For the 3rd time in the past 8 years, the NCAA basketball tournament, a/k/a The Final Four or "March Madness," comes to Tampa this coming week at the St. Pete Times Forum for south and southeast regional games Thursday and Saturday.  It also comes as the NCAA has (slightly) expanded its field of teams competing in the three week long tourney, though mercifully limiting the expansion to  three new schools,making a record 68 teams competing.

Any expansion is a mistake, but it could have been worse.  But though you'll be reading laudatory stories in the press about what a great event the race to the Final Four is, it frankly isn't as special at is used to be (last year's thrilling Duke-Butler championship game notwithstanding).

The proliferation of the best high school players going straight to the professional ranks was becoming such a problem that five years ago NBA Commissioner David Stern instituted a new "one and done" rule requiring draftees must be at least 19 years old and one year out of high school.

So now we see great players come in for a year, maybe two at a prestigious college program, catapulting their team perhaps deeply into the tournament, before leaving for the riches of the NBA.

Some critics say that the  NBA has suffered in recent years because the players failed to get the adequate coaching to compete as a pro, or that they've diluted the game because of their lack sometimes of the fundamentals.  Still, the natural players rise to the top,  such as Derrick Rose, still only 22 years old, but a phenom now with the Chicago Bulls in his 3rd year now after being a "on-and done"with Memphis but now a possible MVP candidate.  There are exceptions of course, of players competing longer in college ,such as the presumptive favorite for National Player of Year, BYU's Jimmer Fredette.

But the fact of the matter is, you may root for a team because you just like them, but they're hardly a "team" these days, since the best players don't generally play together for more than year or two.  It's coaches, who have always been high paying visibly active representatives of a college program, who are the stars more than ever.

These thoughts are nothing new, but only became magnified over the weekend when HBO presented a special on the great University of Nevada-Las Vegas teams of two decades ago in the special The Runnin' Rebels of UNLV.  Although the program is heavy on the somewhat selective harassment that that basketball program had with the NCAA in terms of rule violations, the heart of it is in the back to back Final Four games between UNLV and Duke in 1990 and 1991.

This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.