The Perks of Being at the Number One Ranked School in the Country

As some of you may know, the Villanova’s Men’s Basketball team has been at the top of the national rankings for the past two weeks.

When they were elevated to that status last week, it represented the first time in the history of the program that they had been ranked No. 1.

As you might imagine, the campus is quite excited about having the No. 1 basketball team in its midst, and it is a frequent topic of conversation in the hallways.

Personally though, I am a little disappointed.

I had thought that simply being on the faculty of the number one ranked team in the country would bring some perks, but I haven’t seen any.

For example, get a load of the following incidents that have occurred over the past week:

• A few days ago I was wearing a Villanova jacket while waiting in line at the post office, and I was thinking that the cashier would have asked me if I wanted to come to the front of the line, you know, because of the jacket and the fact that we have the number one team in the country. Nope, never happened. I had to wait like everyone else.
• The next day after the post office incident I went to a bagel store, wearing my Nova jacket again. After they gave me my order, I started to walk out, and the cashier said that will be $4.99 sir. Really? I just assumed it would have been free…
• This past weekend I was on the phone with a customer service rep who seemed to have an Indian accent, and when she asked me for my email address, I gave her my school address. After saying villanova.edu at the end, I braced myself for an onslaught of questions – Do I know anyone on the team? Do you go to all of the games? Do you think this is the year they can win it all? Well she did ask a couple of questions – How do you spell Villanova? Is that a four-year college? I was tempted to reply, “Are you serious?”
• When I walked into Planet Fitness tonight wearing my Villanova t-shirt, I thought I would be mobbed by all the guys there wanting to chat with me, hoping to get some juicy inside details of what it’s like to be at the number one basketball team in the country. Well given how dedicated everyone is to their workout at Planet Fitness, no one even seemed to notice that I was there.
• After leaving Planet Fitness I needed to stop at Mom’s Organic grocery store (as mentioned before, the world’s greatest grocery store). The parking lot was fairly crowded, and I saw one car waiting to pull in to a spot that was about to be vacated. I pulled up close to the soon to be empty space and put on my turn signal. Well the person in the other car started yelling something to me, and I just pointed to my Villanova hang tag. Well that seemed to carry no weight, because the guy just kept yelling, and made sure that he got into the space before I did.

Looking back on my week, I realized that nothing had changed in my life, despite being on the faculty at the number one basketball program in the country.

I’m sure it would be different if I were Jay Wright, the coach, or Ryan Arcidiacono, one of the players, or if I had even some remote connection to the program. But I’m not and I don’t.

But still, shouldn’t the fact that I work at the same school as the number one team in the country count for something? Shouldn’t I get some token acknowledgment of the fact that I’m in such close proximity to greatness?

Apparently not.

So I guess I’ll have to scrap my plans of ignoring red lights if there is no traffic coming from the other directions. It seems like the cops probably wouldn’t be impressed with the Villanova bumper sticker on my car.

Good luck Nova, and bring on March Madness!