Chicago Herald-American

My Sun-Times colleague Jim O'Donnell wrote an inventive feature in Wednesday's paper on the plight of the mid-major and lack of Cinderella's in this year's NCAA tournament. (When the tournament's "Cinderella" team is Arizona, that's a problem.).

Jim's proposal is for a "Cinderella Regional" comprised exclusively of mid-majors. That would assure us of a Cinderella team in every Final Four. He even enlisted response from various experts in the field and not surprisingly, it was tepid at best. Said ESPN analyst Dick Vitale: "It would create a lot of drama and excitement, but realistically, it's just not going to happen."

Most revealing in the anlalysis was the biggest reason why it's not going to happen: TV won't stand for it. For all the mileage CBS gets out of a George Mason or Davidson going deep in the tournament, it's ultimately a ratings killer, according to former CBS president Neal Pilson.

''What happens with Cinderella teams as they move through a tournament, they inevitably replace teams from larger markets like Texas or California or Florida,'' Pilson said. ''While they are a nice media story, they don't really attract a dedicated cadre of viewers.''

As I explained to Jim, no matter how many mid-majors get into the tournament, creating a "Cinderella" team will be problematic because of the disparity of talent in the college game created by the NBA's ban on high school players entering the draft. Since the best prep players stopped going straight to the NBA (2006), 100 percent of the Final Four teams (8 of 8) have been No. 1 or No. 2 seeds. In the seven years prior to that, 50 percent of the Final Four teams (14 of 28) were No. 1 or No. 2 seeds. And so far, with all the No. 1s and No. 2s going strong, it looks like more of the same this year.