There is a longstanding theory in college basketball, backed by years and years of evidence, that you can do a lot of nice things from a school like Butler and a league like the Horizon, but you cannot win it all. Reach the Sweet 16? Sure. Make the Final Four? That can clearly happen, too.
But no school like Butler or one from a league like the Horizon has won a championship in the modern era, and it's been more than two decades since a program operating without the advantages provided by the Power-Six conferences has cut nets on a Monday night in April. Consequently, most of us decided at some point that it's simply not possible anymore, that the gap between the haves and have-nots is too wide, that magical runs are fun to watch but they will always come up short, and yet for the second straight year, a private school based in Indianapolis with a little more than 4,000 students has an opportunity to smash that theory to pieces and take it off the table, forever and always.
What's interesting is that the Bulldogs represent something much larger than themselves. Similar to how Tiger Woods showed young African-Americans that anything is possible on a golf course, and how Anthony Robles showed handicap men that anything is possible on a wrestling mat, Butler is 40 minutes away from showing small schools with small budgets that anything is possible in college athletics, and it doesn't matter if that's not really the goal.
It's a game that could reshape the way people view college athletics and remove the word "can't" from our vocabulary forever.