Only College Basketball Gives the Fans What This National Championship Did
The Duke-Butler game (and the story that went along with it) for the right to be called the National Champs could only have happened in college basketball.Â
The BCS gives a national champion and, truth be told, it comes closer to presenting to the sporting world the best college football team in the nation. Duke and Butler each had five losses during the season. Few people in the know will argue that a match up of Kentucky and Kansas (the likely scenario if college hoops were under the BCS formula) wouldn’t have produced a team more worthy of being called the best team in the nation.
The professional leagues, with their best-of-seven format, would never excite a nation of fans the way last night’s contest did. Even the NFL, with its win-or-go-home postseason would ever come close to the show the Blue Devils and Bulldogs put on last night.
If ever the cliche, “it’s a game of inches” applied, it was the national championship game. From Gordon Hayward’s fadeaway which, a credit to him, he did not leave short, to Nolan Smith’s finger roll to Hayward’s final heave - an inch one way or another and . . .
A game like this even makes sane people temporarily lose their minds. Witness Digger Phelps’ remarks about the bigger schools abandoning the philosophy of recruiting one-and-done’s - players who are so talented they go to college (as opposed to attending college) - because in the words of Digger, “Where’s Kentucky? Not here.” Certainly, the one-and-done collegiate player is a farce, brought on, allegedly, by the NBA collective bargaining agreement, but for anyone to think schools will no longer recruit the best available players, even Digger will have to think twice about his brash remark.Â
College baseball’s World Series may come close to what we witnessed at Lucas Oil Stadium (it’s just not as popular), but consider: 72,000 people watched it in person; Hinkle Field House was packed; Cameron Indoor was packed, and millions of others watched at homes, restaurants, and any place there was a television. Â
Paraphrasing from what is said about a good speech:
“Days, months, years from now, people won’t remember what they SAW as much as how they FELT.”  Â