COMMENTARY: March Madness is just that

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ This March college basketball madness should stop. It is a caricature of […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ This March college basketball madness should stop. It is a caricature of sports fairness and, worse, a ruthless exploitation of players.


The principal theme of the NCAA tournament is David vs. Goliath: The underdog tries to upset the favorite. Fans want to see the mighty destroyed, the successful torn down, the great humiliated.

But what if the favorite is the better team and has an off day? What if the underdog is playing over its head? Is a single elimination playoff the best way to determine the national champion?

World cup soccer (still the best cure for insomnia since sheep) and Olympic basketball tournaments are much fairer. Double elimination does not appeal to the egos of sports fans or to dramatic media coverage, but it does insure that freak accidents don’t determine the champion.

The NCAA should cut its number of tournament teams from 64 to 32 or, better yet, 16. No team would be eliminated until it loses two games. In the absence of a round-robin tourney (which would be the most fair of all), this is the only honest way to run a basketball tournament for the national championship.

Of course, this much needed reform is not going to happen. Too many people are making too much money off the present form of March Madness to let elementary fairness get in the way.

In this respect, March Madness epitomizes the corruption of big time college sports. It is a bonanza for the schools, the coaches, the networks, the announcers and commentators. Everyone makes money, some folks make a lot of money. Who gets left out? The players!

The athletes _ men and women _ wear themselves out earning money for everyone else but themselves. In substantial part, they are poor and badly educated young people whom everyone else ruthlessly exploits, while at the same time expecting them to go through the charade of attending classes and earning credits just as other students do.


Moreover, the young people become targets for sadistic faculty-types who like to boast about how many stars they have flunked. The athletes are attracted by dreams of the NBA and the big money they hope to earn. (“Show me the money”is one of the truest lines in the current hit film”Jerry McGuire,”which is about a sports agent).

But only a few athletes will realize those dreams. A few more will overcome the obstacles and the conflicting demands and earn themselves a college degree, in some cases a valid one. The rest will exhaust their athletic eligibility and have nothing more to show for it then memories, often bittersweet.

Then it will be back to the streets.

This entertainment masquerading as athletics is so commonplace, that few people seem to notice it. Certainly most sports writers are all too willing to ignore the exploitation.

One hears little protest from activists. Who will picket the Final Four games to demonstrate against the exploitation? If big-time college sports continues to be part of the American higher educational enterprise, the schools who engage in this sham should at least treat their players fairly.

They should discard the charade of”amateurism”and share their profits with their employees _ which is what the players really are. Instead of policing schools to make sure alumni don’t slip a couple of thousand dollars under the table to players, the NCAA should demand that colleges pay their athletes a living wage, not only while they are playing, but until they earn their degrees.

MJP END GREELEY

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