On Friday, higher seeds prevailed in 15 of the 16 matchups but even in a tournament where only 5 lower seeds emerged victorious in the 32 first round games, there is only 1 entry out the 11.57 million entries on ESPN’s Tournament Challenge that picked all 32 contests correctly.  1!  There are 38 entries that had 31 of the 32 teams picked correctly;  that’s .000328% of all ESPN’s brackets.   So when Iowa State and Baylor fell before you left the office on Thursday and you tore your office pool bracket sheet to shreds, feel some solace that you were not alone.  In fact, you might want to pull that baby out of the trashcan and tape that it back together.  As long as you didn’t have the Cyclones or Bears advancing too far, you may be still in line for a payday, because on the whole, favorites did much better than they have in recent years.  The chalk still talks going into the weekend games.

And speaking of a payout, I will leave you with this report from Vegas… Kentucky was 1:500 to beat Hampton and some schlub bet $600 on Kentucky.  The spoils of his wager… $1.20.

In 1987 Southern Methodist University was issued the harshest consequence that the NCAA could levy after it was confirmed that 13 players from the 1985 & 1986 Mustang team were paid a total of $61K from a booster’s slush fund with the full knowledge and approval of SMU athletic department staff and SMU Board of Governors Chair (and eventual Texas Governor) Bill Clements.  The NCAA canceled SMU’s 1987 season, restricted the 1988 season to away games only, banned SMU from bowl games until 1989 and eliminated 55 scholarships over four years.

In addition to the high profile matters involving the Hurricanes, the Buckeyes and of course Cecil Newton Jr’s. proposed sale of his son, Cam, to Mississippi State , this past year’s investigations regarding player pay-outs, recruiting violations, expenses to “scouting services” and informal agent relationships involving major college programs at Alabama, Auburn, Oregon, Michigan, Texas, UNC, LSU and Georgia Tech are just the beginning.  Mark Emmert who was appointed as CEO of the NCAA last fall, has his hands full, but unless he takes firm action, this cavalcade of indecorum may only be the tip of the iceberg.   If shady dealings are happening at all of these schools, who is to say it is not the norm, rather than the exception?  No matter what the intentions of the recruiters, local merchants, boosters or would-be agents, cash-strapped 17 to 21 year olds who have been heralded for their athletic prowess are going to be easy pickings.  And because many of these improprieties do not come to light until after the students graduate, future student-athletes within these programs will be the ones who suffer.  Sure, Reggie Bush lost his Heisman, but he is still playing in the NFL and he is still paid for what he can do on the field.

The NCAA has to do more than just the forfeiture of games and the reduction in scholarships.  Given the interconnectedness of schools in viewer-rich conferences, airplay bans will adversely impact the TV revenue of schools which have committed no wrongdoing.  Although such a ban might create more accountability among conference members, at this rate, the SEC would lose half of its teams to black-outs.  And again, these actions impact future students, coaches and leadership, not the ones who actually committed the infractions.  The scenario is not unlike our toothless United Nations.  Unless unified and comprehensive military action is invoked, all of the sanctions and public derision in the world do not change behavior.  It has been several years since the UN issued sanctions in North Korea and Iran, what is different?   In 1992, the UN invoked its initial set of sanctions against Libya.  It took 19 years for the regime to change, but it did not happen until the rhetoric ended and the airstrikes began.

Right now the reward for breaking the rules far outweighs the risk.  Just like Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thumb their respective snouts at the world’s cooperative assembly, so too will college football insiders continue to violate the rules and roll the dice with the NCAA.  Winning college football programs mean piles of money to the university, prestige for alumni and future individual professional deals.  And because the so-called “death penalty” is more like a 2 year sentence in juvie, there is no reason to not conduct business as usual with multi-layered pay-outs and an array of strawmen doing the bidding of the programs.  Unless the NCAA follows the money and levies more individualized and career-altering consequences, the days of college football as an amateur sport will draw to a close.

Not to over-simplify, but the Odyssey Dawn game plan was to attack from the outside to weaken Libyan strongholds, limit Gadhafi’s ability to attack from the air and allow the rebel forces to take control of territory in chunks.  Okay, not a bad plan….  if you’re playing Risk against an eight year old.    But unlike basketball or board games there were some important endgame decisions that required deliberation before the game plan was initiated.  Here are a just a few…

• Who exactly is leading this insurgency and who will be running the show in Libya if the rebels succeed in toppling Gadhafi?
• What happens if the no-fly zone results in a stalemate?  How long could the US potentially be engaged in Libya? 
• Is there any situation where the US would send in ground troops?
• What if Gadhafi simply agrees to relinquish control of the rebel strongholds in the east in exchange for US/NATO withdrawal?  That’s all the rebels really seem to want so they would have their endgame goal.  Does that make a divided Libya an acceptable result to the US/NATO?
• Will US military engagement be the practice de rigueur when insurgents in other countries seek dynamic democratic restructure?

