The top-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs are poised for a Final Four run. The effects for their fraught Washington town are complex, but could resonate for years to come

I doubt he remembers, but the first time I met Mark Few was when he was with his wife and children, looking for a seat inside a mega-church on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington. I was home from university for the winter holiday and had tagged along with my father on that Sunday morning. Upon traversing a thousand-car parking lot, we were greeted by six video screens, a handful of professional cameramen, a 12-person band, and hundreds of Protestants, gathered together to sing contemporary Christian rock.

Few, walking quickly and in lockstep with his wife, hustled past me, no doubt looking to find a seat before a crazed fan could accost him. “Great work,” I said, as he zipped past. Few, whose face is compressed and tanned like a Florida retiree, was wearing a yellow, wool sweater. He nodded towards me. “Thanks,” he said, before disappearing into a mass of singing white people.

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As the men’s basketball head coach at Gonzaga University, Few is an extremely tough man to pin down. I bumped into the world-famous art dealer Larry Gagosian at the Hemingway Bar in Paris not long after that, and even he had time for a couple of words. But in the deeply conservative, largely rural, college-basketball-obsessed town of Spokane, Coach Few is the famous equivalent of about nine Larry Gagosians. He is always getting approached in Spokane’s restaurants, stores, parking lots, even churches. As the coach of the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, he is the central – perhaps the only – source of hope for a struggling city.

In 1881, Spokane was incorporated as a lumber and mining town, with thousands of men coming by way of the newly established Northern Pacific Railway through Montana and Idaho in search of gold, silver, and mill jobs. Jesuits founded Gonzaga shortly thereafter, in 1887, offering classes in theology and Latin.

Spokane (pronounced spoh-kan) has changed a good deal since its founding, and as is typical with cities whose central industry is no longer demanded, its quality of life began to slide once the demand for milling and mining fell in the early-20th century. In the 1930s, with the second world war spurring the economy, aluminum plants became Spokane’s central industry; but in the postwar period, Spokane experienced few newcomers. All of its job industries had dried up.

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In 1974, there was a world expo that brought a more expanded downtown. But as far as economics and quality of life goes, Spokane has stayed essentially the same since its postwar slump: it’s still relatively poor, still relatively dangerous.

Last year, Spokane ranked as the 22nd most dangerous city in the United States, up from 26th the year before. Last year alone there were 10 murders, 1,100 violent crimes, and 12,000 property crimes. President Trump’s message of gloom and doom resonated acutely with Spokane and the deeply conservative US congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers has represented Spokane County since 2005. Spokane’s unemployment rate is stalled at about 7%, the highest for a medium- or large-sized city in Washington and double the rate of Seattle. Over 17% of Spokane’s population lives below the poverty line. Spokane, in short, is a town in desperate need of success, vicarious or otherwise.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A view of the Monroe Street Bridge in Spokane, Washington. Photograph: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

For a while, that success was nowhere to be found, especially not in sports. The city has long had a minor league baseball team (the Spokane Indians) and a hockey team of the same level (the Spokane Chiefs). None of these teams were much to be proud of (and most of them were rather racist in name).

When Mark Few was named head coach of the Gonzaga men’s basketball team in 1999, he put Spokane on the map. Every year that Few has been head coach, the Gonzaga Bulldogs have gained entrance to the NCAA tournament, making it to the Sweet 16 five times and once to the Elite Eight. Yet, they have never been to the Final Four, and a championship has always seemed unlikely, no matter their ranking or early hype.

This year, however, having spent much of the season as the No1 team in the nation, according to the Associated Press and ESPN polls, and with the third-best offense and fourth-best defense in the nation, according to the college basketball statistician Ken Pomeroy, there’s serious reason to think 2017 will be different.

The Zags have previously had teams with standout players, from Utah Jazz superstar John Stockton to the three-point legend (and mustache aficionado) Adam Morrison. But in the 2016-17 season, they’ve had not just quality players, but a quality team: a mix of veterans, strong transfers, and arguably their best-ever recruiting class. Junior guard Nigel Williams-Goss (16.4 points per game), 7ft 1in senior center Przemek Karnowski (5.9 rebounds per game) and 7ft freshman forward Zach Collins (10.4 points and six rebounds per game), are firing on all cylinders. The Zags can score, rebound, play unselfishly, and, as has been all too rare, defend. Gonzaga has the third-most efficient team offense (with a scoring margin of 24.9 points per game), and, the fourth-most efficient defense, which matches the combined efficiency of Villanova in 2016, Duke in 2010, and Kansas in 2008 – all national champions.

