Ron Kantowski offers some advice for tournament organizers on how to get more bottoms in the seats

Monday, Nov. 26, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

A "cheap" ticket to watch No. 1 North Carolina and No. 6 Louisville and BYU and lesser-known Old Dominion (which sounds like something you'd purchase in a six-pack) play basketball at the Orleans Arena on Friday night cost $94.

A cheap ticket to watch George Carlin perform at the Orleans Showroom that same evening cost $55.

So here are seven words you can say on television:

I Can't Afford North Carolina Basketball Tickets.

There isn't a bad seat in the Orleans' horseshoe, so at least you didn't have to bring binoculars along with your $100 bill to the Findlay Toyota Las Vegas Invitational. If you wanted to sit even closer and know one of the Rockefellers, there also were $115, $136 and $168 seats, which got you close enough to detect the fragrance of Rick Pitino's hairspray.

All advance tickets were sold as two-day packages. So if you had cousins or nephews playing for South Carolina State, Jackson State, Hartford and Iona, you could justify paying $94 for a ticket, given it was good for admission to all eight games.

Otherwise, it was like paying $94 to watch a No. 1 seed (North Carolina), a No. 3 seed (Louisville) a potential 6 or 7 (BYU, if Bishop Gorman's Jonathan Tavernari keeps sinking jump shots from Big Al's Oyster Bar) and four No. 15s. In November. When the games don't count.

Even Dick Vitale, who doesn't complain about much of anything related to college basketball, except when some middle-of-the-road Atlantic Coast Conference team is bypassed for one from the Mountain West on Selection Sunday, denounced the price of the tickets.

"They've got to find a way to restructure the ticket prices to get some more people in the building," said the college hoops guru after the admission price was reduced to $52 on Saturday. There still were lots of empty seats.

Chris Spencer, the affable Cincinnati-based promoter who has been trying to make these college basketball tournaments work here for almost a decade, said he wasn't disappointed by the empty seats after last year's sellout featuring Kansas and Florida and their huge followings.

"I'm just thrilled to death that anybody bought a ticket," he said. "We had $10 tickets for Cincinnati and Illinois (when the tournament was played at Valley High School) and nobody showed up."

Spencer said moving to the Orleans Arena was great for the teams and fans but has skewed his profit margins. There's a much higher overhead to pay and with zero help from the local tourism agencies - "We've probably put $60 million into the Las Vegas economy but never received a dime," he said - he has had to price tickets higher than he'd like.

Ticket packages for next month's Christmas weekend event featuring Purdue, Alabama, Iowa State, UT Pan American, Missouri State, Wofford, Bethune Cookman and Texas Southern begin at a reasonable $44, but that's mostly because there aren't any headliners like North Carolina or Kentucky or Kansas among that group.

Sports promoters have begun to price their games like rock concerts, and I suppose it's hard to blame them. They're in it to make a buck, too. So you don't charge Gordon Lightfoot prices when you've booked the Rolling Stones. Even UNLV has figured out it can hike tickets when Louisville is in town and get away with it.

Moreover, fans who travel with their teams already have booked expensive flights and expensive hotel rooms and set aside blackjack and shrimp cocktail money. So what's another $94 for game tickets?

But there has to be a way to make a buck, or even a lot of them, without forcing those who live here to knock off a 7-Eleven on the way to the box office.

Spencer, eternal/silly optimist that he is, hasn't given up on reaching out to local fans, our dubious track record for supporting live sports notwithstanding. He said the early ticket buy I propose already is being considered and he plans to distribute fliers that can be redeemed for $15 off tickets to the December tourney. He said he's committed to Las Vegas, because the teams would never hear of playing in Fresno or somewhere else they don't offer insurance when the dealer turns up an ace.

A sports promoter's idea of a successful tournament is a bottom line with a black number. A sports writer's idea of a successful tournament is a bottom in every seat.

In the world of hard-to-find happy mediums, one doesn't necessarily guarantee the other. Not even when North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough and BYU's Trent Plaisted are trading baskets and pounding the glass like it's the middle of March.