North Carolina-Gonzaga is a national title game showdown unlike any other we’ve ever seen

In recent years, we’ve been blessed to see a number of NCAA tournaments capped off with high-profile, classic showdowns in the national championship game. None of those recent title tilts was anything like what we’re going to see on Monday night in Phoenix.

On the surface, the justification for excitement is pretty straightforward. The two teams left standings are a pair of No. 1 seeds with a legitimate claim to being the best two college basketball teams in America for the 2016-17 season. That’s all any of us can hope for when it comes to the culmination of any NCAA tournament.

This is different, though. Regardless of whether or not we get a contest played at the level of last year’s classic, it’s a near certainty that the story spawned by the result is going to outweigh whatever takes place during the game itself.

There’s no point in beating around the bush, and the reason why is because Gonzaga’s involved. The little program that could, which turned into the little program that never would, which now has an opportunity to become the little program that sat on the throne.

Defending Gonzaga, if you want to call it that, feels a bit silly at this point.

The Zags are 37-1 and a single victory away from becoming the first one-loss team to win a national championship since NC State did the trick all the way back in 1974. A win would also make them college basketball’s first national champion west of Kansas in two decades, and the first champion from a non-power conference (unless you want to count UConn in the first year of the AAC) since UNLV came out of the Big West to win it all in 1990.

If you want to simplify things even further, you can: Gonzaga is a No. 1 seed playing for the national championship. This is what we expect No. 1 seeds to do. Except when they come out of the West Coast Conference, apparently.

For the past four months on social media, the mere mention of two things has been guaranteed to elicit an immediate and extreme response: the President of the United States of America and Gonzaga basketball.

Somehow, in a season where Duke has fielded perhaps its most controversial player since Christian Laettner, it’s been a West Coast team from a low-major conference that has borne the brunt of America’s disdain. For that polarizing of four-month periods to end with the Zags winning their first national championship would be especially sweet for fans and defenders of the program alike.

And then there’s North Carolina. The familiar face. Arguably the bluest of the blue bloods.

No program has appeared in more Final Fours than North Carolina, which is making its 20th appearance at the event and will now play in the national championship game for an 11th time. No program has earned more No. 1 seeds than UNC, no program has been ranked No. 1 more times than UNC, and only one has won more games in the NCAA tournament than the Tar Heels.

Even with all that being the case, there’s a redemption story at play for Roy Williams’ team as well.

Six Tar Heels, including three starters, who will appear in Monday night’s championship game against Gonzaga were also on the court in Houston 364 days prior. They were there for a championship most expected them to win, and they were there when the realization of that dream was snatched away in the cruelest way imaginable.

For all North Carolina’s experience at the highest level of college basketball, no Tar Heel team had ever been beaten at the buzzer in a national title game before. That’s because no team period had ever been beaten at the buzzer in a national title game before.

Now North Carolina is back to restore order to the basketball universe in Chapel Hill, the one that’s been in chaos since the moment Kris Jenkins’ shot ripped through the net inside NRG Stadium. To do so, the Heels will have to take down a fellow giant that’s been masked as something lesser for far too long.

That’s what’s so appealing about all this.

This isn’t the little guy vs. the big guy. This is the big guy vs. the other big guy who’s been told that he’s little for his entire life. The overwhelming evidence to the contrary that no one seems willing to pay attention to has only exacerbated his frustration. This is that big guy’s opportunity to show his complete dimensions to an American public that had used any excuse it could find to look the other way for the past two decades whenever that size was on display. They won’t have anywhere else to look Monday night.

On its face, North Carolina vs. Gonzaga is one tremendously talented and accomplished team facing another cut from the same cloth with the sport’s top prize on the line. There is a core similarity here, sure, but the differences between the two become more defined and more interesting the closer you look. Those similarities and those differences will all come together on championship Monday to form one of the most fascinating and hopefully memorable national title games that any of us have ever seen.