Easter/Passover to give us massive sports brawl for public attention

This coming weekend is going to be one of those points in time each year that infuriates the portion of me interested in sports.

The baseball Opening Day, scheduled for Sunday at Wrigley Field and on Monday for all other teams, is going to get drowned out by the nonsense that has become “March Madness.”

AS IN THE NCAA’s men’s basketball tourney – which is now down to four college teams who will play on Saturday, with the two winners advancing to a championship game on Monday.

Opening Day, that ritual that is supposed to be a part of the rebirth of our society each year from the doldrums of winter, is going to get overshadowed by college basketball teams that I suspect the bulk of sports fans could care less about.

It always works out that the basketball tourney commonly called “March Madness” (even though any knowledgeable sports fan knows the term was first used with regards to the Illinois state high school basketball championship tourney) spills over and invades what ought to be baseball’s time clock.

And yes, I’ll be honest and admit I find it equally ridiculous that the World Series always gets played each year in a mad race to complete the event before Halloween. It’s like the sports spectacles we watch don’t know how to keep track of time or when they’ll be played.

IF IT’S REALLY “March Madness,” then why are we still playing it in April? Is this an April Fool’s gag (albeit a few days delayed) on baseball?

Don’t tell me that the average sports fan really cares that much about Duke or Kentucky (a part of me is spiteful enough to hope that the championship game comes down to Big Ten teams Wisconsin and Michigan State, just because it would screw up the thought processes of those who actually care about the game).

Besides, the Great Lakes states could use the public attention. Which they otherwise would have got from the season opener Sunday when the Chicago Cubs take on the St. Louis Cardinals.

And we’ll get to see for ourselves just how far from completion (mid-May is the current time estimate) the Cubs are from rebuilding their outfield bleacher section with ultra-modern video board that won’t look totally ridiculous in a 101-year-old ball park!

ADMITTEDLY, IT IS a novelty for the entire baseball season to begin in Chicago – a move that hasn’t happened since 2006 when that season began at U.S. Cellular Field and the then-defending champion Chicago White Sox (who wound up being a third-place team that season) beat up on the Cleveland Indians 10-4 before a national audience, courtesy of ESPN.

The same attention (on ESPN2, to be exact) that the Cubs are expecting to get from their Sunday opener (the White Sox start their season in Kansas City and don’t get to play a home game until a week from Friday).

But how much of the sports fan attention will wind up getting shifted away to pontificating about who will win Monday? And on Monday, will the basketball winner wind up being the “big” story, rather than the assorted Opening Days taking place across the country?

Somehow, that just seems wrong for a tourney that could have ended a week earlier (the NCAA basketball tourneys for Division II and III are already complete), with those athletes having to return to campus to go back to pretending to be full-fledged college students for the next couple of months.

OF COURSE, THIS isn’t the only intrusion, of sorts, taking place this weekend.

For Sunday is Easter. Major League Baseball has the nerve to use its holiest (allegedly) shrine of Wrigley Field to kick off the season on the holiest of all holy holidays. For those who are Jewish, Passover is Saturday. Does this mean the NCAA semi-finals are intruding on that holy event?

How many clergy of so many religious denominations will have something to rant about this weekend?

Are we likely to see family battles reminiscent of Thanksgiving, where one faction of the family wants to sit down and eat while the other just can’t tear themselves away from the television to watch some football?

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Hoosiers eating crow?!? The race to backtrack from “religious freedom”

I must admit to being surprised at how quickly Indiana government officials are backtracking themselves concerning the alleged “religious freedom” law enacted last week.

Indiana Gov. Dan Pence said Tuesday he expects the Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly (the negative image of what we have in Illinois) to pass some measure by week’s end that will clarify the intent of the new law so as to make sure that people can’t wind up being discriminated against based on sexual preference.

WHICH IS THE fear of many of those who are now lambasting the Land of Hoosiers for having felt the need to lead the nation in passing such a law to begin with.

It was interesting to hear Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society speak earlier this week on WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” program about how the law doesn’t really make Indiana much different from Illinois in terms of the way people’s rights are protected.

