The madness of the Madness

So it's March now, and that means March Madness. and like many of you I can't wait for the moment when Directional Hyphen Sasquatch Tech knocks off Duke behind 38 points from some unknown phenom with a cool name, like Marcus Aurelius Jones or something. In fact, I so can't wait for it, I've jumped the gun and decided on my national champ pick already.

I pick Kansas.

I pick Kansas not because the Jayhawks are the No. 1 team this particular minute, or because they're 27-3, or because they haven't lost since January 11. I pick them because of this.

Yes, sir. I want to be in front of my TV that Monday night when a program the NCAA has declared to be dirty to the core lifts the NCAA's grandest college basketball prize to the heavens.

It will be the perfect distillation of everything big-top college athletics is, every contradiction and glaring hypocrisy laid bare for all to see. It will be the ultimate triumph of the unholy alliance between apparel companies and the universities whose interests they pay millions to serve, while the universities Sgt. Schultz their way past the unsavory elements of that alliance.

The feds called foul on those elements with their bribery probe a year-and-a-half ago, catching some of college buckets' most celebrated names red-handed in the act of looking the other way. The NCAA has been in backup mode since, desperately trying to police the very sort of undeniable corporate enterprise it has long denied college athletics to be.

Thus the landing-with-both-feet on Kansas, dispensing five Level I violations -- the most serious under NCAA rules -- on the Jayhawks for their partnership with Adidas, the primary target of the federal probe.

The Jayhawks signed a 14-year, $196 million extension with Adidas in April, maintaining its position as Adidas flagship program. Of course, we are expected to believe that $196 mill is solely for shoes and shirts, not for Adidas recruiting kids into its various AAU programs and then steering them to KU. Nuh-uh, no way, Kansas coach Bill Self and his program don't nothin' 'bout that.

That's the crux of Kansas' response to the NCAA allegations, a masterpiece of I-see-nothing  obliviousness. That anyone could possibly believe this is proof positive unicorns may indeed exist. Because if you think Self and Co. really had no clue Adidas was doing what the feds caught it doing, then you must also think that somewhere leprechauns are riding bucking unicorns in some great fairy-dust rodeo.

Of course, the NCAA itself created the culture for which it is now finding Kansas culpable. It has spent decades proclaiming that its athletic programs are nothing more than an extension of the academic mission of their universities, even as those universities turned their "student-athletes" into unpaid billboards for their various corporate deals. The federal probe stripped that illusion down to the axles, and now it's a rusted hulk sitting bare-boned on cement blocks in America's front yard.

And the night Kansas cuts down the nets?

The rusted hulk will be on full display. And like most rusted hulks, it won't be a pretty sight.