards of the basketball world keep track of the number of times they've been selected for the tournament. Much more storied programs keep track of another number—the times its team has competed in the round of sixteen, in other words, the number of times a team has won its first two tournament games.

If the first paragraph of the article you're reading mentions that it is the tenth trip to the Sweet Sixteen in seventeen years, or that your program has been to more Sweet Sixteens than any other program since 2000, well, you are not Montana, Lehigh, or Norfolk State. You are Ohio State, Cincinnati, Wisconsin, or Syracuse. You have an excellent basketball program, and you assume that you will "make the field" most years. The real test is advancing to the third round, when only you and fifteen other teams are left. After that, (almost) anything can happen. I'll save for another day the kinds of schools that measure success in terms of Final Fours and national championships. Let's keep thinking about the winnowing process that leads to four square(d).

[d] Recruiting structure and history RF

That's just a little bit of the culture behind the structure. We could call the third round anything we want. That it has become a mellifluous measure of college basketball excellence is a sign—a semiotic marker—of the way we think, act, and plan. The structure has been in place since the beginning of bracketed tournaments (everything from high school baseball to Wimbeldon works this way). The events play themselves out...and become part of the record of the past (history). Culture is that fascinating web of understanding that not only helps us interpret what has happened (how events proceed through the structures) but shape the very events themselves. I watched just a little bit of the tournament action this weekend. I was stunned, even in my small sampling, to see how many players and coaches, not to mention pundits, noted that "getting to the sweet sixteen" was a goal in itself.

A little reflection should make that pretty easy to understand. A very real bottom line hovers over the Sweet Sixteen. Teams that make one are "in the conversation" in a manner that almost never comes to lesser-known programs (such as Ohio University or Xavier). Even well-known programs gain a kind of cultural capital that can be seen in the endless recruiting cycles that hover in the background of college basketball life. All of these things are "cultural." You will notice that I have not said—not once—that these things are "merely cultural" or "sidelights" or in any way less important than bottom lines. They are all wrapped together, and the careful analyst will be unable to see where bottom lines begin and culture ends. I will have much to say about those matters in the coming weeks.

[e] Sweet RF

For now, let's think about Sweet Sixteen basketball. A wide array of "seeds" made it out of their initial structural positions this weekend. Those sixteen seeds in each region have been cut to four. In "theory," each region should now be looking at the #1, #2, #3, and #4 seeds. With four regions, we get sixteen hard-working and exhausted teams (sweat sixteen). The structural-historical situation is a little bit different, though. Take a look at what really happened, and how the four teams in each region were seeded—structure...and history. I am told that this is the first time that four teams from one state have advanced, and why should it be surprising that the battleground state of Ohio would be the one?
                 East Region                                    South Region
                 #1 Syracuse                                     #1 Kentucky
                 #2 Ohio State                                   #3 Baylor
                 #4 Wisconsin                                    #4 Indiana
                 #6 Cincinnati                                    #10 Xavier

                 Midwest Region                              West Region
                 #1 North Carolina                             #1 Michigan State
                 #2 Kansas                                        #3 Marquette
                 #11 North Carolina State                  #4 Louisville

                 #13 Ohio University                         #7 Florida

[f] Patriarchal alliteration RF

You will notice that not a single region advanced seeds #1-4. Not one. On the other hand, all of the number one seeds are in the third round. That's history (and event). It's why the NCAA tournament is not a "theoretical" exercise, even though it is most definitely a structured one. Only one of the four teams in each region will advance after the two games this week (Thursday through Sunday). And if you think that a more logical structure would prevail and #1 Kentucky would play the lowest seed (#10 Xavier)...you would be wrong. #3 Baylor plays #10 Xavier and #1 Kentucky plays #4 Indiana. That's how the original structure worked, and the various contingencies, such as upsets, have nothing to do with it. The general idea is that it will all work out in the end.

We'll see. Why don't we end today's post with just a little more alliteration, though? Eight "Sweet Sixteen" games will be played on Thursday and Friday. The winners of those games will play on Saturday and Sunday in what has come to be called the Elite Eight. Have you had it with these phrases yet? Bear with us as the winners of the Elite Eight contests rise to the Final Four...before mercifully leaving just two to play in the distinctly unmelodic national championship game. Let's see how the debutantes do on their way to Suite 16.