Although the difference appears to be that Illinois has laws including sexual preference as a category of person whose rights are protected. Indiana has never felt the need to offer such protections within their state law. Which is a big difference, no matter how much some try to downplay it!

That is why some wonder if the law is meant to let people who have hang-ups with regards to gay people (particularly on the marriage issue) claim that their religious beliefs are somehow being violated.

AS THOUGH THOSE beliefs somehow permit people to act on their prejudices toward those they don’t like.

It actually reminds me of a “Sunday school” moment when I was a kid of about 8 when we were told that being a “good person” had nothing to do with whether one went to “Heaven” after death – it was about how strong one’s religious faith is.

Perhaps some people think being the last hold out against gay marriage is what will assure them a place in the hereafter; while presuming that everybody else is Hell-bound.

As though God is the ultimate bully who backs those who bully everybody else not like them. I’d like to think that if there really is a hereafter, certain people are in for the shock of their existence when they find out how wrong they truly have been in life!

BECAUSE THE WAY that Indiana’s political actions of last week made any sense was as a political statement; letting it be known they did not approve of having “gay marriage” forced upon them by a federal judge – as opposed to Illinois where the Legislature and governor enacted changes in the relevant laws.

Which themselves were only a couple of decades old and were part of an effort by a then-Republican-dominated Illinois government to make its own statement against gay marriage.

Now, Indiana officials have to back away from their hard-headed statement. Perhaps it was all the public condemnation they were receiving that caused the change of heart.

Not just that the band Wilco cancelled an Indianapolis concert, or that the NCAA was talking about never again holding the men’s basketball tourney in the Indiana capital city (the Final Four will be held there this weekend, and it wouldn't be practical to relocate the event at this late date).

NOT EVEN THE fact that several states (including New York) rushed to enact legislation saying they were prohibiting non-essential travel by their officials to Indiana so long as the new law remained in place. Not that it would have cost much. Because how many people make non-essential trips to Indiana at all!

Or even the fact that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now hitting back against all those vapid “Illinoyed” ads that Indiana has concocted trying to claim that businesses should jump for the chance of a Hoosier mailing address so as to get lower tax rates.

The lower taxes might just be evidence that the state government doesn’t do as much as Illinois does, and that the public embarrassment of having the Indiana address might not be worth the cost savings.

And we can all think of State Line Road as being just another municipal boundary like Howard Street to the north – rather than the barrier beyond which oddball things happen when one ventures too far to the east!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: It may be nothing more than fantasy, but there are times I wonder if those northwestern Indiana counties ought to just shift themselves over to Illinois. While some Hoosiers would probably wet their pants with glee at the thought of being rid of Gary, we in Illinois would gain additional Congressional representation (and Electoral College votes) at the expense of Indiana. We’d see how quickly Indiana would quit wanting to live in such isolation from the rest of the Great Lakes states.

Who do we call the “home” team this time of college basketball season?

We’re at the point of the year where much public attention will be spewed upon the NCAA men’s basketball tourney for Division I, yet we here in the Land of Lincoln don’t have an obvious team to root for.

Now I’m sure there are many Chicagoans who went to college at various places across the country who can turn to their alma maters that were worth anything this past season to root for.

YET FOR THOSE of us looking for a local team, there isn’t much of anything. No Illinois school was able to get a bid to partake in the tourney.

Admittedly, Valparaiso University in Indiana is on the outermost southeast fringe of what could be called the Chicago area, although I’m sure people living north of 95^th Street would prefer think of it as alien turf. And some people like to think of Notre Dame as an area college, while just as many detest the very concept.

But the Hoosiers definitely got more on us this time of year – Indiana U. and Purdue also made it while the west side of State Line Road got nothing.

Those of us whose sporting attention isn’t totally dominated by spring training baseball and fantasies of that all-Chicago World Series taking place this year will have to look to the so-called lesser college basketball tournaments.

