From the Sidelines

JED JACOBSOHN/NEWSMAKERS Mateen Cleaves and the Spartans may have won, but t hey still deserve a better tournament.

A NIT-picky look at the NCAA

Everyone except the most curmudgeonly denizens of Bracketville loves upsets. Upsets are what make the NCAA tournament exciting—but exciting and fair don't necessarily go together like Cleaves and Peterson. Frankly, they happen too often. They also cheapen top teams' regular season achievements. Two No. 8 seeds in the Final Four make for good columns about the merits of parity but shouldn't be allowed to happen at all. In order to run a fairer tournament, the Big Dance should take a few fandango lessons from its bastard brother, the National Invitation Tournament (NIT).

While Bill Guthridge and his North Carolina Tar Heels should be commended for their frenetic jaunt to the Final Four, the selection committee needs to realize that a 19-13 team should have had a much more difficult road to the top of college game. All Carolina had to do to get there was beat four opponents on a neutral court. The NCAA's practice of sending teams to neutral sites for all games is inherently unfair to higher-seeded teams. As a reward to both the team and its parent institution, the NCAA should reward the best teams with home-court advantage. Does anyone think Florida would have beaten Duke if the game was in Cameron? Could Pepperdine have beaten Indiana at Assembly Hall? Instead, CBS viewers were treated to crowds in such enthusiasm-deficient towns as Birmingham and Buffalo that would have been drowned out by Gaulladet's commencement ceremony. In the NIT, the selection committee rewards teams with higher Ratings Percentage Indexes with home games in the tournament's first three rounds. The raucous local crowds make for intriguing television viewing, and the teams with better records and more difficult regular season schedules are rewarded not only by getting a chance to play on their home floor, but also by getting a chance to make more money at the gate. The Final Four, however, should be played at a neutral site.

The NCAA has been riding the Final Four site carousel from non-charismatic venue to non-charismatic venue since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. When I think of St. Petersburg, Albuquerque, and Seattle, I think of shuffleboard, sand, and coffee—not alley-oops, hardwood, and Gatorade. The best four should always square off at the same venue, a venue that holds some meaning for players and fans alike. The NIT Final Four has been held at Madison Square Garden since James Naismith was nailing peach baskets to the wall, giving teams a sense of tradition and direction each year. Every team knows they want to be cutting down the nets in the Big Apple when the NIT concludes. The venue doesn't have to be in a large metropolitan area—Omaha has played host to the college baseball World Series since the 1950s, and the community has rallied behind the event, making it the most exciting thing to hit Nebraska since the William Jennings Bryan "Cross of Gold" speech in 1896. The permanent site should be in a location where basketball is king. This year's choice, the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, would be ideal in light of the perpetual Hoosier hoops mystique. So would the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. or the Charlotte Coliseum in North Carolina, which merits mention only because it's in the state that sired His Airness.

The committee should also shrink the tournament field. The NIT only takes 32 teams, ensuring that undeserving schools get left out in the cold like Carlos Boozer's ball after a shoot-around in Anchorage. The 64-team field rewards mediocre teams from major conferences—i.e., Wisconsin, Purdue, and North Carolina—and pitiful small conference champions by giving them a chance to face teams that played well all season on neutral terms. Teams like Arizona and Stanford that put together solid full seasons aren't rewarded at all. They are forced to play at neutral courts far from home, and meet strong, albeit underachieving, teams in the second round. While everyone loves to see Valparaiso crusading against the big dogs, it's not necessary to give them a bid each year. A system of play-in games should be established for the smaller conference champions. Under such a system, two or three minor conference representatives would still have their chance to put a stone in the old slingshot in March.

So next time I find myself in Bracketville, I'll pass on the "freshly baked finger rolls" and head straight for the town council meeting. When Harold "The Show" Arceneaux and Weber State pull off another upset, I won't be jumping up and down with everyone else. Because much like Bryan, I prefer fairness over fun.

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