Why I want NU to win this year

I have never been a diehard fan of the UAAP collegiate basketball series  is that what it’s even called? Yes, even if I spent a good nine years of my life as an Atenean — four in high school, and four and a sem in college — I could never bring myself to watch an actual game (except on TV, once in a blue moon) because there was simply too much testosterone swirling around in the Araneta (now MOA Arena), or because my blockmates in college were all about the games, and hardly about anything else. (Umm… what about the musical I’m starring in, friends? #BITTER)

The fanatical ones called UAAP basketball and its corresponding hard-court hotties the anchor for their college existence while for others, it was their reason for living, period. To me, based on my affinity for the arts (and the underdogs), UAAP, or basketball for that matter, always came off as just plain gibberish — as nonsensical as the buzz over Lady Gaga’s new album, “Art Pop.” (Seriously, have you read the press release? The “reverse Warholian expedition” description of her album is prosaic and hardly makes any sense!) Yes, to me, the nonsensical part of this post-“Born This Way” Gaga always applied to basketball and the UAAP.

I guess, when I was still a student, despite my ill feelings toward the sport, there was something in it for me, somehow. When you’re busting your ass reading through telephone-directory levels of text every single day for Poli Sci, or cramming a paper for English, the freebies and the relief that winning a UAAP title offers helps you breathe a little. We’d win and diehard professors would dish out free cuts. There was also a celebratory bonfire at the end of each season, and an incentive for the students in the short run. A holiday was either declared (sleep!), or my blockmates and I would get ourselves an easy “A” in a short quiz or minor paper, or a mochi. “Why the hell not, right?” When you’re that stressed, Goddamn it, anything helps!

But now that I’m no longer a student, with no stake in the games, I find myself growing farther and farther away from the league I was never even crazy about to begin with. Wait, is Ateneo now on its three-peat, four-peat, or five-peat? That’s how detached I am.

You can just imagine how it was nothing short of ironic that I ended up working for a college lifestyle publication early last year that did specials on the UAAP, and had a monthly update about its other properties besides basketball in our pages. While I never really did master this “foreign” landscape during my time there, it was my interview with two-time UAAP MVP and NU Bulldog Bobby Ray Parks, Jr. that had me tuning into the sport again — well, as best I can given my hectic schedule in publishing and the theater.

For the magazine’s UAAP issue, I found out that, like me, Bobby has gone through a great deal of loss in his personal life. Last year, his girlfriend at the time succumbed to cancer, and earlier this year, his father, legendary PBA player Bobby Ray Parks Sr., also to cancer. How he managed to overcome his afflictions, turn to God for strength, and channel the tragedy to ignite his performance in every game (he would point to the heavens before each game as a way of honoring his fallen loved ones) is indicative of his strength of character, not to mention what he said: that “I’d trade in my two MVPs for a championship for NU any day.”

Now, it might come off as heresy, or a betrayal of school spirit that I am lobbying for another school to win this year over my own. “You ungrateful S.O.B.!” I can already hear my Atenean conscience — and the Ateneans in my life — yelling, or even the lead in the cast of the play I’m directing who is part of the Blue Babble Battalion. But that’s just me, wanting someone who’s gone through something similar to what I did when I lost my sister, to get the time to shine that he deserves. It helps that his team is an underdog, or quite literally, the Bulldogs. But Bobby Ray is also a two-time MVP from seasons past, and his team has been working doubly hard this year to upset my alma mater’s five-peat and bag the championship for their own.

The standings as of July 21 were that NU and UE were tied at both fourth and fifth place with a 3-3 standing, FEU soaring over everyone else with an undefeated 6-0, and Ateneo second to the last with 2-4.

Fine. Maybe a compromise, then: that both Ateneo and NU end up in the final four, and let’s have ‘em duke it out for the semi-finals, or possibly even finals (if that’s even possible in light of this well-oiled FEU machine). Well, if that day comes, you know where my heart lies: with the little dog (or Bulldog) that could.