WITHIN THE CHICAGO area, there is Loyola University which got an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational. Where they will play their first (and potentially only) game Tuesday night against Rider College, and we likely will hear many repeats of how the Ramblers won the whole thing back in 1963!

There also will be Tuesday night basketball for the University of Illinois in Urbana, which got selected to participate in the National Invitational Tournament – which once was a big deal but now comes across as the ultimate consolation prize for failing to make it to the NCAA Division I tourney.

But they get to play the University of Alabama, which is noteworthy because they recently fired their basketball coach. Just BEFORE getting selected for the NIT.

I’m sure on a certain level, it would be a more intriguing story if Alabama were able to achieve some success under these circumstances. Could this mean the sporting nation would view a Fighting Illini victory as the ultimate bummer – completely ruining the story line?

I ALSO CAN’T see much enthusiasm for the other Illinois-based school that made it to the NIT – Illinois State University in Normal, which on Wednesday will have its first tournament game against the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Will anyone (outside of alumni with fond memories of Garcia’s pizza) get worked up rooting for a team whose own NCAA tourney dreams came crashing down with a loss in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to the University of Northern Iowa (which did get the NCAA bid)?

Perhaps if we pretend to ourselves that the team from Green Bay is the Packers, then we could get Chicagoans to care. Otherwise, I just don’t see it happening.

We may wind up finding a better tale if we drop down to the NCAA Division III level, where their national tourney began a couple of weeks ago. They already are down to their “final four” schools (out of 64) playing for a national title.

AND THERE, WE find an Illinois-based school with a serious shot at winning a championship – the Rock Island-based Augustana University, which will play Babson College Friday and possibly the winner of Virginia Wesleyan/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for the championship on Saturday.

Those of us with an Illinois rooting interest may have to look to the banks of the Mississippi River to find a local team to cheer for, although I’ll have to confess to feeling some confusion about this prospect.

The Illinois Wesleyan University alum in me knows of Augustana because the two schools both play in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (and the Vikings beat IWU in the conference tournament last month), while the Titans’ own national title dreams fell short last weekend with a loss to Stevens Point.

If those two schools make it to the title game Saturday in Salem, Va., it really would become a choice of which one’s victory would annoy me the least. It also could have me looking forward to the coming of a new baseball season all the more.

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Illinois schools did make NCAA tourneys; you’re looking at wrong ones

I have read several commentaries by sports-types all decrying the fact that no Illinois-based university qualified for the NCAA basketball tourney now underway.

We in Chicago or the rest of the state have no rooting interest – unless we happened to acquire a higher education at an out-of-state university.

EXCEPT THAT IT’S really not true. Unless you’re one of those people who are misguided into believing that “March Madness” is nothing more than the Division 1 tourney. That attitude actually bothers me more than the fact that the tournament itself won’t end until early April.

March “Madness” my duff!

Personally, I’m more intrigued by the tourney for Division III, where my own alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, has managed to make it all the way to the “Final Four.”

Sure enough, on Friday, the IWU Titans will be playing the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Remember them. Many years ago, the Chicago Bears held their pre-season training camp on that campus.

IF THE BLOOMINGTON-based college prevails, THE championship game will be Saturday against the winner of Williams/Amherst – the latter of which was last year’s national champion. I’m sure they’d like to have two titles in a row – compared to the last IWU national title in 1997.

Now I know there are bound to be some nitwits who will retort that I’m bringing up a tourney involving institutions of higher learning that nobody’s ever heard of.

Although I’d argue none of them are any more obscure than Wolford College – which would consider it a miracle if it were to manage to beat the University of Michigan on Thursday. That’s a real-live Division I match!

So for those of you who are complaining that there’s nobody local to root for in college basketball, I’d argue you’re not looking deeply enough.

ALTHOUGH THE FACT that the other NCAA basketball tournaments get less attention also mean they breeze right past us. Why else would the Division III tourney be nearly done just as the Division I tourney is starting.

Now if by chance you don’t want to join me in rooting for the Titans (you’re probably one of those deluded fans of Millikin University in Decatur), there were other local schools that managed to get into post-season play.

