The NCAA basketball tournament is about dreams. And it is about lies.

Madness is, of course, both a dream and a lie, figurative and alliterative, enhanced now with still another "M" sound into Mega March Madness, so that beyond this will be Mega Mammoth March Madness, I suppose, until it ends somewhere, as it usually does, in April, which should be known as April At Last, to give April its own noise.

Strangely, this extended bit of college basketball silliness produces more racket than it deserves since up until now, only relatives and bookmakers have paid the least attention to the sport.

Suddenly, arguments rage over Winthrop's chances or Drexel's snub, when the arguers couldn't tell Winthrop from Drexel if they came by to fix your computer, which is, after all, what they do for a living.

There is undue admiration given to a - to take last year's feel-good-about-strangers-story - George Mason, a Final Four midmajor that glowed in headlines and video clips before returning to wherever it came from.

So when, inevitably, one of the similar creatures must step up to the riser with Florida or Kansas or UCLA this week, the whole jangling carnival will be deemed worthwhile.

My pick to be George Mason is George Washington but not Georgetown, alas, which is the way to bet.

The dreams override the lies and feed the notion that every team has the same chance when all every team has is the same shower soap.

College football does not have anything similar, not in this concentrated design, arranged for convenient wagering and time slotted for suitable programming.

If a Davidson were to beat a Maryland, as might happen in the first round, in the first month of the college football season, it would get noticed, then figured into the BCS calculations and forgotten by next week.

That is as it should be. Upsets should not become legendary just because they are piled into the same corner of the calendar.

Basketball exaggerates the achievements of the lightly regarded into remarkable deeds merely because they have fouled up somebody's betting bracket.

The only place the once-15th-seeded Santa Clara is still celebrated for having beaten No. 2 Arizona is at team reunions in Santa Clara.

It's revered not as that championship season but as that one night when outsiders were watching.

Quick, the list of great verifiers, the upsets that validate the fraud. No. 15 Hampton over No. 2 Iowa State. No. 15 Coppin State over No. 2 South Carolina. No. 15 Richmond over No. 2 Syracuse.

Not that any of these upsetters did anything beyond their big moments except to be rounded up as they are here to make a point, even if it is usually the other way around.

Forever is the name engraved on the championship trophy at the end of this thing, and even that does not come with an index.

Please, somebody recite the roster of the Bradley Braves, the 13th seed that beat No. 4 Kansas in the first round just last year.

And just how long a shadow did No. 14 Northwestern State cast over college basketball for beating No. 3 Iowa at this point last year? Not even to the town limits of Natchitoches, La.

The haves like to encourage the have-nots and always say nice things about them later. It is a conspiracy of arrogance.

To lose to a Valparaiso if you are a Mississippi is to praise opportunity out loud and look for a new basketball coach in secret.

There must be better reasons to pay attention to first-round games than the fantasies of wannabes, and how overripe is the annoyance of teams like Niagara and Florida A&M, peeved because they had to play each other on a Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, instead of being allowed to lose directly to Kansas on Friday.

Consider Gonzaga, once the mysterious stranger from parts unknown slapping around its betters until Gonzaga became one of them.

This led to Gonzaga, once proud to have lost to Arizona by one, weeping for losing to UCLA by two and having to explain itself.

And now here Gonzaga is again, reaching up instead of holding off, a more natural position.

The teams that are supposed to be there at the end are more often than not exactly where they were supposed to be. And teams that are supposed to lose, do just that, usually sooner than later.

Dreams and lies. You can't tell them apart. Thank goodness and March Madness.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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