Published: April 1, 2010

During the month of March, colleges from Arkansas Pine Bluff to Xavier, crisscrossing the country from Gonzaga to Georgetown, focused on one thing only: college hoops. Spring Break, St. Patrick’s Day and midterms all took a backseat to basketball for students at those schools lucky enough to have a team in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.

Even at schools with teams that missed the cut, the tournament still represents one of the premier events on the sporting calendar—just not at Fordham. Even with brackets now  whittled down to the Final Four, finding a hoops fan at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) is hard; finding a Rams fan is impossible.

“Fordham has a basketball team?” asked Amalia Tollas, FCLC ’13. “The Lincoln Center campus has zero to do with sports.”

Despite our D1 status, students have many reasons to ignore the Rams. “We’re not on TV so I can’t really watch them, and I’m at this campus so I’m not necessarily going to go up to the Bronx to watch a game,” said Sean Killeen, a second year Fordham business student. “Also, they aren’t very good.”

Others, like Nick Sereda, FCLC ’13, have more emotional reasons for not bleeding maroon. “Fordham is so horrible that if I rooted for them it would just be a cycle of pain and disappointment.”

Although hoops fans are often hard to find at FCLC, students who do follow college basketball are left to choose for themselves a school to cheer on throughout the year. In this case, almost all fans decide to root for their hometown team.

“I usually root for Georgetown or Maryland, but more Georgetown because I’m from D.C.,” said Ryan O’Toole, FCLC ’12. “Since coming to Fordham, I haven’t rooted for Georgetown because they are Jesuit rivals, so I usually root for Maryland or George Washington if they’re good. I’m a big local person. If Fordham was good I would root for them.”

Within this category are those like Tollas who have family ties to local schools. “Duke!” said Tollas. “My mother went to Duke Law School, so I grew up with my dad and my sister watching the Duke games. That was back when Shane Battier was on the team so when I was really young I would go along with the ‘who’s your daddy Battier!’ chants.”

Like Killeen, who roots for his home team of Michigan, Adam Gemar, FCLC ’13, roots for the Minnesota Gophers. “My girlfriend goes to University of Minnesota, and they’re in the Big 10 so they play better teams,” said Gemar.

For Jacob Sexton, FCLC ’12, Fordham could not be further from his roots. “I root for the University of Kentucky,” said Sexton, “not because we are having an excellent year (which we are), but because my hometown is Lexington, Kentucky, where the university is located. Where I’m from, it would be blasphemy not to [root for Kentucky]. It’s more than a tradition or past time, it’s a way a life. UK basketball is the common canopy for discourse in Lexington among all ages and social classes.”

Some students, like Sereda, pick their favorite teams by their gut, with alliances switching with their circumstances. “I like UCLA, mainly for their uniforms and John Wooden,” said Sereda, “but right now I’m rooting for Kentucky just because I have them winning on my bracket.”

At FCLC it is rare to find those like Sereda who fill out a bracket, let alone find someone who follows a team the whole year. When the Men’s College Basketball Championship is decided on April 5 and the talk shows and newspapers stop making brackets for “the best TV show” or “the best cupcakes in New York” in honor of March Madness season, most of Lincoln Center will have an easy time finding another source of entertainment. The most exciting month in sports will be over, and hardly anyone at FCLC will notice.