You have to look to the women’s basketball programs to find them. But they’re there.

At the Division II level, Lewis University in Romeoville and Quincy University both managed to qualify – even though neither made it past the first round of their tournament.

AND FOR THE Division I level for women, DePaul University is actually worth something. They’ll play their first match Saturday against Oklahoma.

That could give Chicago basketball fans something to root for. And it shouldn’t be looked down up. I’m sure the Blue Demons’ men’s program would give anything to still be playing ball this season.

Or any of Illinois’ Division I men’s programs. A part of me thinks they are fantasizing these days that they could be in Illinois Wesleyan’s position. Just one game away from playing for THE championship for the year.

A game that the men likely would remember for the rest of their lives.

ALSO ONE THAT I’m sure the men and women who are playing these past few weeks will take with them as they advance their way through life.

Now for those of you who are just absolutely determined to root for a large-enrollment school, I suppose you can follow the Fighting Illini men’s team as they work their way through the NIT (the ultimate in athletic consolation prizes).

Although by the time you read this, their season may be over as well – they played Boston University on Thursday, with that winner going up against Clemson on Saturday.

I suspect the Illini will be back in Champaign for good following this weekend. Then again, so will the Titans – hopefully with some athletic hardware showing them as winners!

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Admit it. You're thankful I didn't write anything political for Thursday.

EXTRA: Chicago-area’s true best team?

Suburban Naperville-based North Central College lost out Saturday on its chance to win a national title in men’s basketball, losing 52-44 to Amherst University – which now plays for the national title April 7 in Atlanta against Mary-Hardin Baylor College from Texas alongside the Division I tourney that will get all the public attention.

Although it should be noted that the Cardinals’ defense on Saturday managed to hold the Amherst defense to about 50 points – just one day after the Lord Jeffs managed to score 101 points in their victory over Cabrini College in Pennsylvania.

IT ALSO DOESN’T take away from the fact that North Central made it to the “Final Four” of the NCAA Division III tournament – which likely will make them the best-achieving college basketball program from Illinois for 2012-13.

I really doubt the Fighting Illini will make it much farther than their game Sunday against the University of Miami Hurricanes.

When was the last time any Chicago-area college did so well in a basketball tourney? There’s always that DePaul squad from 1979 that made it to the Final Four.

Or those North Park University basketball teams that between 1978 and 1987 won five national titles – including three in a row between 1978, 1979 and 1980. Which as far as I’m concerned is all the more reason to pay attention to the Division III athletic scene when considering college-level sports.

FOR THOSE OF you who are thinking I’m getting too worked up over small-college sports, think of it this way.

Would you really rather I get worked up over the thought of whether or not we should take Todd Stroger’s desires to serve as a commissioner on the Cook County Board that seriously?

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Ought to be more to sports fandom than guessing when doing basketball brackets

I’ll be the first to admit that much of the appeal of filling out brackets for the NCAA Division I tournament for men’s basketball is lost on me.

The baseball fan in me thinks it’s ridiculous that college basketball now drags well into the baseball season (which begins April 1, compared to the April 8 date on which we’ll finally be done with what is supposed to be “March” Madness).

THEN, THERE’S THE fact that I attended a college that played Division III athletics. Which means as far as I’m concerned, the men’s basketball tourney began weeks ago.

Friday wasn’t the day that many schools (including the University of Illinois, the closest to a local rooting interest unless you count Valparaiso University in Indiana – which already has lost) began play. It was actually the day that we got to see which schools made it to the Final Four.

Including the prospects of Naperville-based North Central College, which Friday night took on Vermont-based Middlebury College. A part of me thinks we ought to be paying just as much attention to the Cardinals’ basketball program which, we must admit, is likely to advance farther in the Division III tourney than the Fighting Illini will make it at the Division I level.

Realize how painful it was for me to write that last sentence. Because I’m an alumnus of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, whose team got beat a week ago by those same Cardinals 83-73.

