March 30, 2007

We adore the four
Unlike any other sport, semifinalists in college basketball and their fans all feel as if they've accomplished something big.

By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH
The Kansas City Star

The players cut down nets, and, back on campus, their fans partied in the streets. Yes, the UCLA Bruins, Ohio State Buckeyes, Florida Gators and Georgetown Hoyas had made it all the way to the mountaintop of college basketball.

The semifinals.

Never mind a national championship was still two wins away. In college basketball, the semifinals mark the measure of greatness.

"The Final Four is the benchmark," said college basketball fan Karl Capps, a Lawrence native. "If you've made the Final Four, you've made the Super Bowl."

Only in college basketball is making it to the semifinals the pinnacle. On Saturday, the Final Four takes center stage in America. Four teams. Two great games. Millions of fans watching. Thousands of pizzas ordered.

Traditionally, the spectacle of Semifinal Saturday can be so overwhelming that Monday's national championship game becomes anti-climactic. This year, with four of the top eight seeds advancing to the final weekend and pro talent littering the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, that could very well be the case.

"I think that you could build a very strong argument," said longtime CBS college basketball announcer Dick Enberg, "that the basketball semifinal doubleheader is the greatest day in basketball, if not one of the greatest days in all of sports, because four great teams have earned their way to a chance at a national title and all four teams' fans think they're going to win it."

So when did the national semifinals become the biggest day in hoops? Fifty-five years ago, to be precise.

It started in 1952, when the 16-team tournament brought all four semifinalsts -- Kansas, St. John's, Illinois and Santa Clara -- to Seattle. Phog Allen's Jayhawks beat St. John's in the national championship game, and every year since, four teams have converged on one city for the final three games of the season.

It wasn't until the mid-'70s that the term "Final Four" was introduced. Cleveland Plain-Dealer sports writer Ed Chay first coined the term when he wrote that 1974 Marquette was "one of the final four." The NCAA would soon start taking advantage of the term, just in time for the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson showdown in the 1979 national championship game.

That game, between Bird's Indiana State and Magic's Michigan State, brought college basketball to the masses more than any other. It was and is still the most-watched college game in history.

So, that brings us to today, when guys such as UCLA guard Michael Roll wear strands of net as necklaces when they make the field of four.

"Best necklace ever," Roll said last weekend after UCLA beat Kansas.

KU fans can only wish that Brandon Rush or Julian Wright got to wear that necklace. But they understand how hard it is to make the Final Four. That's what makes it so special.

"The Final Four is unique," said Capps, a KU fan who went to San Jose, Calif., "because it's so difficult to get there. It doesn't matter how good you were during the season or if you're the best team. You're still a long shot to make it to that event."

Capps and fellow KU alum John Wilkins are also Chiefs fans. They were asked how the Chiefs making it to the AFC championship game -- the NFL's final four -- would compare with Kansas making the official Final Four.

"It's not even close," Capps said.

"It's because the odds are so much longer."

Wilkins said: "If you're seeded right, you only have to win one game to make the AFC championship game. It's much harder to win four games in a row."

And, let's be honest, coaches in other sports aren't judged by how many trips to the semifinals they've made.

In college basketball, if you've coached in a Final Four, you've immediately jumped to another level. Last week, KU coach Bill Self acknowledged that he was jealous of coaches who have made the Final Four. For another year, Self will hold on to that feeling. He'll watch Saturday's games from the stands in Atlanta.

The Final Four is an elite fraternity, even for the fans who get to experience it. KU fans Tom and Gayle French, who live in Overland Park, went to the Final Four in Atlanta in 2002.

"It's like being on a movie set," Gayle French says. "The lights are so bright, the stars are in the crowd -- Ted Danson, John Wooden. It's the elite of the elite."

Enberg, who has covered just about everything, including tennis' Wimbledon and golf's The Masters, ranks the Final Four right up there.

"College basketball has become such an important part of our sports culture," he says.

"Almost, for a nonfan, you can't avoid it. It's like the Super Bowl, where a great bulk of your audience decides it's a happening. That's what this has become. Basketball builds toward a great happening."

To reach J. Brady McCollough, sports reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4363 or send e-mail to jmccollough@kcstar.com

J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell)