A Friendly Dialogue

March Madness is here.

The NCAA men's basketball championship tournament begins tomorrow, and members of the selection committee must be mighty proud of themselves.

Once again, they've produced a stunning field of candidates for the coveted national title and once again, they've moved one step closer to ridding themselves of a nagging pest--the Ivy League.

Since the NCAA tournament began to sport a modern 64-team look in the 1980s, the Ivy League champion has been seeded 16th in a region against one of the top four teams in the country. The results in the last three years; three losses by an average of 40 points.

1986--Syracuse 101, Brown 52.

1987--North Carolina 113, Penn 82.

1988--Arizona 90, Cornell 50.

You are one of those members of selection committee and you say the obvious to yourself. "That league is ruining the excitement, the attraction, the attendance, the magic, the esteem, no...the very essence of my baby which makes the NCAA tournament transcend life as we know it."

You seeth and grit your teeth, forced to put, no hide, the Ivy League winner somewhere in your bracket.

But wait, you get an idea.

What if you impose a moratorium on the number of automatic bids into the 64-team field? With the burgeoning number of conferences forming around the country (thank goodness for the Trans America Athletic Conference), it won't be long before the number of automatic bids exceeds the number of bids allowed.

Won't that be a shame? You'll just have to strip a couple of automatic bids from those conferences which truly don't deserve them.

Now, you seed the weaker conference teams against the elite in the nation and showcase the slaughter on national television. You've done it again this year, sending the Ivy's sacrificial lambs, Princeton, to be destroyed by the Georgetown Hoyas Friday night on national television in Providence. It's only a matter of time.

Public opinion will groundswell, a revolution will be in order and your work will be done. And then you run into Harvard Coach Peter Roby, and he isn't smiling.

"I don't think it's fair for the NCAA tournament committee to base whether we get an automatic bid based on our performance in the tournament," Roby says. "Why do we have to apologize for Cornell losing by 40 to Arizona, when Seton Hall turned around and got beat by 40 the next time out?"

"Life's not fair," you remark, "and your league's just taking up space."

"If you want to talk about historical perspective, the Ivy League has done more than its share to represent college basketball," Roby continues. "There are a lot of conferences out there that have never put a team in the Final Four."

Mutterings

You mutter something like, "I'm sure the Trans America Athletic Conference is a couple of years away from putting a team in the Final Four," but your confidence is ebbing.

Roby's 6-ft., 4-in. frame is growing taller now.

"Ten years ago, we had a team in the Final Four [Penn]," Harvard's fourth-year coach says, "No scholarships and a team in the Final Four. How can that be? No scholarships, go to Carolina and beat Carolina in Carolina. That's what the tournament is all about, and that's why we deserve to always have a shot at the tournament."

"You're living in the past," you say.

Roby continues, "I don't think people understand what that team in '79 did. You're talking about nonscholarship, academic guys, studentathletes with a full course load."

"[People] should be allowed to dream," Roby says, not noticing your presence anymore, "and nothing--no matter how much money, or how much whining people do because they want eight teams from their conference to go--should take that away from us."

You twinge. Roby notices you again, but you almost wish he wouldn't.

"Nobody gets on probation. All our guys graduate. National Collegiate Athletic Association," he says, pointing to your NCAA pin. "There's a word in there called collegiate. What's that mean? It means that you make decisions not because of money and not because of outside pressure. You make a decision because it's the right thing to do, and the Ivy League playing in the NCAA tournament is the right thing to do."

Roby saunters off in disgust.

You know you're right and Roby's wrong. You're sure of it. But in a strange, twisted way, you hope that somehow Princeton does the impossible Friday night.