I’M STILL SHUDDERING in disgust at the beating my alma mater’s team took in the first half, putting them too far behind to catch up in the second half (although they did come close at times). A “Sweet Sixteen” appearance sounds nice. But an “Elite Eight” one would have been more soothing. Nothing that happens in the Division I tourney is going to mean as much to me.

Now for those people who are about to start sending me all kinds of e-mail messages telling me that the Division I programs are just so much superior and involve schools that people have actually heard of, I’d say that’s nonsense.

I really doubt that most of the people now so eagerly filling out tournament brackets had any clue who the Iona Gaels were – prior to their taking on Ohio State University Friday night.

Heck, I’ll even go so far as to say I’ll root for Iona College based in New Rochelle, N.Y. (a community many people probably only think of as the home of the fictional Petrie family – remember the Dick Van Dyke show?). Solidarity amongst small schools.

BUT SOMEHOW, I suspect that Harvard University’s victory over New Mexico earlier this week was the major upset for this first round. A Buckeyes loss would truly be the evidence that life as we know it is over.

Not that I’m all that interested.

Like I already wrote, MY school is already out of the running. And I just don’t get people who pretend to be interested in college athletics when they don’t have any rooting interest for the particular school – either by having attending it or living in a nearby community.

I look at the brackets that say James Madison is playing Indiana, and some people get worked up over the possibility that the Hoosiers are potentially the best in the nation. I just see nothing, whether the Hoosiers whomp on the Dukes of Harrisonburg, Va., or not leaves me cold.

LIKE I WROTE before, maybe I’m just a bit too eager for baseball to begin.

I got a kick out of learning that we’re far enough into spring that the Mexican League season actually began Friday with the Tabasco Olmecas playing the Red Eagles of Veracruz – with the rest of the league’s seasons opening Saturday.

Not that I’m all that intrigued by Mexican League baseball. But it means we’re moving closer and closer to that date when those Arizona and Florida training camps shutter themselves for the year, and the regular season gets underway.

April 1, with the Kansas City Royals in Chicago and the Cubs taking a trip to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates – it sounds more intriguing to me than a tourney involving out-of-state schools that will still be a week away from completion.

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EXTRA: Illinois has a school in tourney

I got my chuckle from reading a commentary published in the Chicago Sun-Times bemoaning the fact that Illinois may not get any representation in the NCAA basketball tourney when the 65 qualifying Division I schools are announced this weekend.

Now I will agree with the point that many of the top high school ballplayers seem to be leaving the state when it comes to wanting to play college ball. It most likely is due to the fact that this state's college basketball programs are largely mediocre (DePaul University’s Final Four appearance of ’79 was such an aberration). I have a nephew who plays high school ball, and while I have heard him about wanting to play the game at higher levels, I have never heard him talk of thinking that being an SIU Saluki or a UI-Chicago Flame is anything special.

BUT I FIND it ridiculous that Illinois people have nobody from our state to root for. For I have been paying attention to the NCAA Division III for the past two weekends. Because that tourney doesn’t draw the big bucks from television ratings, officials are more concerned with playing the games as quickly as possible.

So as of Saturday, they’re already down to their Elite Eight. And I’m getting a kick out of my own collegiate alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University, being among those 8 schools. Particularly after learning about their 77-72 victory Friday night over Carthage College (maybe that will shut up all those Redmen fans in Kenosha, Wis., because their team won the CCIW conference tourney and IWU qualified through an at-large bid).

One more victory, and IWU will be in the Final Four, with a chance to play for the national title in “scenic” Salem, Va. – although if one wants to think about it seriously, what makes Indianapolis, Ind. (the site of the Division I Final Four), any more luxurious?

So technically, we could all be rooting for the Titans of Bloomington (which the last time I looked at their roster included one Chicago kid and nine others from the suburbs) if we wanted some Illinois connection.

AS FOR THOSE of you who are about to get snotty with me and send me some sort of note proclaiming the inferiority of the lower classifications of college sports, I’d say the big difference is that you don’t get too many of the 7-footers, and you get the occasional kid who spent his life practicing his ball-handling skills, but whose growth spurt topped out at about 5-foot, 6-inches.

