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Another dispatch from the Dungeon
When we last left you, we were in high dudgeon over the way the NCAA tournament committee treats the small and mid-major conferences. We deplored the indignity being foisted on the two teams ranked No. 64 and No. 65, who'll be forced to win an "opening-round game" to enter the tournament draw as we know it. Noting that the telecast of this vile prelim has been exiled to TNN, the erstwhile Nashville Network, we cued up a country song: Take This Bid and Shove It. And so we sit in the Dudgeon Dungeon, waiting out the rest of Championship Week, desperately hoping that Creighton, despite losing in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, can land an at-large bid. What are we eating in the Dudgeon Dungeon? Thin gruel and Doritos. What are we reading? The Fix (ViviSphere Publishing, $16), the new novel by Jeff Schneider, a former Division I ballplayer who used to work in Louisville's sports information department. The gist of the plot: The World Broadcasting Company is alarmed that its NCAA tournament ratings have taken a dive because so many Cinderellas are going deep into the draw. Its solution: Enlist the mob to make sure the most ratings-friendly, big-time schools reach the Final Four. You can see why we identify. What are we chanting? "RPI, R.I.P!" If I were a power-conference plutocrat -- fat, sassy, unwilling to play a mid-major at its place with its officials in December -- I'd concoct and swear by the RPI, too. Imagine an "index" based only 25 percent on your own winning percentage, but 75 percent on your opponents' and your opponents' opponents' winning percentages. In other words, a stat that has much less to do with your performance on a basketball court than with the circumstances you happen to be born into. There are more meaningful ways to evaluate how fearlessly a team schedules. An equitable RPI would reward a blowout win on the road over a blowout win at home, and penalize schools whose ratio of home games-to-road games is out of whack. But as it now stands, the RPI gives a free pass to schools that lard their pre-conference schedules with "bought" home games against the little guys. I normally defer to Brother Joe Lunardi of Blue Ribbon on all matters bracketological. And Lunardi was absolutely right when he recently asserted that, for what it is, the RPI isn't flawed. The problem with the RPI is what it is: a rubber stamp for the pedigreed powers, a device that allows them to play their clubby little selves and let the phone calls of the Creightons go unreturned. The day we bust out of this joint, we're making sure the leg irons are ready for the RPI. In the meantime, thanks to all readers of The Hoop Life who forwarded their suggestions for our country playlist. It helps us wallow. One suggestion came from George Vecsey, the New York Times columnist who, as the collaborator on Loretta Lynn's autobiography, certainly knows his country music. Vecsey's contribution wasn't a country song, however. It was an old Beatles tune that gets our wish just right: When I'm Sixty-Four. 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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