GREENSBORO, North Carolina. NCAA officials today smoothed Duke University's road to the Final Four by awarding the Blue Devils the overall no. 1 seed shortly before tipoff in its ACC tournament final against Boston College. Duke was also given first, second and third round byes in an effort to ensure that they reach the finals of "March Madness".
Myles Brand, NCAA President, said the decision was made to maximize television ratings of the national championship game, which have lagged in recently years with the Monday night success of The WB's "7th Heaven" and TNT's "Wanted". "There's just something about Duke in the Final Four," Brand explained. "If they're not in it, I probably wouldn't watch myself."
Other schools have complained about favoritism towards Duke in the past. "Shane [Battier] got all the calls," said Gilbert Arenas, who played for Arizona in the 2001 championship game against Duke. "One of the refs asked for his autograph, and another asked me to take his picture" with the Duke star.
Duke haters have created web sites such as TruthaboutDuke.com, and conspiracy theorists blame the school, founded on tobacco wealth, for the spread of lung cancer and the clubbing of baby seals.
Under the package offered by the NCAA, each Duke player will receive a Rolex watch if the team wins its Elite Eight matchup, and a Cadillac Escalade if they advance to the finals. Various other prizes, including the Nobel Prize in medicine and the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding musical composition, would be divvied up among the players if they are crowned national champions.
Head coach Mike Krzyzewski was offered $40 million to switch to the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 but decided to stick with the school where he has won three national titles. "I was told that Kobe Bryant swears in the huddle," he said at the time. "As a coach of impressionable young men, that's my job."
Krzyzewski, known for his sideline temper, is affectionately referred to as "Coach K" on Duke's web site because the school's sports information department is afraid of misspelling his last name.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