And that's culture.

Structure, History, and Culture (4)—NCAA Basketball First Round

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture."

[b] First Round RF

This is the fourth in a series of posts dealing with a major set of theoretical concepts—structure, history, and culture. There is no better place to begin than the introduction to the series, and Tuesday's post (Packing the Car) took some very basic steps toward explaining how the concepts work in practice. Thursday's post (NCAA Brackets) was really much too complicated for the baby steps toward deep understanding that I prefer in this series, but the NCAA tournament is upon us, and I cannot resist pointing out timely matters of structure, event/history, and culture. Even if you have not yet read the first few posts, here are the very basic ideas (if you find this to be simple, you either have a background in Sahlinsian structuralism or are not paying attention). We "negotiate" structures all of the time—and all kinds of them—physical, intellectual, cultural, and beyond. Each time we interact with a structure, we make choices. There is a great deal of individual choice in these matters. These choices result in an event—a particular set of choices intersecting one or more structures. Once that particular event is over, it is history. The particular negotiations of structure accumulate over time and become culturally recognized ways of negotiating those structures. 

I like to say that we are structure-negotiating animals. If you learn to think this way, it will change your life and ways of thinking...about everything.

 ***  ***

[b] Event RF

I do want to point out—this is geared especially to those readers who are either bored or mystified by basketball—that I will not be posting on NCAA basketball tournament topics every single day for the next fortnight or so. Really. Having said that, I should also note that the NCAA tournament provides a particularly good opportunity to think deeply about matters of structure, history, and culture.

Round One is over. Thirty-two of the sixty-three total games the tournament offers are over (if you count "play-in" games, thirty-six of sixty-seven are over). We are one round into a six-round tournament and half the games are done. Half of the teams, in other words, get to play only one game. One. What's up with that?

For schools such as South Dakota State, Montana, North Carolina-Asheville, St. Bonaventure, and Long Island University, getting to the tournament is a very big deal. It is a feat that will figure in recruiting for their programs for several years to come. Same deal with Harvard. That university is little used to being pitied, but they received the equivalents of pats on the head all through the media this week. "Harvard made it to the big tournament for the first time! Good for them. They have had so little to show for themselves in the past."

Montana, South Dakota State, and Harvard. They'll remember.

And yet it was to be a brief moment in the sun, shared with thirty-one other games over a thirty-six hour feeding frenzy of college basketball (with up to four games going on at one time). These first two days of the tournament (the structure we call "Round One") are over so fast that the victors usually only have forty hours or so to prepare for Round Two, and the losers often don't know what hit them.

Early on this Saturday morning, with the last game fading from event to history just moments ago, I want to consider what happened in Round One this year and to reflect just a bit on matters of structure, history, and culture. 

[c] Prediction/historic/wrong RF

Before we begin to look at what really happened, let's take a quick glimpse at the structure of the seedings. Each region (of four) is seeded #1 through #16. One way to think about it is that the seeds in the first round always add up to the number seventeen. Take a look.

#1 plays #16                    #5 plays #12

#2 plays #15                    #6 plays #11

#3 plays #14                    #7 plays #10

#4 plays #13                    #8 plays #9

That's the structure. I have not shown how the second, third, and fourth rounds look. They are another matter for another....year. We'll deal with that stuff in the 2013 tournament (I think). For now, let's stick closely to structural-historical matters in Round One (Thursday and Friday, March 15-16, 2012). The "theory" is that the lower (better) seed will beat the higher (less accomplished) one. That is how the structure has been erected, and results have flowed through the structure like so many dominoes falling into rhythmic place.

Usually.

