THE JOYS OF MARCH — FRESH TEAMS, TEARJERKERS — MUST BE PRESERVED

The NCAA tournament has problems, but they can’t be solved by presenting bids only to teams in power conferences, which is what Sankey suggests when the event should quiet Pitino and address Shannon

     You see the selfies and confetti, the dancing, the odes to late fathers, the thrill of teams from Longwood, Duquesne, South Dakota State, McNeese, Stetson, Samford, James Madison, Morehead State, Vermont, Wagner, Colgate, Grambling State, Grand Canyon and, hey, whatever national monument you’d prefer. We smiled. We felt good.

     And through it all we asked, as Adam Zucker replaces Greg Gumbel as host of the NCAA tournament: Who will be the bogeyman who removes the joy from March? It’s certainly not Rick Pitino, who referred to the selection committee as “fraudulent,” which he NEVER has been in his corrupt career.

     The piggishness of college basketball thrusts our eyes to the future. It’s a nice way of counting the number of greedy monsters inside megaconferences. Starting next year, the Big Ten has 18 teams, including UCLA, Oregon, Washington and USC. The Southeastern has 16, including Oklahoma and Texas. The Atlantic Coast has 18, including Stanford, California and SMU, none of which are atlantic. The Big 12 has 16, including Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.

     In the mind of Greg Sankey, who views himself as the deity of college sports as SEC commissioner, those 68 programs are exactly the number of bids in the actual tournament. He has suggested, with degrees of softness, that the only teams that earn bids will be those from power conferences. So never mind that Florida Atlantic and San Diego State, two non-power teams, reached the Final Four last year. Never mind that St. Peter’s became the first No. 15 seed to make the Elite Eight two years ago. Never mind that all three qualified this year, too. Never mind it’s a reason why gamblers are wagering $2.72 billion, preferring wannabes who thrive. He wants to shed most of the 32 who qualify by winning postseason events.

     The men’s tournament is in trouble, which shouldn’t shock anyone following the daily campus dramas. CBS and TNT are spending $1.1 billion a year for the affair, through 2032, and Sankey wants the almighty restructuring of leagues — embracing NIL and transfer portals and whatever else — over the glee of oddball automatics. Who wants McNeese or Samford when you can have last-place Missouri, 0-18 in the SEC this season, in the massive shebang? Or 8-24 Michigan? Sankey wants football separation to take over basketball, which has a history of springtime romance that should be above his obliteration of what we grasp and are trying to love. Right now, we realize Caitlin Clark is a much better story. What is Sankey doing?

     He told ESPN: “We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of expansion.”

     At this point, I’m wondering how loud Pitino is moping because St. John’s fell short. If he’d been more conscientious in guiding Louisville through sex scandals, maybe committee members would have been kinder and allowed him to make the brackets with his son, Richard, at New Mexico. I’m more interested in Keith Dambrot, who coached LeBron James in high school, leading Duquesne to its first NCAA bid in 47 years. “YESSIR?? Punch that ticket to the Big Dance @DuqMBB!!!” James tweeted. “CONGRATULATIONS!!!” Maybe James’ son, Bronny, should have accepted Dambrot’s scholarship offer instead of going home early from 15-18 USC.

     “I was the most relaxed I've ever been,” said Dambrot, whose wife has battled breast cancer. “I just tried to enjoy it for the first time in my life.”

     Yet here’s Sankey, whose comments only can be taken one way, trying to back off his words. He also pointed out UCLA reached the Final Four from the First Four in 2021 after Syracuse, in 2018, advanced from the play-in game to the Sweet 16. Now, we’re “overreading” his statement. He told The Athletic: “I take the example of Ole Miss baseball — last team in, won a national championship — and baseball is different; it’s actually less random than basketball, since you have to win series and it’s double-elimination. It’s simply an observation that we leave some highly competitive teams out that can justify their participation. That’s part of the review. That should be part of the conversation. Because again, we keep adding teams — nobody seems to want to deal with the volume of Division I teams increasing (to 362 schools) — so we’re going to have to continue to adapt. I think that’s healthy conversation. I don’t make that decision, but I certainly can make observations.”

     The observations are not sound. The men’s tournament struggles because the best players in the upcoming NBA draft, such as Victor Wembanyama last year, are overseas or playing in developmental leagues. We no longer have Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Shaquille O’Neal. We don’t have Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Carmelo Anthony. We don’t have Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, Jerry West, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson. There is no Christian Laettner.

     What we have is Connecticut, with a half-baked coach, and players we’re just learning about now. Only a handful will be considered for an NBA roster spot. The national superstar is in Iowa City, where Clark looks at UCLA — or LSU, with Angel Reese — in her regional final in Albany, N.Y. The best player on both sides might be Terrence Shannon Jr., who is playing at Illinois only because a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order. He faces one count of rape after a September arrest in Kansas.

     Think CBS mentioned his issues? Once? “They have everything they need to win the national championship,” said Clark Kellogg, as Shannon cut nets after a Big Ten title run. The Wisconsin band wasn’t quite as friendly Sunday, chanting “No means no” in Minneapolis. A Big Ten official stopped the noise. As the Illini advance, the network will be watched closely. CBS can’t go any longer without mentioning the allegations. I mean, Jim Nantz isn’t even involved anymore.

     “I’m the basketball coach, and a lot of this stuff was put in play by our university, the courts, and I’m not going to consume myself with it,” coach Brad Underwood said. “It’s a very serious matter. He’s got representation. ... It will be handled accordingly and with great sensitivity and respect to everybody.”

     Shame on Illinois, the guilt of the Ill.

     At least Dan Monson, in the story I want to follow, extends his post-firing run at Long Beach State with an opening game against Arizona. And at least Temple, in the story I didn’t want to follow, lost in the American Athletic Conference title game as a program investigated for gambling activity. The bettors always lose, right?

     The NCAA tournament is the one event left that melds also-rans with behemoths. Let’s keep it that way, for the good of Longwood University, wherever it is.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.