It’s still entertaining, and you do get the occasional NBA-quality player passing through (IWU fans still celebrate the 13-season career of Jack Sikma, mostly with the Seattle Supersonics), even though the one IWU game I made it to this season, I saw them play so sloppily when they lost 68-60 to the University of Chicago Maroons that they weren't worthy of any Sikma association that night.

It’s definitely a quality of ball good enough for people wishing to root for a home-state team. And does anyone really think that fans of the Chicago State Cougars basketball program have anything more to cheer about, just because their college’s enrollment is big enough to be classified Division I?

So for those of you who want to whine about there being nobody local to cheer for (and let’s be honest, even if the University of Illinois Fighting Illini do manage to qualify, they’ll probably be knocked out in the first round), I say, "Get real!"

THERE IS STILL somebody from this state to cheer for, although a part of my “joy” was dampened upon learning while writing this commentary that the IWU women’s basketball team lost 77-76 to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, thereby bringing an end to the season for a team that was actually a favorite to win their tourney.

So while the rest of you will be bemoaning the lack of an Illinois or a Bradley in the college basketball tournaments, I’ll be the one anxiously following some quality games. Which means I’ll be the happy one in these days before the coming of the baseball season.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Why am I having fun from college basketball while many fans in this area are feeling nothing (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/2099019,illinois-schools-ncaa-12.article) but sorrow.

When local basketball fans get excited at the thought of playing in the NIT tourney (http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-state/article_17099d54-2d6c-11df-b688-001cc4c03286.html), you know it is a weak year.

I only hope that the IWU Titan season (http://www.d3hoops.com/) does not come crashing (http://www.iwusports.com/index.aspx?tab=basketball&path=mbball) to a halt Saturday night.

Division III gives Chicago basketball fans their only Illinois-based rooting interest in '08

For those of us from Chicago who root for an Illinois-based team come NCAA college basketball tournament time, this year has to be downright depressing. Not one of the universities that play men’s basketball at the Division I level managed to qualify.

While Illinois State and Southern Illinois universities both managed to qualify for the NIT, the second-rate nature of that tourney will keep all but the most hard-core alums from caring whether the Redbirds and Salukis manage to win.

I WOULD ARGUE that for Illinois residents, the superior fan experience this year belongs to a school at the Division III level – and chances are good you missed the story.

For while the NCAA Division I tournament is just getting under way beginning Thursday, the Division III tournament has been underway for weeks already, and one Illinois-based school’s team managed to make it to the Elite Eight.

So in the interest of fairness, we all ought to take a look at what was accomplished by the Wheaton Thunder, the DuPage County-based college that likes to brag it is the alma mater of evangelist Billy Graham and former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Thunder fan (although I’ve seen enough Wheaton College games going far enough back to when the school’s teams were called the Crusaders). I am an alumnus of Illinois Wesleyan University, which plays in the very same College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin as Wheaton

SO WHEN THE Division III tourney began March 7-8, there were two Illinois-based schools playing for a national title – Wheaton and Augustana University, which was the conference champion.

Augustana got knocked off early in the tourney, but Wheaton managed to survive until Saturday, when they lost to Hope College, playing in Hope’s home arena in Holland, Mich.

Why is it that I can say I was taking some interest in Wheaton? It is because I know in my heart that the IWU Titans this season were a superior team. Just how Wheaton got an at-large bid to go to the tournament while Wesleyan got to stay at home is something that can still get me outraged.

After all, the Titans beat the Thunder twice during the conference season, and then again in the first round of the CCIW conference tournament.

KNOWING THAT THE “Fighting Titans” are capable of holding their own against a team that managed to survive so long in the Division III tournament this year makes me all the more optimistic that next season, IWU will manage to qualify and perhaps even have a chance to win the whole thing.