Events play out differently sometimes (that's why they play the games and the fat lady sings), but—now that the "sixty-four" team tournament has a history of its own—we can actually see how things have worked in practice. Let's examine how each of the seeding structures above have played out over the last few decades. People keep track of these things, and some of them actually get paid for it. Here is the record from 1985-2011 (we'll consider this year's event soon):

                     #1 against #16              100%                  108-0

                     #2 against #15               96%                   104-4

                      #3 against #14                 85%                     92-16

                      #4 against #13                 79%                     85-23
                      #5 against #12                 67%                     72-36

                      #6 against #11                 67%                     72-36
                      #7 against #10                 60%                     65-43
                      #8 against #9                   47%                     51-57

[d] Rapt RF

Now we're getting somewhere. This isn't "theory." These are the actual head-to-head results of seed against seed. In theory, a #1 seed should beat a #16 seed. There have been 108 matchups before 2012, and theory and practice cohere. The #1 seed has won all 108 games. In theory, a #8 seed should beat a #9 seed, at least a little bit more often than not. This is the one place in which (barely) things appear a bit aberrant. #8 seeds have lost a few more games than they have won against their #9 seedlings in sneakers.

As much abuse as the NCAA tournament selection committee can get from fans and pundits, their record is pretty impressive here. Lower seeds beat higher seeds, and almost always more often the greater the disparity between seedings. It really is a thing of statistical beauty, and it really happened.

Still, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The "it" that happened was 108 games at each level between 1985 and 2011. What has your seed done for you lately, though? How did this year's games turn out? Did this year's tournament hold true to form?

[e] Structured action RF

Yes. It held true to form. All of the #1 seeds won and most of the lower seeds beat most the higher seeds.

It also held true to structural form in another sense. There were some upsets—large and small. If you looked carefully at the first round history of the tournament (above), you will know that a #2 seed loses a game every half-decade or so and both a #11 and #12 seed will win a game almost every single year. The #8s and #9s will split (with the slight advantage to the latter).

How did the events work out in 2012, now that the first round is in the history books? It isn't theory. The events (all thirty-two of those structured tussles) happened. "Upsets" are in bold.

#1 Kentucky defeated #16 Western Kentucky, 81-66
#1 Syracuse defeated #16 North Carolina-Asheville, 72-65
#1 Michigan State defeated #16 Long Island University, 89-67
#1 North Carolina defeated #16 Vermont, 77-58

#2 Kansas beat #15 Detroit, 65-50
#2 Ohio State defeated #15 Loyola Maryland 78-59
#15 Norfolk State defeated #2 Missouri, 86-84
#15 Lehigh defeated #2 Duke 75-70

#3 Marquette defeated #14 Brigham Young, 88-68
#3 Baylor defeated #14 South Dakota State, 68-60
#3 Florida State defeated #14 St. Bonaventure, 66-63
#3 Georgetown defeated #14 Belmont, 74-59

#4 Wisconsin defeated #13 Montana, 73-49
#4 Louisville defeated #13 Davidson, 69-62
#4 Indiana defeated #13 New Mexico State, 79-66
#13 Ohio University defeated #4 Michigan, 65-60 

#5 New Mexico defeated #12 Long Beach State, 75-68
#5 Vanderbilt defeated #12 Harvard, 79-70
#12 Virginia Commonwealth defeated #5 Wichita State, 62-59
#12 South Florida defeated #5 Temple, 58-44 

#6 Murray State defeated #11 Colorado State, 58-41
#6 Cincinnait defeated #11 Texas, 65-59
#11 North Carolina State defeated #6 San Diego State, 79-65
#11 Colorado defeated #6 University of Nevada-Las Vegas, 68-64 

#7 Gonzaga defeated #10 West Virginia, 77-54
#7 Florida defeated #10 Virginia, 71-45
#10 Xavier defeated #7 Notre Dame, 67-63
#10 Purdue defeated #7 St. Mary's (Cal), 72-69 

#8 Iowa State defeated #9 Connecticut, 77-64
#8 Kansas State defeated #9 Southern Mississippi, 70-64
#8 Creighton defeated #9 Alabama, 58-57
#9 Saint Louis defeated #8 Memphis, 61-54

[f] Analysis RF

Structures matter. Most of the favored seeds won—most. History matters, too. Some of the underdogs won, and a few of them won in historic fashion and concentrations. This year had pretty much a decade's worth of #15 over #2 upsets, and at least one #1 seed (Syracuse) got quite a scare. A healthy little overachieving cluster of #11s, #12s, and a #13 won, too, while sevens, tens, eights, and nines fought to more-or-less a draw.

