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If Oklahoma State has gotten stiffed again, Vermont is pinching itself, Duke and North Carolina are staring at each other and Bobby Knight is happy while Indiana is not, then another journey to the Final Four is about to begin.
Considering that college hoops in Colorado is a local charity after all, and even rare local donations to March Madness turn out to be a first-round loss among the rejects, paying attention to what happens between here and St. Louis pretty much depends on how things work out in the office pool.
This is not to diminish the near-miss of Denver, who, as we see, if the Pioneers had knocked off Louisiana-Lafayette in the Sun Belt final, would have Louisville to contend with.
That nowhere among the 64-plus-one invitees is John Chaney and his Temple Owls is a relief, so the tournament may skip along on its commercial tsunami (this second-half tip-off is brought to you by Jalapeno Mouthwash) pretending not to be about poor conduct or rampant wagering.
To college basketball's credit and relief, this was not a season of great scandal as others have been, Chaney providing the major bit of embarrassment near the end.
Yet suspicion is natural when Washington, a second-tier fluke, is given one of the coveted top seeds instead of another Atlantic Coast Conference team or Oklahoma State. Apparently, only Kansas counts from the Big 12 and not too much, reducing the whole conference to an afterthought.
If you add up the seeds of the five Big 12 teams, you get something approaching Knight's hat size, or more to the point, the IQ that went into picking Washington as a No. 1.
Duke has been the consistent shining specimen of what college basketball can be, the bandit antidote, and the presence of Mike Krzyzewski and the Blue Devils is always a bit like a reunion of parolees with the warden.
Nevertheless, by the end of the month there will be four teams in St. Louis, the choices according to committee being Illinois, North Carolina, Duke and, go figure, Washington.
The reward for having earned such good opinion is the opportunity to beat up on teams with ampersands in their names, or ones that sound like a boast, an old quarterback or a young stockbroker.
Thus do the winner of Oakland-Alabama A&M, Delaware State, Montana and Fairleigh Dickinson serve a purpose, like speed bumps on a freeway.
Except for Washington, I happened to agree with the seeds. My Final Four is Oklahoma State, North Carolina, Duke and Illinois. If a Washington is going to make it, I pick George.
Happily, in college basketball neither my opinion nor the opinion of the selection committee matters. What matters is all of this will be resolved in direct competition, on court.
No BCS, big bowl, little bowl, rankings to bother with.
The curious contradiction of March Madness with its sponsored brackets (this subregion list is brought to you by Clydesdale Support Hose) is that the NCAA lays out its seeds with every bit as much diligence as a bookmaker. No. 1s are supposed to beat No 16s and No 3s should beat No. 14s, but they don't always.
The NCAA does everything but make the odds, leaving Las Vegas something to do. The essence of the tournament is this handy opportunity for gambling and it is what is largely responsible for its great popularity.
This is why folks who have no idea whether Old Dominion is a team or a sippin' whiskey are willing to spend three weeks watching other people's tall children.
And to accept without objection the strange groupings that divide things not into the usual regions of the compass, but identifies the regions by city, Chicago, Albuquerque, Syracuse and Austin.
Unless Texas has annexed the West Coast, a whole region seems to be missing, not to mention direct flights.
This makes complete NCAA sense, not because geography is no longer taught on campus but because anyone going to any of these regions has to go through Chicago anyhow. (This trip from Pittsburgh to Boise is sponsored by Low Fare Without Snacks Airlines.)
College basketball can not match the pros for skill, drama or entertainment, so it must keep vital the notion of March Madness as the natural and wholesome face of its sport, while those of us who drop in for the distraction stare at it with the glazed preoccupation of someone feeding coins into the dollar slots.
Establishing regional seeds is the same as making a point spread. Point spreads arrived at objectively are no less suspicious than the logic that goes into the tournament selections, and both sides are working from essentially the same data pool. How Washington got to be a No. 1 seed proves that, at least, the NCAA is still run by amateurs.
