Huby's Halftime: March Sadness, Love and Basketball, and Swarm
Welcome to Huby’s Halftime. I apologize for the delay in publishing my post. My day job has been jam packed with field trips, basketball tournaments, and a week long professional development in Vancouver. I’m going to combine this month's sports movie and Huby’s Halftime. We talk march madness, Love and Basketball, and the new TV show Swarm. Let’s get to it.
March Sadness
Okay, now that the opening weekend of the men’s NCAA tournament is over, do you really care? Sure, you care about your brackets and beating your friends, family, and coworkers, but how much do you actually care about the games themselves? If you are anything like me, probably not much. As someone who tries to stay up to date on the latest of college sports, I find myself struggling to engage with men’s college basketball. Even living in Greensboro, NC, once the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference and a cultural epicenter of college hoops, it feels like the hype that once went into March Madness has dwindled.
It feels easy to blame the usual suspects: NIL, the transfer portal, and developmental leagues, but is that really it? Let’s get active in the comments. Why or why do you not engage with men’s college basketball?
*I want to specifically highlight men’s college hoops cause we are still strong on the women’s game at my crib
Love and Basketball
In 2023 we are watching sports movies and reviewing them. For the month of February we watched Love and Basketball. This review is short for several reasons, but one of them is that there is not much else to say about this movie that has not already been said.
It is difficult to think of a better sports movie in the last 30 years than Love and Basketball. As noted in the title, we get a love story or a sports movie. At the core, Love and Basketball, is an ode to Black love and women’s basketball. Even some twenty some years later, the themes of equity between men’s and women’s basketball both culturally and structurally are still present.
The early scene where Monica is arguing over what is “acceptable” for men to do in the field of play yet women are demonized for, is sadly timeless. Even the scenes with Monica having to play overseas to be fairly paid for her performance still ring true.
If one thing has shifted in how I now view this movie is with Quincy’s character.
Is Quincy an all-time bum?? Monica is so much better at life than this dude but somehow they still end up together. Yet, sometimes that’s how love actually plays out. It is not always explainable yet when it is felt it is known. This movie allows the viewer to enter into this intimate love story, and twenty years later it still holds up. May we all feel the love both Monica and Quincy felt.
Swarm
Just last week, Amazon Prime released their new TV show Swarm. A dark comedic look at the evils of stan celebrity culture, with a heavy handed mocking of Beyonce’s Beyhive.
Dominique Fishback is an absolute force in the show. Her performance alone is worth the watch, but while the show has not made me want to sell my Renaissance Tour tickets (it’s my newsletter so I can flex a little), it has brought up one question. What would be the sports equivalent to Swarm. After much pondering, here are some answers.
Lebron Fans
We all know them. Since 2011, they have been trying to explain to us why Lebron is the greatest basketball player in history. Dare mention any other great player for GOAT consideration and then immediately cast you out as Skip Bayless.
Critique Lebron’s social activism and you might as well be Tucker Carlson. What gives Bron fans strength in their fandom is that it is not attached to a team or franchise. Their allegiance is solely tied to one man. The sad reality is, even once he retires the fanbase is not going anywhere.
Alabama Football Fans
This fan group is here because is their a fanbase that has brushed so much racial history under the rug and committed actual eco-terrosim in the name of football. In the words of the SEC, it just means more to the Tide.
Nah but seriously. A man committed a felony by poisoning some historic trees, then admitted to (unprompted by the way) said crime on one of the most popular sports radio broadcasts in the country, and ended said phone call by emphatically saying “roll damn tide”. All in the name of football.
Secretly for the last few years I have been hoping for Alabama to go 8-4 just so I can watch this fanbase do mental gymnastics and get Nick Saban out of Tuscaloosa.
Leave a comment. What other fanbase is deserving of a Swarm style TV show?
As a Tennessee diehard, it’s hard to argue with Alabama. However I think it depends on the era and the sport. The Patriots had a pretty nasty fan base for a while, especially rolled into the Tom Brady stans specifically. St Louis Cardinals fans were bad for a while, but this could be that one of my best friends in high school was an annoying Cards fan. Yankees fans also used to be terrible, but baseball has really dropped off in the past few decades.
As far as men’s college basketball, it just feels like all of the energy is put into March Madness itself rather than individual teams, and thus makes it hard to care about any particular team unless you have an affinity for it. And even then it can be hard to care because it feels like even the schools themselves don’t care as much.