Weekly Roundtable: Postseason Passions

We are officially, sadly, in the offseason as I believe every Husky team has now been eliminated from the postseason (Track and Field is the one still going but is mostly individual). But it was overall a great year for Husky athletics. Just about every team (except for men’s basketball, sigh) secured some type a postseason berth. Obviously there are some sports that each of us prefer to others. But your question is which postseason event would you prefer a UW team to qualify for based on the fun of watching the event? To try to make the level of success a little more even than just qualification your options are: NY6 bowl in football, sweet 16 in basketball, sweet 16 in volleyball, sweet 16 in soccer, WCWS in softball, and CWS in baseball. For extra credit, give me your ranking of each.

Coach B- In general, I follow football, then basketball and that’s about it. However, I typically end up following the softball team more than the basketball team. It’s probably because of the softball team’s recent success relative to the basketball team, but for this ranking it’s be pretty close between those two for second. It’s been a long time since we were legit contenders to make a deep run in March, but I think I’d give the edge to the WCWS since it feels like we’ve gotten so close to winning it all in softball (at least from a casual fan’s perspective).

For extra credit (because god knows I usually need it), I’m gonna throw a rowing national championship in there. We are a powerhouse in the sport, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to throw a natty in there. With George Clooney’s “The Boys in the Boat” movie featuring our rowing program’s 1936 Olympic gold coming out this year, I think there would be a really cool buzz around the program if they get a national championship next year.My ranking:

1. Rose Bowl

1a. NY6 bowl

2. WCWS

3. MBB Sweet 16

4. Rowing National championship

5. Volleyball Sweet 16

6. CWS (edited)

Mark Schafer: I would love for the Dawgs to make a CFP run because football is my favorite sport just in general, but there’s just something exciting about following the NCAA Basketball tournament. I can speak from experience that watching the Men make their runs growing up, as well as watching the women when Plum was there, was some of the most fun I have had watching sports.

It comes close, however with the run of success that the softball team has had! It has been so much fun every year to watch that team have success at the national level. But I have to give a special mention to rowing because of the impact of Boys in the Boat and that whole team and as Coach said, with the movie coming out it would be nice to parlay that into a run to increase national recognition of the program!

1. CFP/NY6 Bowl
2. WCWS
3. MBB tournament/WBB tournament
4. Rowing
5. Men’s CWS
6. Volleyball

Honorable mention: Athletics/Track

Gabey Lucas: Gonna get to my full answer later cuz I’m gonna go to bed in a sec but I do take issue with Coach calling softball “recent success” over basketball unless we’re calling the last 20 years “recent” heheh (even though I know you didn’t mean it like that and I’m nitpicking based on semantics, but I saw that and decided to be a lil bitch about it)

I think the note I’ll leave before going to sleep though and finishing my answer is that your question including “based on the fun of watching the event” has the potential to change all of our answers a lot. Like I want crew to win the national championship every year on the basis of having pride in who we are, so for that reason I would put them up at pretty much the highest level if you just asked that question without that part to it, but with that addition obviously that would drop down the list a bunch. Conversely that rockets volleyball super high, but the thing with volleyball is it is fun to watch in the same way chugging a gallon of cocaine and then bungee jumping is fun. That is, actually just extremely stressful and super not chill.

Men’s college world series is easily at the bottom of these options tho, soz boys but while I do love appreciating UW baseball when they have something good going I just truly could not care about college baseball as, like, a concept. (And I’m saying that as someone whose friend is married to a UW baseball alum. I’m sure he’d understand lol.)

Anyone who knows me though knows my top answer is football and softball followed by everything else.

Coach B: Yeah I should’ve recognized the 20 years of softball excellence. That sustained success is part of the reason why I put them ahead of MBB. Even as a casual softball fan, you can tell from the media interviews at the WCWS that UW softball has the attention of a lot of young fans. Those WCWS appearances just feel like they hold greater significance than a sweet 16 appearance.UW MBB interest has just taken such a dive that I don’t think a sweet 16 would really make that big of a difference at this point. We’ve had 1 sweet 16 appearance in like 20 years. It’d need to be a couple successful seasons like that to really rebuild interest.

Max Vrooman: March Madness is my single favorite postseason event regardless of who is in it. Which weirdly pushes it down my personal rankings a bit since UW being a participant doesn’t really make me watch anymore but adds a lot more stress to my life. I’d still rather have UW be awesome in basketball than not but it’s not as if I won’t pay attention without UW’s participation.

Football is in a similar spot where I’ll watch regardless although in this case having UW involved very much changes my enthusiasm level. Watching Michigan/Ohio St/Georgia/Alabama play a postseason round Robin every year is getting increasingly stale when UW isn’t involved. The TCU run last year was great and something like Tulane/USC is super fun but that’s not an every year occurrence.

I always enjoy the WCWS but don’t watch it as often as I should when UW isn’t involved when it becomes must watch which per the original question probably puts it at #1. College baseball just isn’t as much fun as softball and I can’t tell you the last time I watched a CWS game. If UW were suddenly awesome at baseball I’d probably change my tune but until that happens: last.

I love watching the volleyball tournament as well and just don’t make the time in the middle of football/basketball season without UW as an incentive so they’re also way up there. The run to the title game in soccer was also fun but I can’t say I’ve ever watched a postseason NCAA soccer game besides that. And finally, while I love it when UW is great in crew I also don’t usually end up watching any of them live. Which definitely knocks it down quite a bit. I’m just not a big race guy regardless of sport. Sue me.

1. WCWS
2. Volleyball
3. Football NY6
4. Basketball
5. Soccer
6. CWS
7. Rowing

Gabey Lucas: Thats a good point about March Madness and really nails how I feel, which is especially funky to me since basketball has always been the sport I’m most “meh” about, but there’s something about the pure chaos of March Madness that’s really not about basketball it’s about pure societal bracket collapse lol. And that’s fun as heck.