March Madness: Impact of UMBC’s historic upset over Virginia

UMBC’s win was validation

The first-ever 16 over a one seed was going to happen eventually, as the analytics said was trending towards. But it’s different actually seeing it live. For me, I wasn’t truly allowing myself to emotionally get invested in the possible upset until about eight minutes to go. But this win not only was history in the making, but it also solidifies some things:

Conference tournaments are here to stay!

It’s unfortunate that Vermont of the America East wasn’t able to get into the Big Dance as the league representative, as they were head-to-toe the best team. But I’m not going to cry about a team failing to get a must-win game at home nonetheless.

UMBC earned this opportunity, it wasn’t given to them. And while the Retrievers didn’t need to win this to validate their place in the Big Dance, no one is gonna complain about them being here. March Madness doesn’t start in the NCAA Tournament, but rather in the conference tournaments, particularly with the mid-majors.

This is not football!

It was nice for UCF Football to give a shootout to UMBC, but it nicely showed the difference between the two sports. In college football, their mid-majors (better known as G-5 schools) have no shot at a national title, even if they go unbeaten in the regular season. It’s frustrating to tell a team that they don’t even deserve a shot to prove themselves against the big boys.

With 351 schools in D-1 basketball, each of them can reasonably say that they can win the national title, and do it on their terms.