Reject parity in basketball and in life

I hope you have your brackets ready. It’s NCAA Tournament time! Sixty-eight teams started out looking for their “one shining moment,” and in a few weeks only one will be crowned champion. Each team has a chance to win, at least technically speaking. But not really, not usually.

A No. 16 seed has never defeated a No. 1 seed. The disparity is too great. Most years, one or two teams stand out from the rest as favorites—Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, Michigan State. All year these teams dominate, and come tournament-time pundits and fans alike expect them to roll to victory. Should they lose it’s a true upset, a lesser team defeating a dominant one.

This year things are shaping up differently. No team clearly stands out from the rest. The tournament is full of decent teams and a few good ones. The one that wins the title will be the one that gets hot over the next few weeks, not necessarily the one that’s best. College basketball is marred by one of the most damning words for a competitive venture: parity. Some see this as equality, a measure of competitiveness. They argue it levels the playing field and makes for more drama. It’s actually just mediocrity, a lack of excellence.

Parity might lead to more close games and a few more upsets than normal, at least according to seeding. But there won’t be many great games, games played crisply and well. The upsets will be cheapened because there’s no marked difference between the top teams and everyone else. The ceiling on great games and moments is lowered considerably.

In basketball, parity is cyclical. In another season or two, great teams will appear again and the tournament will regain its luster. It’s a result of varying factors, not an active decision. In the rest of life, parity isn’t cyclical. It’s the result of passivity, a lack of intentionally seeking to grow and improve. And the results resemble those in sports: mediocrity, low ceiling, lack of real competition, and excellence.

Life isn’t a competition in the sense of winning and losing, but those around us affect our level of “performance.” We should compete with ourselves and our past selves in an effort to improve. We should seek to be better and to pursue excellence in all things. And “parity”—people who settle for mediocrity—will not help us do that.

Whether it is spiritual life, relationships, or vocation, we need people who raise our level of play—the best we can find. Might we incrementally improve if we’re surrounded by the mediocre? Sure. But we’ll be improving as compared to the challenge they present. The lower the bar, the lesser the growth. We need greatness against which to measure ourselves because it means “wins” are meaningful instead of marginal.

I am not optimistic this NCAA Tournament will be especially well-played or memorable. That’s the effect of parity, the same effect it has on our lives if we settle for it.