 ***  ***

We have spent most of our time today discussing event and history—what actually happens (and has happened in the past) within the structure of seedings. Let's conclude with one of the most fascinating aspects of culture—the mythology of the upset. Someday a #16 will defeat a #1 seed. Everyone will remember it, and one poor little major basketball power will be mocked for a hoops eternity. It will be the only Goliath to lose to a puny little David...ever. Grandparents will tell their grandkids in 2055 that they watched on CBS as the gutsy little guards from Tiny College stayed with the University of Behemoth all game long and won with a shot at the buzzer...in overtime...walking uphill to the game...both ways. No one will ever forget the day that #16 Tiny beat #1 Behemoth.

[g] Birth of an upset RF

As embarrassing as it is today to be Duke or Missouri (#2 losers), nothing will compare to the rockets and flares of mockery that comes to the #1 that fails. And it will happen. The "happening" is history (to come). "Culture" will take care of the rest. We have all sorts of stories about things like that, and all sorts of places to tell them.

That's culture.

Enjoy the rest of the tournament, and think about structure and event, history and culture as you watch. 
 

Structure, History, and Culture (2)—NCAA Tournament Brackets

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture."

[a] Structured Madness RF

This is the second in what promises to be a long and involved series of posts dealing with a major set of theoretical concepts—structure, history, and culture. There is no better place to begin than the introduction to the series, and Tuesday's post (Packing the Car) took some very basic steps toward explaining how the concepts work in practice. Today's post is driven by events more than logical progression. The NCAA (Men's) Basketball Tournament begins in earnest today, and I couldn't resist this post even though the "structures" about which we are talking are much more complex than a car trunk. Sill, here are the very basic ideas (if you find this to be simple, you either have a background in Sahlinsian structuralism or are not paying attention). We "negotiate" structures all of the time—and all kinds of them—physical, intellectual, cultural, and beyond. Each time we interact with a structure, we make choices. There is a great deal of individual choice in these matters. These choices result in an event—a particular set of choices intersecting one or more structures. Once that particular event is over, it is history. The particular negotiations of structure accumulate over time and become culturally recognized ways of negotiating those structures. 

I like to say that we are structure-negotiating animals. If you learn to think this way, it will change your life and ways of thinking...about everything.

 ***  ***

[b] Prognosticator RF

How are your brackets looking? Finish 'em up, because the tournament is starting at noon (EDT).

Most of us are used to thinking about matters as weighty as winning and losing from individual and "team" perspectives. We speak of college basketball teams "going on a run" and fueling their competitive successes with big doses of talent and emotion. Yet even the most "free will" leaning basketball fan cannot help but see the structures that must be negotiated if a team is going to win the NCAA Basketball Championship...or even make the sixty-eight team field that (in theory at least) gives it a chance to take away the coveted plaque after six games and three weeks.

Let's begin to dip our interpretive toes into the structures of the NCAA basketball tournament. It all begins with a thing called "the one seed." If you paid attention to basketball this past weekend, you heard all about the conviction that certain teams (Kentucky and Syracuse, both with 30-1 regular season records) were assured of "one seeds," while a few (Ohio State, Michigan State, North Carolina, Kansas, Missouri, and a small handful of others) would have to see things break their way in conference tournaments to get the coveted seed.

[c] Structured RF

I remember a few years back hearing an angry caller on a Madison sports show bemoaning the "four seed" the Wisconsin Badgers had received that year. He was counting on a "three" and hoping for a "two," he said. He was frustrated, and articulated the structures of the tournament in compelling ways. "You don't understand," he told listeners who thought there wasn't much difference—that it was just a game. "A two-seed advances at least two, if not three rounds before meeting stiff competition. A four-seed already has problems in the second round." 

Whatever could he mean?

Well, this is one of those little parcels of culture that make all the sense in the world to insiders, as it were, and are a maze of obscurity to those who have not been enculturated. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday, otherwise normal-looking people started talking about "5-12 matchups" and the possibility that—maybe this year, for the first time ever—a "sixteen can beat a one." 

