On life's bubble

Life mirrors sports more and more each day

On the bubble. You will, assuredly, be hearing that expression all too often in the days ahead. It refers, in current parlance, to those college basketball teams which are candidates for the last positions in the NCAA tournament. These bubble teams may not be very good, but there are 64 slots that have to be filled. In the old days, only conference champions and a few notable independents made the tournament. In the old days, there were no playoffs, either. Only pennant winners faced off in the World Series. The regular season was, well, regular. Now the regular season is very irregular, more of a preliminary. Everybody gets a second chance. Everybody is on the bubble.

In this way, American sports reflects American culture. Our lives are not so absolute and well-defined now. We are not so structured. The traditional family has gone the way of the regular season. Players and franchises jump all around. Most athletes are free agents, just as loyalty and allegiance count for less in our more fluid world.

Also, wholesale lots of professional football players were released this week. Many of them are very good. But never mind; the NFL teams had to get under the salary cap. So, they fire expensive, tried-and-true veterans and replace them with cheaper, younger players. This perfectly mirrors what corporations do -- downsizing. Likewise, I mentioned that the NCAA tournament used to have places for independents. Today, among colleges, there's only one viable independent left -- Notre Dame in football -- and even the Fighting Irish are having a devil of a time, aren't they? All the independents have been swallowed up by the conferences, which merge and become athletic conglomerates. Usually, they are called "the Big" something -- Big East, Big 12. Be big. Sound familiar vis-a- vis the larger world?

And we recently saw our dear comeback heroes, Michael Jordan and Mario Lemieux, become sidelined, broken-down old warhorses. Michelle Kwan was dismissed as a 21-year-old has-been. At the same time, a 12-year-old girl played in an LPGA tournament. Sports Illustrated has featured teenagers on the cover several times lately. NBC was thrilled that all the new video-game events, like hot-dog skiing and skeleton, attracted young viewers to the network's Olympics. ABC revamped its Monday Night Football cast, and reports indicate it wants to trade Letterman for Koppel, new lamps for old.

Sports, you see, is like all entertainment; young, younger, youngest. When I was young, people said, When you grow up, you will get what you want. Now I am grown up and people say, Tough, we have to give young people what they want. Such is sports, such is life today.

The Olympics seems to have gotten serious about anti-doping measures, but the U.S. Track and Field Federation won't give out the names of athletes who flunk drug tests. It's not the American way, U.S. track says. Besides, in the American way, maybe American lawyers will sue American track. The Olympics reply: This is U.S. unilateralism, where America demands to play by its own rules. Hmm. Sound familiar? The Olympics is talking about throwing the U.S. out of the international track federation, but it won't, of course, because they need us.

Does that ring a bell, too? The issue, in all these athletic matters, isn't whether change is for better or worse. It is just evidence, again, of how sports move in lock step with society.

And how are you? Are you on the bubble?

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.