Columnist Dean Juipe: NCAA event too long and tedious

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, March 13, 2002 | 10:31 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's right there in Sportswriting 101: Never criticize the NCAA basketball tournament.

Oh, you can complain about the selection process, the seeding or the sites and be among the many, but dare to challenge the overall value or the need for a 65-team event and you run the risk of alienating all but the most forgiving of your readers.

The NCAA Tournament is above reproach, as they say in polite circles. And there's a covenant, or agreement, that it shall not be taken to task for being the overblown, extraneous marathon that it is.

As such, the tournament's inherent flaws are not only accepted but embraced by a legion of college basketball fans who fill out the brackets and like to pretend they can pick the winner in all 64 games. Office pools throughout the country attract anyone with $5 to invest, and in Las Vegas -- where the point spread is in play -- there's a heightened interest in such nondescript teams as Winthrop and Holy Cross, to name two No. 16 seeds who won't make it past the opening round.

March Madness? The real madness is that the public puts up with it.

The NCAA Tournament would be best served to streamline itself into a compact event with only deserving teams allowed. If you don't have national championship potential, you're not invited.

Which, in a roundabout way, is how the tournament is once you get to the third round and only 16 teams remain. But, by then, the public has been besieged with an assortment of around-the-clock games on TV that often border on the tedious and frequently are noncompetitive to an extreme.

Need proof? Here are a few statistical tidbits: never, not once, has a No. 16 seed beaten a No. 1 seed; only four times has a No. 15 seed beaten a No. 2 seed; the lowest seeded team to ever make the Final Four was No. 11 Louisiana State in 1985; and the lowest seeded team to ever win a national champion was No. 8 Villanova in 1985.

(The situation is even more disparaging on the women's side, with only one No. 16, 15 or 14 seed -- No. 16 Harvard, vs. Stanford, in 1998 -- beating a No. 1, 2 or 3.)

This translates into a bevy of one-sided games that only a bettor with a point spread involved could possibly find interesting.

For instance, Duke (favored by 34 over Winthrop), Kansas (favored by 30 over Holy Cross), Cincinnati (favored by 24 over Boston U.) and Oregon (favored by 20 over Montana) could effectively keep their starters on the bench and win first-round games this week that, in theory, are designed to be tests of wills between worthy combatants.

It's just that there aren't that many truly worthy combatants. There certainly aren't 65.

The early rounds of the NCAA Tournament are the equivalent of asking the public to pay to see the heavyweight champion spar with one of his cronies. One goes through the motions to appease his casual fans, while the other takes his hits, accepts his check and goes home with something to tell his kids.

I offer no solution beyond the obvious: Cut the tournament in half or at least by a third and eliminate its boring elements. Yet even as I do so, I beg your forgiveness.