Are the NCAAs the Top Sports Event on TV?

YES
Looking for tingling TV drama? How about 65 characters with
storylines that change by the minute. If Alfred Hitchcock were
alive, his set would have been tuned to the tournament for the
past month. "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out,"
Hitchcock said, which is a perfect description of the NCAA
tournament, especially the first two rounds, in which 48 dramas
play out over 96 hours. The NBA Finals? Each game has three
quarters of usually irrelevant action as well as Ahmad Rashad.
The Super Bowl? Like Kevin Costner movies, it usually
disappoints. With the NCAAs viewers get the good stuff. We'll
leave the dull bits to the pros. --Richard Deitsch

NO
Not only is the NCAA Tournament not the best sporting event on
TV, it's not even television's best basketball tournament. That
would be the NBA playoffs. The NCAAs had a nice run. Watching
players like Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing and Hakeem
Olajuwon chase the NCAA title in the early 1980s was high drama,
but those days are gone. The best young players now come from
high school (Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady) or
Europe (Dirk Nowitzki, Peja Stojakovic, Tony Parker), not
college. Give me a Magic-Nets series with T-Mac windmills and J.
Kidd conducting the break like Mahler's Eighth. The NCAAs?
Please, they're so '80s. --John O'Keefe

COLOR PHOTO: AL TIELEMANS Maryland's Steve Blake

TWO COLOR PHOTOS: EBAY (2)

Going Once Going Twice
The online auction items of the week

Winning Bid: $306

DESCRIPTION: This press badge from the 1962 Masters Tournament
belonged to Golf magazine staff member Robert J. Abramson and
allowed him access to the King at the height of his reign. That
April, Arnold Palmer won his third green jacket.

Winning Bid: $8.50

DESCRIPTION: Feeding a baby can often feel like playing football
in the mud, so it seems only logical to have your child suit up
in an NFL bib like this Dolphins model.