What is PCTI VIII About? The Top Story Line Heading In To San Diego

With eight PCTI’s in the history books, it seems the days of personal vendettas fueling rivalries are gone. Best I can guess, this is for a few reasons.

 For starters, as much as I hate to admit it, we have collectively matured a little bit. Of course weeding out a few bad apples over the past few years has made a difference, too. But maybe most of all, by now most of us have won and lost with just about every other person involved. There’s no substitute for shared experience. Whatever the reasons, it makes for a less interesting off-season. There’s no more villains in PCTI. I’ve come to accept that and it’s done nothing to lessen my excitement for July.

But if the personal battles aren’t what they used to be, it begs the question: what is on the line in PCTI VIII?

The answer is, a few things.

THE WIN-LOSS LEGACY: As the years continue to pile up, the bragging rights around individual stats count for less and less (think about it, could anyone do anything statistically that would change your attitude about them as a player? Human nature dictates that we’ve all ‘seen’ too much of each other to let numbers change our opinion.) Am I saying I won’t be keeping close track of my own stats? Of course not. Having individual stats to try to pile up is one of the very best things about PCTI. But considering they’ll do little to change my lifetime averages and won’t have an impact on anyone beside myself, it really matters little.

The one number that grows in significance every year is each player’s lifetime series win-loss record. With each passing year a shining w/l becomes more and more of an indictment of your standing as a successful player and teammate. Conversely, a terrible record becomes more and more of a “you problem” with each unsuccessful weekend. Just think, wouldn’t it be nice to become the first player to win ten weekends? Or for the non-founding fathers, to get there in less years than anyone before you.  

I don’t have the series records of everyone in front of me but it’s a number that we will make sure is brought to the forefront ahead of San Diego. For people like Ben and Hops, this will be a great thing. For Bruiser and Sabin, not so much. For many others like me who are around .500, a few good years in a row could really stand out and shift things.

That’s what I think is on the line for each of us individually. But the real battle this year is about the two teams and what each represents.

QUAD POD VALUES VS BORED VALUES: At its core, PCTI VIII is a battle for ideological supremacy. And our Donald Trump – our man who is making the fifteen others choose sides – is Ben Wilson.

How did we get here? It started in the hours after Wilson’s squad won game six in Cincinnati. Thanks to my late-game heroics, Ben’s team captured the most competitive PCTI to date and his legacy as the ultimate PCTI captain was irrefutable. That he would step away and cede the reigns to a person of his choosing seemed a given. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the deal was sealed before we left the Queen City.

Instead, a week went by. Then a month. Something was amiss. Meanwhile, Danny was voted the MVP, setting up a possible Dan The Boy vs. Ben Wilson captaincy showdown. And as it turned out, the chance to compete against a DTB led team – the same DTB who for years had openly mocked Ben’s drafting/captaining prowess – was too much for him to turn down. He kept the captaincy for another year.

Dan The Boy vs. Wilson was a strong captain matchup and would make for a fun PCTI. But the gauntlet was really thrown down with the teams both men selected on draft day.

First, a little historical perspective for understanding.

Remember, Ben willingly declined the first pick before the PCTI VII draft. Doing so meant that Ben was passing on a chance to draft Abe in his rightful first overall spot. There were a few ways to interpret this. The first is that Ben and Abe to some degree believed that for the competitive balance of PCTI the two of them playing on the same team would not be good for everyone else. Too put it bluntly, they feel that they’re invincible together. Secondly, Ben was also no doubt motivated to again prove that it was he – and he alone – who was the reason for his team’s repeated successes. Ben’s team won because of Ben. He could afford to punt on the first pick because he already had himself.

What PCTI VII proved was that he was right about that second point. Problem for Ben was, nobody gave him much credit for it. Instead, the adulation for team’s success mostly went to Dan for a big offensive first half of the tournament and his trademark defensive effort.