Huh?

Here's the basic idea. There are four "regions," each with teams ranked #1 through #16. Getting a number one seed, as it is called, is a big deal, and has become an independent cultural marker of a basketball program's success. No coach, player, or fan would claim that being seeded number one matters for itself (none would trade a number one seed for an early loss in a kind of Faustian basketball bargain). Still, pundits and programs note the number of NCAA tournament appearances and, if applicable, number one seeds, Final Four appearances, and national championships. That's culture. Where "structure" kicks in can be found in the relatively easy path a #1 seed has when compared to a #8 seed.

          First Round: #1 plays #16; #8 plays #9. Let's assume 1 and 8 win.

          Second Round: #1 plays #8. Let's keep assuming that the lower seeds win.
          Third Round: #1 plays #4 (and #2 plays #3).
          Fourth Round: #1 plays #2.

If everything goes just right, all four #1 seeds will make it to the national semifinal games. That is the structure. In history, it has happened only once, in 2008.

[d] 2011 Structures RF

Again, if you follow the tournament, this is so easy you are pulling your hair (or have quit reading). If you have never thought much about it, this all seems impossible (right?). 

The brief, structural message is that a #1 seed has what should be the smoothest road through the region—not meeting a comparably-ranked team until the third or fourth round. If you are a #16 seed, you meet one of the best teams in the country right away (none has ever won). If you are a #8 seed, you meet a comparable foe (#9) in the first round and then the #1 seed in the second round. It is all about structural negotiation, and comparable teams worry a great deal about being ranked #5 or #6 or #7. There are subtle implications to all of them, and basketball junkies spend inordinate amounts of free time (and disturbing chunks of work time) pondering them. That's culture...and personality.

So let's take a look at these things called brackets—the NCAA tournament "structure" we'll be considering. This one (illustration d, below) is from last year's tournament. It has the advantage of letting me show how some of the matchups "worked" within the structure, and gives the picture of how the first round played out, so to speak, in practice last year. Do you see the gray rectangles? Those are matchups (most of them as you'll see) in which the lower seed defeated the higher seed—for example, the #2 seeds all defeated the #15 seeds.

[e] Structure, history RF

Twenty-eight games held form; there were four "upsets." Four.

Some years have more raucous opening rounds, but 2011 was not unusual. From a quick "structural-historical" glance it might sound like no big deal. Almost everything followed form, with a small hiccup here and there. 

Well, that's one way to look at it. Almost anyone who watched, though (who "lived the history," as it were), remembers it differently. From the "lived experience" perspective, the events played out in exhilarating and tumultuous ways, with three lower seeds prevailing in one region (#11, #12, and #13) and one of them (Virginia Commonwealth University at #11) going all of the way to that storied structural pantheon, The Final Four. 

Another sorry little #8 seed (the "favorite" against the #9 in the first round but the underdog facing the #1 seed in the second round) also made it all of the way to the championship game. As a big, three-week long event, I and many others remember it as a wave of exhilarating upsets. 

It was...and it wasn't. 

[f] Culture...nature RF

As I have mentioned, the vast majority of games "held form," with lower seeds defeating higher seeds in the first, second, third, and fourth rounds. By the time they got to the Final Four, though, it was a "mess" for those who like to pick favorites. Not a single "number one" seed ended up being number one in its region (the "history" looks very different from the structure). Not one. 

That is how structure, history, and culture "work." While I can tell you that most games "held form," you could tell me right back that—for those who love basketball, at least—the upsets made history. We're still talking about it many, many...months later (it was only last year). On the other hand, we are still talking about 1983 and 1985 as though they were yesterday. If those references don't click, stay tuned during the next few weeks as we dig a little deeper in the the culture (and economics) of NCAA basketball.

***  ***

And to round out our discussion, I encourage you to look at the following items, as well. The first is a New York Times piece on "bracket personalities." The second is an interview on Morning Joe with that shaman of college basketball, Dick Vitale. If you have never heard of him (or heard him) you owe it to yourself to explore this odd little acreage of American culture. Trust me.

Bracket Personalities

Dick Vitale 10:35