Yes, I’m greedy. Four “final four” appearances in the past 11 years (and one Division III title back in 1997) is not enough. Call it the mentality of a Yankees fan, if you will, but I’d like to see my alma mater make another trip to Salem, Va., (the regular site for the Division III tournament, unlike the revolving locations for the Division I tourney).

Watching Wheaton not only gave me an “Illinois” school to root for, it gave me optimism that I’m not delusional in thinking that “my school” can win something again in the near future.

Now some people might ask me why I’m snubbing women’s athletics. They might wonder why I don’t pay attention to any Illinois schools that had women’s teams continue to play.

ACTUALLY, I WAS prepared to. IWU’s women’s team won their conference championship and made it to the women’s Division III tournament, but then got knocked out in the first round.

It makes me wonder about the ideal dream – Fighting Titan men’s and women’s teams managing to win national titles in the same year.

Perhaps my alma mater could become the Illinois-based, Division III equivalent of the University of Connecticut, which pulled off this very trick in 2004, when both of their basketball teams won their respective Division I tourneys.

Some people might wonder if it is ridiculous to see these college sports tournaments so personally. After all, Illinois Wesleyan is a place that hasn’t been a part of my daily life in nearly 21 years and it has been eight years since I last set foot on campus.

YET TO ME, it is a place that helped inspire me to accomplish much of what I have done in life. And having a personal rooting interest is what makes a college sports tournament interesting to begin with.

I can’t see the point of paying any attention to a 64-team tourney where there is nothing that connects me to any of the schools. For those people who just want to view college basketball as the National Basketball Association’s version of minor league baseball, that really defeats the purpose of college sports by trying to change them into a second-rate version of the NBA.

The energy and enthusiasm of player and fan alike at the smaller level schools is what makes their game so appealing, even if you do wind up seeing the talents of players who obviously devoted a significant portion of their life to practicing their skills dribbling and shooting a basketball – but can’t play at the highest levels because life’s cruel irony cut off their growth spurt at 5-foot, 6-inches or so. (Seriously, the major difference between Division I elite programs and Division III is that 7-footers are scarce at the lower level).

At the Division III level, you get the ideal of student/athlete that the Ivy League schools would like to think they still represent.

THERE’S ONE OTHER reason I prefer the Division III tourney – it has not become a television-dominated spectacle. It has already been underway for two weeks, and will come to an end Saturday, with either Amherst, Hope, Ursinius or Washington universities taking home a national title.

By comparison, the Division I tourney is just getting underway (even though the March in “March Madness” is two-thirds of the way over), and will wind up stretching out so long that it will run into baseball season – stealing attention away from the truly significant experience of professional sports – baseball’s Opening Day, when even Chicago Cubs fans can dream about their team winning a pennant.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing St. Louis-based Washington win the Division III tourney, just because I know IWU plays them regularly and is capable of handling themselves against their team. It would be yet more evidence that I may see another national title for my school’s team during my lifetime.

And if you’re really going to insist that I pick somebody from the Division I tournament to root for, then I’m going to have to go with American University.

THE EAGLES MANAGED to win the Patriot League title this year, and I did attend the D.C.-based school for a semester back in the autumn of ’86 (my semester of study in Washington coincided with the breaking of the Iran-Contra scandal). But I won’t be the least bit surprised when Tennessee wallops American in the first round.

Even if AU wins a game or two before going home, it wouldn’t mean as much to me as a Titan title in the future.

So congratulations to the Wheaton Thunder for advancing further in post-season play this year than any other Illinois college team. After all, you’ve given this Titans fan some reason to be optimistic for next year.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently commented on the lower-key (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/columnists.nsf/bryanburwell/story/459287C0FE27A78E8625740E00161A6B?OpenDocument) atmosphere surrounding the Division III tourney.

For those people who want to know more about the Illinois-based college that did the best this year (http://athletics.wheaton.edu/index.asp?path=mbball) in post-season play.

American University of Washington, D.C., is making its first-ever appearance (http://aueagles.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/amer-m-baskbl-body.html) in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Results from Salem, Va., can be found here (http://www.d3hoops.com/) this weekend.