Dirty Little Secrets of the NCAA

There's a great video that's been in rotation on MTV for quite some time by The All-American Rejects called "Dirty Little Secret." The gimmick in the video involves people holding up note cards that reveal those nasty, embarrassing, surreptitious facts about ourselves — most of them scatological.

Like, for example, "I like the smell of my own poop." Now, I'll never admit to liking the smell of my own poop — we all know it depends on what you've eaten; for example, taco night vs. lemon chicken night — but if I were to reveal such a thing, it would certainly qualify as a dirty little secret. And also a bit stinky.

I won't admit to that, but I hope that we can all begin to face those hidden truths about the NCAA postseason, such as:

"George Mason Still Doesn't Belong in the Tournament"

Jim Nantz and Billy Packer have publicly offered their mea culpas to the George Mason University Patriots, after they decried their joining the tournament on Selection Sunday and now that the team has made the Final Four.

Wussies, the both of them.

Stick to your guns, boys. Based on the criteria of the selection committee and the teams they were vying against for a seed, the Patriots should be celebrating an NIT victory this weekend.

Hofstra deserved the selection. It won 12 of its last 14 games and made the Colonial Athletic Association finals. It defeated George Mason twice in 10 days, and defeated the Patriots when they were ranked in the Top 25. Hofstra's RPI was 30th; Mason's was 26th — not exactly a Grand Canyon-esque gap.

I believe George Mason was selected for two reasons: games against ranked opponents — negated, in my mind, by the head-to-head losses to Hofstra — and coach Jim Larranaga. I think the selection committee cut a good guy a break, and by "good guy" I mean a guy who has put in his time (20 years) and has done it with two mid-major programs (Bowling Green and George Mason). He's not a glory-hound prick like John Calipari — he's the guy you root for, and the guy you want to hand out a favor to.

Now, at this point in the column, I'm pretty sure some of you are screaming that Mason has proven the Nantzes and Packers and Wyshynskis wrong because the Patriots are in the Final Four. That's just an asinine response. That's like saying Iowa, a No. 3 seed in the tournament, should have been in the NIT because they had the misfortune of losing in the first round. There's no correlation between selection and post-selection performance — based on the criteria, GMU still doesn't deserve to be here.

That said, I'm pulling for them, even if they've turned my bracket into Humpty Dumpty. George Mason is the most inspiring, entertaining and entrancing sports story of the year, and perhaps since the Red Sox World Series victory. I've worked with Mason faculty and athletes professionally, I've covered their campus, and I'm in their community. You can't help but fall for this scrappy school and its cardiac-kids team. And I'm saying that as a disgruntled Maryland alum.

Of course, I'm also a big fan of actor Ed Harris, and would love to see him get some work in "The Jim Larranaga Story" in a few years.

"'Big Baby' is a Truly Awful Nickname"

Seriously, if he's stuck with "Big Baby" or "Baby Shaq," Glen Davis needs to flip the script on this nickname pronto. Even if he graduates to "Big Boy," he's competing with Big Boi from OutKast. I shudder to think how the NBA will market Big Baby — officially licensed bibs and pacifiers, maybe? This may be the most unfortunate nickname in sports history. At least "The Big Unit" probably got some dates out of it.

"Don't Feel Guilty For Ignoring the Women's Tournament"

There's a word for most of the coverage the women's tournament has garnered here in the Mason-obsessed D.C. area: "charity." Nearly every report on the Final Four Maryland Lady Terps has included the phrase "and there's another local team headed to the Final Four, too," and then a shot of them getting on a bus. They must have boarded the same bus 2,000 times for different local media.

Look, nobody cares about the women's tournament, and I'm saying that as a writer who has supported and shown the spotlight on Title IX issues for the last six years. I'm an advocate of women's sports, but I'm more of an advocate of giving people who follow the news what they want.

There is no reason for the Maryland women to be mentioned in the same breath as George Mason University when it comes to tournament coverage. It's like trying to give equal time to the AAA minor league team if it was playing in a championship series the same time as the big league club was in the World Series. When it comes to basketball, the women's game is the Staten Island Yankees, and the NCAA men's tournament is the Bronx Bombers.

So why are the women given such attention? Guilt. The media feels it needs to lend a hand to the women's game because it covers the men's game with such fervor. It doesn't want to face the slings and arrows from women's sports boosters claming sexism when in reality it's about demand — check the ratings, attendance figures and overall imprint of women's college basketball, and you'll find that the X-Games probably warrant more attention.

Again, don't misunderstand: this isn't a slap in the face of the women's game as a sport, or female basketball players as athletes, or the validity of women's athletics as a whole. I'm just saying that ESPN probably isn't putting Kara Lawson on the screen to break down the women's Final Four if it didn't own the broadcast rights to NCAA women's games. It has a funny way of protecting investments, you know? What a coincidence that the head of its parent company will be investigating the steroid history of its newest reality star on behalf of Major League Baseball...

"Life Can Still Be a Bitch For a McDonald's All-American"

Scottie Reynolds is a local high-school basketball player here in Northern Virginia. He's also a blue-chip recruit, signing with the University of Oklahoma.

Or at least he was headed there. When Kelvin Sampson decided to bolt for Indiana University this week, Reynolds found himself in a quandary: sooner, or later?

You can't help but feel for the kid. He was recruited by a plethora of high-profile Div. I programs, and decided to go with a coach he respected. Now, that coach is gone, and Reynolds will have to attend Oklahoma or ask the school to release him. It may choose to do so with conditions attached ... like, for example, "don't play for Kelvin [Sampson]." An entire high-school career of basketball, building a resume that could earn him a spot in the NBA one day, and now his future is in flux.

But it brings us back to what isn't a dirty little secret about college basketball: it's all business, baby...

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" will be published in spring 2006. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].