Sad Bill Murray

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About

Sad Bill Murray is a photoshop meme based on a still shot of the American comedian looking rather gloomy on camera following the unexpected defeat of Xavier Musketeers in their round-of-32 match against Wisconsin Badgers at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament in March 2016.

Origin

On March 20th, 2016, the "March Madness" round-of-32 qualification match between Xavier Musketeers (Xavier University) and Wisconsin Badgers (University of Wisconsin) in the 2016 NCAA Men's Division I basketball tournament went underway at Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Despite the fans' high hopes for the Musketeers' victory against the Badgers, as they had been seeded at second place in the entire division, the game ended in an unexpected victory for the Badgers (66 – 63) with a buzzer-beating, dramatic three-pointer scored by Bronson Koenig.

Among the crowd of courtside spectators shocked by the dramatic outcome was American comedian and actor Bill Murray, who has been spotted at a number of the Musketeers' games during the 2015-16 season to support his son and newly appointed assistant coach for the team, Luke. Immediately after the game ended, a TNT camera turned to Murray to capture his reaction (shown below).

Spread

Murray's dismayed reaction captured on TNT's camera was seen by millions of viewers at home, which near instantly prompted a flood of messages expressing sympathy for the comedian in the social media, followed by the emergence of several isolated GIFs highlighting Murray's gloomy facial expression.

Throughout the evening, a number of photoshopped parodies with visual references to other sports-themed memes began to emerge on Twitter, mostly mash-up combinations featuring the infamous reaction face image of Crying Michael Jordan and still shots of Murray's appearance in the 1996 American live-action and animated sports comedy film Space Jam. In the next 24 hours, the comedian's viral reaction GIF was dubbed "Sad Bill Murray" and picked up by U.S. sports and entertainment news sites, including Mashable^[3], Entertainment Weekly^[2], Vulture^[4], Uproxx^[5] and Flavorwire^[6], among others.