Few other endeavors function as a better societal mirror than sports – and what they tell us about ourselves. What we learned during this college basketball season reinforced our disturbing predilection to celebrate the individual over the team.

Consider the historic anatomy of what we just watched. In an era where transfer portal and Name-Image-Likeness considerations have hijacked talent procurement and retention, the UConn men and South Carolina women cut a swath through their tournaments.

UConn, which inhaled the 2023 field, threw the rest of the country down a flight of stairs again this year. South Carolina finished undefeated. And both teams did so joyfully illustrating the concepts of team, sacrifice and unselfishness.

Funny, though, how both teams are comparatively anonymous national champions when weighed against the primary narrative that ran like a current this year through the sport and national media: Caitlin Clark.

I’d like to think we have a decent feel for the rhythms of both the men’s and women’s games here in Connecticut. The women are still the game’s Broadway. The men occupy the highest rent district. And I think we’d all agree that throughout the season, we read and heard significantly more nationally about Clark than the UConn men or South Carolina women.

Because “team,” “we” and “us” is boring. It doesn’t sell anymore in a country that indulges self-indulgence more than ever. The I’s have it.

This is not to demean Clark. This is to demean the lens through which college basketball was presented to us this season. And yet media companies aren’t stupid. They know what the people want. That’s why ESPN assigned reporter Holly Rowe to an individual (Clark) before the tournament began and not the undefeated team.

Then there was ESPN’s coverage of the final seconds of the women’s national championship game. The cameras showed Clark’s reaction to losing as much if not more frequently than South Carolina’s reaction to winning. It was a powerful message, at least to some of us who believe that the undefeated national champion is a co-star with nobody and nothing else.

The true genius of this college basketball season wasn’t that an individual broke a scoring record. It was that two teams, in what’s become a minefield wrought with transfers and transience, won team championships with team temperaments, tendencies and tones.

Sadly, “team first” is going the way of the VCR and the landline. Because, look around. How many people do you know now who root for a team more than their fantasy team? Do they root for a team more than who you bet on? And the self-indulgence revolution roars on.

I’m not suggesting individual accomplishments can’t and shouldn’t capture the national narrative. The M & M boys were a bigger story in 1961 than the overall Yankees team that year, which is likely one of the top 10 best single-season teams in baseball history. The McGuire-Sosa home run chase in 1998 eclipsed the Yankees’ 125-win season.

Yet I feel as though we were all more likely to root for laundry in those days. As in: the uniform of your favorite team, not the three-team parlay du jour. But it’s here that sports serve as that societal mirror again, showing us what we’ve become, right down to our kids.

Youth sports are about travel teams, not Little League. High school kids leave the hometown for the prep school. College kids live in the portal. Transfers worry less about their new school and more about the NIL deal. Fans pay attention to who they’re betting on, not who they grew up rooting for. And trust me: It’s not particularly pleasant to ponder how so much of what I was taught – and what I still believe in – is becoming obsolete.

I’ll say this much though: I plan to endure this. As stubbornly as possible. Hence:

No, I don’t like your kid’s travel team or prep school. Your kid (with few exceptions) belongs in his/her hometown playing with his/her friends. No, I don’t care about your fantasy team, NCAA bracket or your latest wager. No, I don’t care to hear about Caitlin Clark. I want to hear about how in this era of self-indulgence, both 2024 national champions did it the old-fashioned way.

But then, I’m the guy, surrounded by a few of his friends, watching the big screen at the Birdseye every Sunday in the fall rooting for Big Blue-tinged laundry, dying a little more inside every time Daniel Jones runs for his life.

I guess it’s all about what we’ve been taught.

And what we’re teaching now is depressing.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.