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NCAA tourney fiasco Nothing to like about 'opening-round' game
It's easy to get in a high dudgeon over how the NCAA treats the small schools that make its postseason tournament such a delight. And the tourney is still several weeks away. But here at the Dudgeon Dungeon we like to say, "Avoid the rush. Get indignant early." Why do we feel so strongly? The upsets the Middle Tennessee States and the Santa Claras pull off each spring -- when finally given a chance to play some big school on a neutral floor -- are the only things that keep the NCAAs from being a charmless pageant of inevitability. The Ivy and Patriot leagues are the lone conferences where you can go up and down rosters and, with only the rarest exception, incant the phrase student-athlete without dissolving into hysterics. Teams from the MEAC and SWAC take whuppings in the Carrier Domes and Rupp Arenas of the land just so they can collect enough cash to bolster the thinnest of budgets. And still these schools get the short end from the NCAA. Yes, the hardcore college-hoops fan may tune in that first week to see whether the top seeds are marching to their preordained station in the Final Four. But the vast majority of followers -- the masses who make the NCAAs such a valuable TV property -- plunge into the office pool because of Crouching (Princeton) Tiger, Hidden (Drexel) Dragon. This year we have special reason to decry the NCAA's attitude toward the have-nots. It's an extra game, involving the two teams the NCAA tournament selection committee decides are Nos. 64 and 64A. This "opening-round" game -- the NCAA refuses to call it a "play-in" -- will take place on Tuesday night, March 13, in Dayton, and it will determine who'll occupy the 16th seed in a "first-round" game in the Midwest Region three days later. Let's take a few questions from the floor. Q: Where on earth did this game come from? A: The big boys had one of their disagreements a few years back -- the kind of squabble that ensues when too few parties have the luxury of fighting over too much money -- and eight schools bolted the WAC to form the Mountain West Conference. That left the tournament committee to make a decision. The committee could have taken away one of the 34 at-large bids, which almost always go to big-conference also-rans, and turned that bid into an automatic invitation to the MWC champ. Or it could have asked the MWC champion to "play in" against some 7-7 team from a big-time conference. Instead, effective this year, the committee -- which is packed with representatives from the power leagues -- decided to set aside an automatic for the MWC, protect every last at-large bid, and force two Lilliputians to justify all over again their place in the field of 64. Q: Could this have had anything to do with the MWC commissioner serving as chair of the tournament committee? A: No. To believe that, you'd have to believe that committee members aren't looking out with equanimity for the good of all college basketball's chillun, but only for their own narrow interests. Q: How exactly do we know the committee's motives are pure? A: Because the NCAA is dedicated to the value of taking part, not the accumulation of spoils for the winners. It's a bulwark against all things commercial and professional, and dedicated solely to education, equity and other high-minded values. Q: Then how come the hundreds of millions in rights fees from CBS get apportioned to each conference based on how many tournament games its teams win? A: Oh, shut up. The NCAA is trying mightily to destigmatize the "opening-round" game. It'll pay all the travel and administrative costs for both teams. It'll make sure the loser's conference gets a first-round share of tourney lucre. And everything that takes place in Dayton on March 13 will become part of the official tournament record. But a berth in the "opening-round" game is still such a booby prize that the game won't be broadcast on CBS. It won't even air on ESPN, or ESPN2, or even ESPN64. It will be on The Nashville Network -- which is perfect, given how many country songs address timeless themes of heartbreak, hard luck and indignity. We have a few weeks yet to stoke ourselves into even more of a fever here at the Dudgeon Dungeon. So if you have any tunes for our country playlist, send them along to thehooplife@aol.com. I have one to get us started: Take This Bid and Shove It. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, which will be published in January 2002 by Warner Books. Send comments to thehooplife@aol.com.
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