And so it ends for Kansas State

Ah well...

My dream scenario for Kansas State fans to be able to rub it into Kansas fans' collective faces fell just short of the Final Four.

I now have to figure out which Final Four team I can find a totally petty reason to root for.

Monday. I'll figure that out on Monday.

Let's Go Kansas State!

I still can't name a single player on the Kansas State Wildcats basketball team... yet I am still rooting for them.

And after their double overtime win against Xavier last night a wonderful thing happened for K-State fans:

They are now favorites to go to the Final Four.

With Butler's win over top ranked Syracuse (two other teams that I don't know the starting 5 for), Kansas State is now the top ranked school in the West Region.

Now I am sure Syracuse thought they were going to beat Butler, so K-State can't take them lightly... but if a #2 seed can beat a #5 seed then my Schadenfreude fueled scenario would come true.

Kansas State would be a Final Four Team while Kansas, the #1 team in the country, couldn't even make the Sweet Sixteen.

And if they make the Final Four, they wouldn't have to face a #1 seed from the Midwest as Kansas has been knocked off... so it isn't outlandish to see Kansas State in the Championship game...

And if they can beat Kentucky or Duke...

OK, I am getting ahead of myself. BUT for all of you Kansas State fans out there, savor this. This could be YOUR 2004... that year where your team was better than the big bad "always better than you and you are sick of hearing of it" powerhouse.

Unleash the prick within!

Do people REALLY root for Cinderella in the NCAA tourney?

I am not going to claim to be an NCAA Men's Basketball expert. I can't name the starting 5 of a single team in the tournament.

But I find the 64 team bracket to be fascinating, much like I find the US Open in Flushing and the Masters to be compelling even though I am not a tennis nor a golf fan.

One prevailing notion (or myth) of the NCAA tourney is that the Cinderella team has a shot to win it all. You could be Arkansas Pine Bluff, or ITT Technical Institute or DeVry and have a chance to win the National Title... provided you go on a doozy of a 6 game winning streak.

And this year you have an Ivy League school (Cornell), a 9 seed that I have no clue where they play except that I am guessing it is in the Northern part of Iowa (Northern Iowa), and a couple of more double digit seeds (Washington and St. Mary's.) One of those programs could win it all.

It won't happen. The closest you will get is a George Mason making the Final Four, but in the end there will be two elite programs in the final.

The real question is "do people WANT to see upsets?"

In theory, yes. In theory sports fans love to see the little guy triumph. But I can tell you CBS sure doesn't want a Northern Iowa vs. Cornell final! As cool as it sounds, the TV interest will be close to nothing except true die hard fans. They want programs like Duke and Syracuse in the finals... colleges with a storied basketball past and lots of alumni scattered across the country.

I also think most sports fans would rather see the best teams face off for the title. You couldn't get a more unlikely underdog story than the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, who finished ahead of the Yankees and knocked off the defending champion Red Sox to make it to the World Series.

Yet nobody watched.

This year's Super Bowl pitted each conference's #1 seed... and it scored bigger than the last M*A*S*H.

The 2008 World Series barely beat After MASH.

Also let's face it, as cool as the Northern Iowa win over Kansas was, I am sure it got a lot of fans furious. Let's just say a lot of people looked at their brackets and threw them out in disgust.

I actually would like to see a Cornell/Northern Iowa final... but then again I don't work for CBS and I didn't fill out a bracket this year!

Hey Women's Basketball... change your schedule and thank Sully later

Seriously, women's basketball... you should be starting your NCAA tournament RIGHT NOW!

And not just this year, but every year the women's NCAA tourney should be in early March.

Actually it should be wrapping up now with the bulk of the tournament in February. Instead the women play at the same time as the men... which is great and empowering and Title 9 and all of that, but it also ensures that NOBODY is watching.

Think about it... between the end of the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four, sports is a wasteland.

There's NOTHING! The NBA? They are grinding along their regular season where at this point the only suspense is "Which team will rank 8th in the conference and be slaughtered by the Lakers or Cavs in the first round?"

The NHL? The Stanley Cup Playoffs don't start for a few months... when most sports fans all say at the same time "Christsake, they are still playing HOCKEY?"

People are so starved for sports that people show up to the NFL Combine.

That's right... the sports pages are so barren that NFL hopefuls running wind sprints count as news.

As for baseball, at this point it is time for split squad spring training games. You will forgive your pal Sully if he can't get into a game where the big leaguers who DO show up play only 4 innings and by the end, the game is played with a pitcher wearing number 98 1/3 and the hitter will start the season with the Lowell Spinners!

This year we did have the Olympics... but Johnny Weir and company can't be there every year to quench our sports thirst.

If the Women's Tournament were going on now, they'd be one of if not THE top story in sports.

I am not saying it will surpass football in popularity... but think about it in movie terms.

The biggest seasons for movie goers are the summer and Christmas time, and that's when the studios wheel out all of the blockbusters.

In some of the slower months, they release films that would get swallowed up against the blockbusters but do well with specialized audiences. Smaller horror films do well in the fall. A romantic comedy like Valentine's Day would get no press in the summer, but becomes a big hit in February.

So think of Women's basketball as the niche release during the lean month and a half between the Super Bowl and the Final Four.

And lest we forget one of the big reasons why the NCAA Men's tournament gets so much attention:

Office pools!

Why else do people who don't know Syracuse Basketball from Devry Basketball during the regular season suddenly get interested in March?

They are fun to fill out and it makes you pay attention to games you wouldn't normally notice.

That's right... women's basketball needs to embrace greed, gambling and the need to yell "in your face!" to a fellow office mate.

There's a month and a half wide open.

I'm not saying I am going to become a huge women's basketball fan, but it HAS to be more exciting that watching drills in the combine!