If Oklahoma State has gotten stiffed again, Vermont is pinching itself, Duke and North Carolina are staring at each other and Bobby Knight is happy while Indiana is not, then another journey to the Final Four is about to begin.
Considering that college hoops in Colorado is a local charity after all, and even rare local donations to March Madness turn out to be a first-round loss among the rejects, paying attention to what happens between here and St. Louis pretty much depends on how things work out in the office pool.
This is not to diminish the near-miss of Denver, who, as we see, if the Pioneers had knocked off Louisiana-Lafayette in the Sun Belt final, would have Louisville to contend with.
That nowhere among the 64-plus-one invitees is John Chaney and his Temple Owls is a relief, so the tournament may skip along on its commercial tsunami (this second-half tip-off is brought to you by Jalapeno Mouthwash) pretending not to be about poor conduct or rampant wagering.
To college basketball's credit and relief, this was not a season of great scandal as others have been, Chaney providing the major bit of embarrassment near the end.
Yet suspicion is natural when Washington, a second-tier fluke, is given one of the coveted top seeds instead of another Atlantic Coast Conference team or Oklahoma State. Apparently, only Kansas counts from the Big 12 and not too much, reducing the whole conference to an afterthought.
If you add up the seeds of the five Big 12 teams, you get something approaching Knight's hat size, or more to the point, the IQ that went into picking Washington as a No. 1.
Duke has been the consistent shining specimen of what college basketball can be, the bandit antidote, and the presence of Mike Krzyzewski and the Blue Devils is always a bit like a reunion of parolees with the warden.
Nevertheless, by the end of the month there will be four teams in St. Louis, the choices according to committee being Illinois, North Carolina, Duke and, go figure, Washington.
The reward for having earned such good opinion is the opportunity to beat up on teams with ampersands in their names, or ones that sound like a boast, an old quarterback or a young stockbroker.
Thus do the winner of Oakland-Alabama A&M, Delaware State, Montana and Fairleigh Dickinson serve a purpose, like speed bumps on a freeway.
Except for Washington, I happened to agree with the seeds. My Final Four is Oklahoma State, North Carolina, Duke and Illinois. If a Washington is going to make it, I pick George.
Happily, in college basketball neither my opinion nor the opinion of the selection committee matters. What matters is all of this will be resolved in direct competition, on court.
No BCS, big bowl, little bowl, rankings to bother with.
The curious contradiction of March Madness with its sponsored brackets (this subregion list is brought to you by Clydesdale Support Hose) is that the NCAA lays out its seeds with every bit as much diligence as a bookmaker. No. 1s are supposed to beat No 16s and No 3s should beat No. 14s, but they don't always.
The NCAA does everything but make the odds, leaving Las Vegas something to do. The essence of the tournament is this handy opportunity for gambling and it is what is largely responsible for its great popularity.
This is why folks who have no idea whether Old Dominion is a team or a sippin' whiskey are willing to spend three weeks watching other people's tall children.
And to accept without objection the strange groupings that divide things not into the usual regions of the compass, but identifies the regions by city, Chicago, Albuquerque, Syracuse and Austin.
Unless Texas has annexed the West Coast, a whole region seems to be missing, not to mention direct flights.
This makes complete NCAA sense, not because geography is no longer taught on campus but because anyone going to any of these regions has to go through Chicago anyhow. (This trip from Pittsburgh to Boise is sponsored by Low Fare Without Snacks Airlines.)
College basketball can not match the pros for skill, drama or entertainment, so it must keep vital the notion of March Madness as the natural and wholesome face of its sport, while those of us who drop in for the distraction stare at it with the glazed preoccupation of someone feeding coins into the dollar slots.
Establishing regional seeds is the same as making a point spread. Point spreads arrived at objectively are no less suspicious than the logic that goes into the tournament selections, and both sides are working from essentially the same data pool. How Washington got to be a No. 1 seed proves that, at least, the NCAA is still run by amateurs.