It’s easy to say – after the game – that Butler should have reconsidered its offensive strategy when UConn began its run early in the 2^nd half.  And it is likely that adjustments to the game plan were discussed but the Bulldogs could not successfully implement those changes.  The difference here is that Butler fully considered its opponent’s capabilities and aspirations, understood its own unified goal, knew the game would not end in a stalemate, and recognized the need for a fully-integrated plan of action involving all facets of the team  to succeed in attaining its objective.  To date, nothing coming from the Executive Branch has offered that much clarity with respect to our involvement in Lybia and endgame analysis.

Fast Fact:  Gadhafi has been cagey enough to stay in control of his country for 42 years.  He orchestrated (through Britain) Scotland’s release of a known terrorist on alleged humanitarian grounds.  He employs a deadly 40-member, all-female bodyguard team trained in martial arts and firearms.  And Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi thinks Gadhafi is the cat’s pajamas (probably in part because there is a 323 mile pipeline filled with Libyan oil running under the Mediterranean Sea to Sicily).

So why did the Big East rack up 16% of the 2011 bids?   MONEY.  All of the Big East teams selected for the dance came from significant population centers where even casual fans are engaged by CBS’s masterstroke of sports coverage and marketing, the NCAA Tournament.  (Come on, you can hum the theme in your head).   Schools like tiny St. Mary’s – which has been left behind for two years in a row – have neither the local numbers nor the national panache to generate viewership.  And viewership equals advertising revenue which CBS/Turner Sports desperately needs in order to generate ROI in light of the $10.8 Billion it paid last April for the rights to broadcast the tournament for the next 14 years.

How can the NCAA get around the perception that it relies too heavily on the power conferences?  Like any business, they try to have their cake and eat it too.  It is no coincidence that last April, the NCAA Board of Directors considered increasing the field of schools invited to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament to a whopping 96.  Do any of you non-conspiracy theorists think that NCAA’s idea of expansion could, perhaps, be driven by the dollars associated with the CBS deal?   There are only a total of 347 Division 1 NCAA programs teams, so increasing the field to 96 means that 27.6% of the teams in the entire nation would qualify for the tournament.  Fortunately for now, wisdom slightly prevailed over greed and the Board of Directors only pushed for a limited expansion of three additional teams in 2011.  For you history buffs, the last time the men’s field was expanded was in 1985, yielding tourney champ Villanova (an 8^th seed) beating mighty Patrick Ewing and Georgetown.  However, in the decade just prior to the 1985 expansion to 64 teams, the NCAA rode the growth wave like a rented mule. 

 The NCAA Board of Directors (aka CBS/Turner Sports pawns) was not going to get to a 96 team field in one fell-swoop, but I believe that history repeats itself, and the NCAA will continue to add teams to the dance in dribs and drabs over the next few years until it ultimately reaches the target 96 team field in by 2018.  You see, NBC owned the rights to broadcast the NCAA Tournament from 1969 to 1981.  CBS began pursuing a new deal 1980 – also coincidentally when the last period of expansion occurred.

The 96-team target of the CBS/NCAA coalition also aligns perfectly with the new American “everyone is a winner” philosophy where we reward mediocrity and all of the kids go home with a trophy.  Congratulations media-education conglomerate, you are well on your way to crapping up the best three weeks in college sports.  And as for VCU – which some proponents claim would not have been in Houston but for the expansion to 68 teams – it’s not the extra three bids this year that allowed the Rams to be included in the tourney. They should have been there in the main bracket of 64 teams instead of Villanova, Penn State, Michigan State, Tennessee or Georgia. Take a look at the pedigree, potential fan base and boosters of those five programs and compare them to VCU.  John Marinatto, the commissioner of the Big East, said it best in a recent e-mail, “Placing 11 teams into the N.C.A.A. championship doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a concerted, consistent and focused effort on the part of our coaches, [and] administrators…”  What do you think that means?

The revelation destroys Tressel’s defense that he didn’t inform Ohio State officials of the e-mails implicating the players because he didn’t want to endanger the federal investigation. Tressel is the subject of an NCAA investigation into whether he committed violations by not telling his bosses about his players’ issues.”

This is an example of a perfect subject for our category called, The Quick Hook.  We get in, we make our point and we get out.  Just like Czechoslovakia (or Wisconsin).

It’s not that different in Libya for Muammar Gadhafi.  Although he is in a dangerous 4th and Long situation, he is not bringing out his punter to kick the ball back to the Benghazi Runnin’ Rebels.  The result should be about the same as in the Hampton-Duke game, a shellacking.