Or, "How Russell Wilson Changed my Sports Philosophies"

Growing up, I had a particular vision of how sports worked. I was in Seattle, a town that, at the time, hadn't seen a champion on the professional level since 1979. I was only six years old when a baseball team full of now-forgotten talent won 116 games, but fell short when the time came to play for the ultimate prize. This, and I'm sure other experiences, shaped my view of the sporting world. A championship represented the top of a mountain that our plucky upstart teams tried to climb every year, only to be beaten to the punch by teams from the other towns, ones with more fans, more media coverage, more money. I made my teams the underdogs, which, most of the time they were.

When I was just about to turn eleven, one team made it further up the mountain than any team I loved had before. The Seahawks climbed all the way to the championship game, they were playing in the Super Bowl. It was so weird to me at the time, the Super Bowl wasn't the kind of game my teams played in. The Mariners in the playoffs was a faint memory, distorted by the weak power of my younger brain. Of course they'd never make it up the mountain. The Sonics were led by Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis into the final stages of a climb in 2005, only to fall short, because of course they would fall short. The Seahawks were making it pretty high up the mountain with a surprising amount of regularity, but of course they weren't prepared to make that final push. I never expected much from my teams, because mountains are steep, and scary, and full of teams that are so obviously better. It was an upset every time they progressed, in my head.

But here they were, playing for a title. Yes, that scoreboard at Super Bowl XL really said SEA. No, it wasn't one of my Madden franchises. It was surreal.

So of course they lost. Sure, I was upset, but not because I expected a victory. Not even really because of the refereeing, though that didn't help. It was anger for the missed opportunity, the realization that the climb had been fruitless, that the Seahawks would come home just as empty-handed as ever when all was said and done.

This turns me towards Gonzaga.

My sister started attending Gonzaga University when I was seven. How immediately I became conscious of their basketball team, I'm not sure. I do remember attending a Gonzaga/UW game wearing a community Kennel Club shirt up in the top row, screaming during Husky free throws and in general having definitely picked a side (which, for the record, I have not and will likely never do in the Apple Cup). The Huskies weren't bad at the time, making the tournament three times while my sister was in school, even once as a one-seed, but I still picked Gonzaga. They were the perennial underdogs, the plucky upstarts looking to stick it to the man of the power conference teams. I was in love.

How much in love, you ask?

I didn't see Adam Morrison cry live because I was too busy with my own tears. I was throwing things across our family's den when Jimmer Freddette and the rest of BYU just refused to miss shots against us. I was going to Battles in Seattle on an annual basis. I was printing out blank brackets, filling them out on Sundays, and taping them to walls so I could fill them out, hoping one day I'd advance Gonzaga's name to that final, tantalizing line, with the words underneath, "National Champions."

Of course they'd never get there. The mountain was tall. There were too many other teams who were better. Had more fans. Had more students. Had more money.

The Zags even got a one seed once, but blew it, just like all the talking heads, the armchair analysts on Reddit, the Twitter eggs said they would. Damn that mountain.

Enter 2013.

I had just been accepted to Western, Loyola Marymount, and Gonzaga. The University of Washington waitlisted me. There really was only one option, but there was so much money to be paid. I made the choice anyway. And the Seahawks had a young rookie quarterback leading them to victory after victory with sheer willpower.

He had a mantra.

"Why not us?"

There were a lot of good teams in the NFL. Aaron Rodgers was leading Green Bay to big things. Tom Brady was Tom Brady. In their own division, Colin Kaepernick was about to make a Super Bowl run. The mountain looked just as steep as ever.

But Russell was climbing it. A rookie quarterback was shocking the world, leading the Seahawks to a miracle comeback against the Falcons. One which was taken away with one kick. But the damage had been done.

"Why not us?"

A phrase I heard a lot for the next year. As the team rode on Russell's back, energized by a stifling defense the likes of which I may never see again, we kept hearing, "Why not us?" Why not this team? They were just as good as anyone else. The stats said so. The players said so. And hey, someone's gotta win the thing, right?

"Why not us?"

As I watched the Super Bowl in a friend's dorm in C/M, one of three Seahawks fans in a room of about eight, I got told to calm down as I bounced on a bed that wasn't mine while Malcolm Smith intercepted Peyton Manning and ran the ball all the way in the other direction. "Calm down?" I replied, not taking the request, "It's the Super Bowl!" It was the game my team isn't supposed to win. I don't get to have championship teams to root for. They never climb that mountain. But here they were. My heart was telling me it wasn't over, the Broncos had a record-setting offense, I'd had this sort of thing ripped away from me before. But my head was telling me the odds were growing smaller. Then Percy Harvin ran back the second half kickoff and the only reason to watch became to see if the Seahawks would shut out the best offense to ever play football in the one game that truly mattered.

"Why not us?"

This Gonzaga team has a few similarities to that young underdog champion team. DVOA, the most advanced football statistic, thought they were the best team that year. KenPom's AdjEM, the best basketball statistic, thinks Gonzaga is the best team in college basketball this year. The Seahawks had a heated division rival that was one of the best teams in the whole league. Gonzaga has St. Mary's, a heated rival that's been in the Top 25 for almost the whole year. The Seahawks had a mix of homegrown and acquired talent. Gonzaga gets key contributions from both categories of players.

Where the similarities end is in the tournaments they play. Football, while still providing ample chances for underdogs to succeed, has games that usually result in the better team winning. In college basketball, the odds are much less likely. Add in the fact that the Seahawks had to win three games to Gonzaga's needed six, and the odds seem to drop.

"Why not us?"

But the odds are as good for Gonzaga as they are for any other team. They have the talent to match up with anyone in the country. They have the bodies to compete with anyone inside. They have the shooters to punish any collapsing defenses. They have the defense to keep opposing teams off their game.

"Why not us?"

This year is different from the past. Fatigue has set into the minds of America at large. What was once everyone's favorite underdog is now a consistent presence. Gonzaga doesn't have the shine of a plucky young upstart in the minds of college basketball fans across the nation. The patience has run dry, and now the heavy burden of expectation has taken its place. A Final Four seems like the minimal acceptable outcome.

But this team hails from a small Jesuit university in a corner of Washington State most don't even think about. Where not even five thousand undergraduates attend classes every day. Where a walk across campus takes a little under ten minutes. Where I sit in a repurposed gymnasium trying to make theatre happen with equipment that only receives sporadic updates, and the music department has five buildings only because they're all houses or former Knights of Columbus buildings so there's not much space in any single one of them.

This is where this team comes from. This team that struggled this year in their arena that seats 6,000 against a team whose home arena seats 19,000. This team that gives about a thousand of those seats to the students of its sponsoring university for free. This team, full of both top international prospects and players who will never sniff professional play. This team that told players who were frustrated by the low quality of the program around them to come see what Spokane is like in the winter. This team that won 32 games so far this season, and is hungry for more.

The mountain is steep. The echoes of doubt ring out all around its wrinkles. The journey will not be easy, and an early end will be met with ridicule and scorn.

Last year, a Catholic university in a suburb of Philadelphia with just over six thousand undergraduate students took home college basketball's biggest prize.

"Why not us?"