Of course when I say give Ben credit, it’s clear who controls the PCTI discourse: Dan’s inner-circle. That would be me, Sabin, Joe and his new pet in PCTI VII, Jeff Godon. If Ben wasn’t getting the credit he felt he deserved for his run of success, it was on us for overlooking it or deciding it wasn’t important enough to highlight. Likewise, it was no surprise that Dan won the MVP with those of us who speak the most and the loudest about PCTI trumpeting our guy’s performance.

Maybe things this year go differently if we give Ben his due in the moments after our big win in Cincinnati. Maybe we’re in a different place now if someone other than Danny had emerged as the star of our team. Maybe we’re not even talking about this if Dan hadn’t for years repeatedly mocked Ben’s successes.

Jump ahead to draft day. Ben has made the decision that he’s going to pick first and he’s going to pick Abe. The days of him caring about any sort of competitive balance now are gone. The message to Danny and his supporters was a clear one: if you think you’re so great for being the “Abe Stopper,” try stopping both of us together. I doubt any part of Ben thinks that that same competitive advantage no longer exists with him and Abe on the same team. I just don’t think he cares anymore.

With that said, you certainly can’t read too much in to his decision to pick Abe first. Everyone has and would do the same thing. It’s what he did in the rest of the draft that made his intentions impossible to miss. In a move that I never thought I would witness, he drafted the entire Quad Pod. In one swoop willingly leaving Danny with all of his inner-circle guys (minus Smooth who was in a weird spot without having an established draft value) and pitting him against the faction that he has railed against the most of anyone.

And that gets us back to my first line about VIII being an ideological battle. Since its creation, QP has aimed to divide PCTI. Sure, they’ll try to divert their intention with all their phony love for each other but make no mistake about it, this group was created to alienate itself from the PCTI brethren. QP is the self-selected “cool” pocket of PCTI.

Of course, a cool group can only exist if a separate “uncool” group exists opposite it. You don’t need a sociology degree to understand that this is classic establishment vs. anti-establishment tension. And when you’re talking about the PCTI establishment, it’s Dan and the rest of his people, who in either an official or unofficial capacity make up the PCTI Bored.

Dan’s group sees nothing ridiculous about waking up early and getting to the gym an hour before game one. The QP sees nothing ridiculous about sleeping through breakfast because they stayed at the bar an hour later than everyone else. Dan’s group will buy new gear and order t-shirts. The QP will wear mismatched shorts, lawn mowing shoes and dress in drag. Dan’s group will text workout updates and lament bad games in offseason men’s league play. The QP are naturally the more gifted athletes who might be playing six days a week or might have not touched a ball in six months. Dan’s crowd dreams of mid-offseason meet ups to get in a few pickup runs. QP might rendezvous at Stagecoach one of these years, just to hang.

For years this tension has served as the flint and tinder that helped give PCTI its spark. And right at its middle was the one guy who co-existed between both groups better than anyone: Ben Wilson. Anyone paying attention has recognized that Wilson has long been the apple of the quad pod’s eye. If they hadn’t of stupidly branded themselves geometrically and therefore locked in a set number of members, I bet he’d have received a formal invitation by now. To call him an unofficial member would not be an over exaggeration. Conversely, few wear their love for PCTI as openly as Wilson, something Dan certainly has to appreciate it. On the “lives for this” scale, Ben is near the top.

But now Ben has made his choice, and there’s no going back.

Truth is both groups have more in common than they might want to let on. For all its antics, nobody would ever question QP’s collective love for PCTI and what they bring to the hoops element of the weekend. Likewise, for all its perceived straight-arrow, dad-like lack of hipness, Dan’s people get after it plenty hard during the weekend nights. That’s why it’s been a successful coexistence for all these years.

It likely would have stayed that way for many more, if not for Ben. With his draft day move, Wilson made his allegiance (or disallegiance) clear for once and for all: He’s a QP guy. And in a message that he had to know would hit Dan right between the eyes, with a straight face he mockingly uttered in the draft video, “I just wanted to draft the guys who gave a shit.” Translation: Dan, not only can you have your guys, we’re about to beat you at your own game.

So what is PCTI VIII about? It’s about your win-loss record, which will ultimately be your legacy. But it’s also about an ideology winning out. And if you don’t want to choose a side, too bad. Ben already did it for you.