OK, I have to admit that I am a sports fan. I can't help it - I was raised by a father who was an athlete and coach for most of his adult life. I played sports since as long as I can remember. I don't play much anymore, but I still have an interest, and quietly follow sports, although most of my friends have no idea that I do it follow it so closely.

I do enjoy college basketball, but I don't really get interested unless one of the local teams like the SIU Salukis or Murray State Racers do well. Murray did very well this year. But nevertheless, the NCAA tourney, the "big dance" gets me paying attention.

College basketball is a lot different now than it was when I was young. My early memories of the NCAA were of a few teams dominating - like UCLA for example. There were only a handful of teams that could hope to get toward the finals of the NCAA, and only one or two that had a chance to win.

But now it's a lot different. I guess I've heard it called "parity," which is a good word. I think it's that more and more poor kids saw basketball on TV and realized that with a lot of practice they might be able to get a ticket out of their lower income neighborhoods. And playing basketball is fun, mostly - so you had the chance to work hard at something fun, get good, and get out. And not to mention get a lot of aclaim, fame, and the possibility of money in a pro career. So a lot of kids got really good at basketball, and there were plenty of schools out there that wanted to improve their basketball programs.

Whatever the reason, over the last decade or so, across the board in men's college basketball, smaller, previously little known schools, such as Gonzaga, have become basketball powerhouses that regularly take down the best of the large school teams and end up being ranked in the national polls. And then there's the upsets in the big dance.

This year has seen it increasing even more. And while my heart was with the Murray State Racers, and they should have beaten Butler but by no means embarassed themselves, I do think that Northern Iowa's victory over Kansas points out something that I have thought over the last decade, and that is the lack of recognition of the level of play in the Missouri Valley conference.

I follow the Missouri Valley because SIU is one of the members. In the last decade SIU has been one of the contenders if not the champion. Not this year. They ended up in the bottom. And, as often happens in the Missouri Valley, teams played themselves evenly throughout the year. The only team which sort of stood out was Northern Iowa, who won both the conference and the conference tournament. But the Missouri Valley, because of how the teams beat up on each other, more because of the high level of play across the conference, and most of the teams ended up with a number of conference losses, only placed one team in the conference.

That was a bit of injustice in my opinion. And the fact that Northern Iowa defeated, without controvery, the number one team that even the president had picked to win the tournment, points to the injustice of the snub of that conference.

The Missouri Valley places hard nosed, physical defense. That is the kind of play that wins games against teams that aren't used to that kind of play. The NCAA tournament committee should have realized that and had at least the top two teams in the Missouri Valley conference. Their omission looks very bad at this point in time.

OK, sorry for getting off the subject here, but I just wanted to make my opinions known on this subject. At this point the tourney is hard to call. Kentucky fans are on fire, but their team is very young. They have their hands full with Cornell, who is seasoned and hot. But wouldn't it be fun to see Northern Iowa in the final four? It could happen.