This is the latest in a series of columns written by award-winning sports columnists, exclusively for nssafame.com.
Knowledge is Good. Greed Isn’t. By Mark McCarter
Mark McCarter (Sean Meyers Photography)
Because, after all, what are Twitter and Facebook but avenues for us to prove to friends, families and followers just how utterly clever and witty we are? Which is why, after the latest hullabaloo over Trump University, the Harvard Of The Internet, I took to social media with an observation:
“Just hoping the NCAA Tournament Committee gives us a first-round game between Trump University of Faber College.”
It drew several responses from folks quoting from “Animal House,” where we were informed that at Faber College, “Knowledge Is Good.”
Then I heard from a friend who works at a historically black college:
“We all know how the NCAA works. Both Mission College and Hillman College will be in play-in-games,” he wrote. Mission College being the fictional setting for Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” Hillman for “The Cosby Show,” both HBCUs.
My friend had a point. It reminded me, a week away from March Madness, I was due for my annual grumble about the folly of the NCAA’s play-in games. Or, as now being marketed, the First Four.
Back to another “Animal House” reference: You are a SWAC or MEAC or Big South team, you get steered by Neidermeyer – the NCAA – over to the corner at the frat house mixer with Jugdish, Sidney and Clayton. Those are the play-in games.
You’re told “you have the night to yourself” and “everybody’s watching.” But you know better.
It started as a single-game format in 2001, and the SWAC and MEAC, predominantly black conferences, filled nine of the 20 spots. The NCAA expanded to four games in 2011, all the better to assure as many power conferences were kept happy and well-paid. Miraculously, NCAA determined it would send four low-seeded at-large teams to Dayton.
I grumble about this as a sentimentalist and a guy who has ridden along with tournament underdogs.
There’s nothing about the tournament we embrace more than the surprise teams, the unknowns, whether it be the old Gonzaga teams or the Florida Gulf Coasts and VCUs of recent vintage. (One of my favorite NCAA lines, when the Zags fell from Sweet 16 potential to Cinderella stature one year, “Looks like Gonzaga will be this year’s Gonzaga.”)
My first few NCAA tournaments, I was a beat writer covering double-digit-seeded teams.
And, yes, I was THAT beat writer. I was one of those youngsters who pops up on press row, certain to be whack-a-moled out of that spot in the span of one game, one of a team’s “media horde” that numbers two writers, a broadcaster and the tag-along who helps carry the broadcaster’s equipment.
I was impartial as an L.A. jury. I may not have rooted out loud, but I did inside. Damn straight I wanted them to win. It was the old days when you were permitted to like the people about whom you wrote, and vice versa. I often rode the team bus. I frequently heard the words “last call” in the company of assistant coaches. I played Pac-Man in the hotel lobby against the point guard.
I saw through those kids’ eyes the thrill of being one of the 64 teams, in sharing the arena with famous programs. I watched them pull a first-round upset over a team that would win the national title a year later.
It was an experience that can’t be replicated in a First Four scenario. The NCAA now short-changes a bunch of student-athletes. They don’t get the full NCAA tournament experience. Nor does a fan base for which this is often a once-in-a-decade experience. Dayton is a great host. But it’s not like going into the Barclays Center and having your shoot-around sandwiched between Duke and Villanova. It’s not like seeing your school on a tournament T-shirt with Kansas and Michigan State.
The 64-team wasn’t broken, but the NCAA was determined to fix it by adding four more teams, to make sure the rich got richer.
Knowledge is good. Greed isn’t.
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Mark McCarter is a four-time NSSA Sportswriter of the Year, author of two books and now serves as Special Contributor for WHNT News 19 in Huntsville, Ala.
