The cruelty of March has become ritualized. Like a regularly scheduled breakup.
Not that I’ve become numb to it.
This month, sensing another premature tournament exit by Kansas, I’ll find myself face planted on my living room floor in a modified child’s pose, a cloud of shame hovering over me.
In this dark hour, I will call my dad, a former basketball coach and fellow KU fan. We’ll compare notes, rationalize the loss, and he’ll paraphrase Hyman Roth: “Son, this is the business that we’ve chosen.”
Indeed, every year, I eagerly sign up for another season of Kansas basketball obsession, the pain of last March receded.
But it’s more than selective memory that keeps me coming back. According to the academic literature of fan psychology, there’s a strong evolutionary reason for my devotion to Kansas basketball.
When we link our identity to successful people and organizations, we are engaged in what psychologists call “ego enhancement.” It’s a simple concept: I like x, therefore you should see me in the same light as x.
It’s also fairly absurd to think about. While I’ve contributed zero to the Jayhawks, I magically employ the pronoun “we” to describe “our” success. A record 14th Big 12 Championship! We rock!
In the academic literature of sports fan psychology, linking your team’s success to your own is known as “basking in reflected glory,” or BIRGing. The term was first coined in 1976 by a team of researchers led by Robert Cialdini, who discovered college students were more likely to wear school apparel if their football team won.
As a graduate of KU, I consider BIRGing about the basketball team my inalienable right. Instead of school apparel, my BIRGing these days comes in the more subtle forms of upward, if only temporary, mood swings.
Whoohoo, another Big 12 Championship! I think I’ll wash the dishes!
Another number one seed! Hey babe, what about a dinner date tonight?
But all this success by Kansas only seems to amplify the inevitable feelings of shame following our March exit.
To be fair, Kansas is hardly a total post-season loser. Under coach Bill Self, we won the national championship in 2008, and have been to two Final Fours over the last 14 years. How many other schools would kill to have such a record? But still, relative to our high status, we’ve underperformed when it counts most.
And vicarious shame, as most diehard sports fans know, is a much more intense and lasting emotion than vicarious glory.
Cognitive dissonance may help explain the particular harsh flavor of shame reserved for Jayhawk fans. As regular season overachievers, Kansas always flies first class into the tournament, making our fall that much more painful.
How to cope with such shame?
One technique identified by researchers is known as cutting off reflected failure, or CORFing, the opposite of BIRGing. Instead of decreasing the psychological distance between yourself and a successful team, you seek to increase the distance.
CORFing means no talking about a major loss with your friends and avoiding SportsCenter. You simply act like it didn’t happen. And if someone asks you about a loss, you discard any “we” references and employ the pronoun “they” as in, “Hey, they just aren’t really good, you know?”
But research has showed diehards are not easily given to CORFing. Indeed, a 1990 study of Kansas basketball fans by Daniel L. Wann and Nyla R. Branscombe found that long-term fans were less likely to CORF than relatively new fans.
Breaking up, it turns out, is hard to do.
Andrew Longstreth, a 1998 graduate of the University of Kansas, is a writer living in Brooklyn.