In fact, eight of the last 10 national champions have ranked in the top five for both offensive and defensive efficiency. This year’s Gonzaga team ranks third in combined efficiency. The perpetual concern about the Zags is whether their West Coast Conference competition properly prepares them for the NCAA tournament. It’s a reasonable question to ask – the WCC is notoriously weak – but they’re 7-0 against top out-of-conference teams. That’s all to say, this is a basketball team that is poised to become national champions. What this means for the struggling town of Spokane, however, is slightly more complex.

On the surface, it might seem trivial or silly to claim that the quality of a town’s sport’s team could “save” that city or fundamentally change its residents’ quality of life. If this were true, the logical first thought would be that the difference would come through economic changes. Create a strong team and a city will earn revenue from selling more seats and concessions that they can pass along into infrastructure projects and other economic stimulus schemes. But that’s essentially never the case.

In 2004, the $25m McCarthey Athletic Center was built, and it seats 6,000 screaming fans. But the new arena hasn’t had significant effect on the town’s struggling economy as a whole. Economists disagree about a lot of theories, but what’s almost universally agreed upon is that a sports team has almost no effect on a city’s financial outlook. “The impact is so small, I’m not sure it’s even measurable,” says Michael Leeds, a sports economist at Temple University. “There’s basically no impact.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gonzaga fans cheer for their team during this month’s West Coast Conference tournament. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Rather, the change that the successful Zags have brought to Spokane is an adjustment of the city’s collective emotions. Sports are like religion: they provide a built-in community to residents. In a small town that has few other forms of community, Zags fandom stands out especially. In a groundbreaking study on the subject, Stephen Reysen of the University of Kansas wrote that identifying closely with an athletic team increases a fan’s feelings of happiness and success. “Positive correlations were found between fanship and entitativity, group identification, and collective happiness,” Reysan wrote.

“Mirror neurons,” activated in our brains not just by participation in sports, but by watching others participate, also help explain the profound sense of connection to our favorite teams. “It’s incredible,’’ says Eric Simons, the author of The Secret Lives of Sports Fans. “Over the longer term, you attach to teams in the same way you do with other people. You form a relationship with them even though it doesn’t reciprocate in the way that a friend would. You anchor your identity in this team, and this team becomes, essentially, an extension of you.”

For most Spokanites, the Zags have become like a close friend. For my father and me, they are a team that we look towards during times of success, but also – perhaps especially – during times of difficulty. My father listens to every Zags game on the radio, while eating his dinner alone. My mother passed a few years ago, so whether they’re running up the score against Santa Clara or losing to BYU, my father listens in, extending his invisible support for the team just as they return their type of invisible support to him.

In the same way that a hometown team provides emotional support to its residents, it provides a common social currency as well. Personally, I could not be living a more different type of life than my father – or than many of my childhood friends who stayed back in Spokane – but a quick mention of Karnoswki’s high-scoring season or Williams-Goss’s rebounding prowess immediately levels the conversational playing field. Perhaps this common currency and invisible mutual support helps reconcile the lack of logic inherent in turning over your feelings of self-worth and happiness to strangers dribbling and shooting an orange ball.

Zooming out even more, the reason a struggling town ascribes emotional significance to a constantly rotating group of 18- to 21-year-old boys is a slippery phenomenon. What is it, exactly, that my father is hoping for when he’s eating his pasta and listening to the game on the radio? The bus driver with his “Go Zags” sticker on his ticket machine? The residents of the crumbling house who post a “Gonzaga Bulldogs” pennant in their window?

The aforementioned psychology of connection explains much of it, but not all of it. As someone who growing up was generally more interested in reading a book than watching the Zags play, the answer has long eluded me. But I believe those activities have more in common than I’d previously given them credit for. The janitor who makes up the 17% of people living below the poverty line, returning to home in north Spokane late at night to catch the Zags isn’t thinking about the “mirror neurons” that are firing or the common social currency he is establishing. He isn’t thinking about the economic possibilities of a strong sports team, Few’s $1.37m per year salary, or the soaring number of applications to Gonzaga after they made it to the Elite Eight. He’s excited that his team is ranked to be national champions this year, that his team is in its best form in the school’s history.

It’s not five college boys on the floor at any given time; it’s an entire city. My dad drops his fork to pump his arms as Williams-Goss sinks a buzzer beater. Stickers get affixed to busses, pennants go up in windows. For a moment, to be from Spokane is a privilege, and even if you’re from a desperate town you become, if only for a short while, a winner.