Duke saved us from a boring Final Four

Duke's players and fans weren't the only ones celebrating the Blue Devils' win against Baylor Sunday night.

You can bet CBS executives were doing the same thing.

When the day started, the TV folks faced the rattling actual existence of trying to sell a Final Four imperturbable entirely of Cinderella’s.

That's not as attractive as it sounds. If everybody’s a Cinderella, than nobody is. The story doesn’t work without an evil stepsister. Nobody watches it.

That’s why CBS had to be hoping Baylor didn't beat Duke, the aggroup nearly every college fan loves to root against.

A Bears win would hit made for a incredible Sweet 16 and Elite Eight weekend, one of the best ever. It would hit given us three 5-seeds — Butler, Baylor and New market State — along with West Virginia, a aggroup that last went to the Final Four in 1959, when Jerry West was their leading player.

Unfortunately, that's a group with enthusiastic stories and no drama. The public usually wants superstars and celebrity. When the biggest name is New market State, that doesn't cut it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the basketball. True fans would be delighted to wager Baylor instead of Duke playing for the championship, but true fans don’t drive the ratings, casual fans do.

Duke is the best possible aggroup to hit in a Final Four. Like the Yankees, nobody’s neutral about the Blue Devils. You either hate them or fuck them.

Haters think the Devils' fans are arrogant snots, that the coach is a pinch-faced biddy and that few of the players are NBA-bound.

The other lateral thinks the fans are fabulous, that the coach is a combination of Knute Rockne and Mother Teresa and that the players are the embodiment of self-sacrifice and teamwork.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you hit to check them.

The statistics backwards that up. When George Mason went to the Final Four in 2006, nobody watched. The Patriots lost, and the title mettlesome between Florida and UCLA was watched by sextet Meg fewer viewers than the preceding assemblage and was the lowest-rated championship since 1975.

On the other hand, in 1992, Duke-Michigan drew 34 Meg viewers, the most ever for a championship game.

And the NCAA needs viewers. From 1975 to 1999, the championship mettlesome drew between 25-34 Meg every year. Then, in 2000, New market State-Florida drew 20.6 million, a bounteous drop. The finals haven’t busted 24 Meg since. They’ve had a hard time, in fact, breaking 20 million.

It would be the same this assemblage without Duke.

That’s not to say there aren’t enthusiastic stories in the Final Four. There are. The Mountaineers are a second seed, but they haven’t been to the test weekend of the season for 51 years.

Michigan State thrives in March. The Spartans hit been to sextet Final Fours under Tom Izzo and were in the highest-rated mettlesome ever, the 1979 Magic Johnson-Larry Bird final. But the team’s history of excellence doesn’t equal viewers when Magic isn’t on the team.

Then there’s Butler, the classic Cinderella, the kind of edifice that sends casual fans streaming to Google to encounter discover which land it inhabits. They encounter discover that Butler is not only an Indiana school, but its field house was the setting for the land tournament in “Hoosiers,” maybe the best basketball movie ever made.

That’s all caretaker for the storytellers and makes decent office fodder. But there can’t be more than a container of people who hit Butler in their Final Four, and people are more likely to check a mettlesome in which they hit a betting interest than one in which they don’t.

That’s another think people will check Duke. For a lot of fans and non-fans alike, Duke is their last chance of rescuing something from the ruins of their devastated brackets. If it effectuation a shot at winning the office pool, you watch.

So, though Baylor would hit been fun, we’re still left with a pretty good Final Four. We’ve got a true character in Butler, an upstart Big East aggroup in West Virginia, a faithful sidekick kind of aggroup in New market State and the big, bad Dukies.

If you are a Duke hater, you’re not happy. If you’re CBS, you're ecstatic.

Syracuse rises to No. 1 in coaches' poll

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Syracuse kept winning last week while Kansas, Kentucky and Purdue lost. The results were enough to boost the Orange to the No. 1 spot in the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll released Monday.

Former No. 1 Kansas fell to No. 2, followed by No. 3 Kentucky, No. 4 Duke and No. 5 Kansas State.

The Orange (27-2) beat Providence and then-No. 8 Villanova last week, with the latter win coming in front of an NCAA on-campus record crowd of 34,616 at the Carrier Dome. Meanwhile, Kansas and former No. 2 Kentucky dropped decisions on the road at Oklahoma State and Tennessee, respectively.

Syracuse earned 23 available first-place votes from the panel of 31 Division I coaches. Kansas got 7 first-place votes and Duke received 1.

Kansas State climbed one spot to No. 5, while Purdue fell three places to No. 6 after a tough week, in which the Boilermakers lost forward Robbie Hummel for the season to a knee injury and fell to Michigan State at home.

Ohio State, West Virginia, Villanova and New Mexico round out the top 10. The Lobos climbed into the top 10 with a win over Mountain West Conference rival BYU, which fell four spots to No. 15.

Butler dropped one spot to No. 11, while No. 12 Michigan State and No. 13 Tennessee rose up the poll with their wins. They're followed by Gonzaga, BYU, Temple, Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt and Georgetown.

UTEP, Baylor, Maryland, Texas A&M and Texas round out the top 25.

Tennessee's win over Kentucky vaulted the Volunteers four places to No. 13, while Georgetown fell seven spots to No. 20 after a home loss to Notre Dame. The Hoyas play Monday night on ESPN at No. 8 West Virginia (7 p.m. ET), followed by No. 25 Texas hosting Oklahoma (9 p.m. ET).

No. 22 Baylor and No. 23 Maryland entered the poll Monday, while former No. 22 Northern Iowa and former No. 24 Richmond dropped out.

Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=4956590