Private Schools a Rarity in the Big Dance

WASHINGTON — It's Big Government trampling private enterprise. It's the use of tax dollars to help government institutions conquer market-based institutions. And it's the frequent triumph of state over church, though the Catholics have proven to be a scrappy lot.

It's March Madness and it's long been dominated by teams at universities backed by government dollars. Your tax dollars at work.

Want a true underdog in the NCAA basketball tournament? Forget about triple-directional schools (Southwest Northern Utah AT&T). Pick a private school. There are four of them (Villanova, Davidson, Stanford and Xavier) among the final 16 teams competing Thursday through Sunday for coveted spots in the Final Four. Xavier plays West Virginia Thursday night. The other three privates open regional play Friday night.

History tells us the private schools will be crushed under the weight of tax-supported state universities. Dating back to 1990, only 12 of the 72 Final Four teams have been private schools. Take away Duke (and lots of people would like to take away Duke) and the number shrinks to five (Syracuse twice, Stanford, Georgetown and Marquette). In seven of those years, there were no private schools among the Final Four.

Duke (thrice) and Syracuse (once) are the only private schools to win the title since 1990. Only 10 private schools have won the tournament since it began in 1939, with Duke and the University of San Francisco (led by Bill Russell) as multiple winners.

And it is here where we turn to the Vatican and note its love of hoops. Of the 10 private schools that have won the basketball tournament, seven have been Catholic schools: Holy Cross 1947, LaSalle 1954, USF 1955 and 1956, Loyola (Chicago) 1963, Marquette 1977, Georgetown 1984 and Villanova 1985.

That leaves Syracuse, Duke and Stanford as the only non-Catholic private schools to win the Big Dance. Let's look for clues to their success.

The Syracuse Web site cheerfully notes this 1881 message from outgoing Chancellor Erastus O. Haven to his successor Charles N. Sims: "You cannot save the university. It must go." This may help explain why Haven was outgoing.

The school, indeed, did survive. But the Syracuse Web site includes an indication that it took awhile for athletics to catch on:

"1886. Students burn the ramshackle gymnasium behind the Hall of Languages."

And the Orangemen were not orange until 1890 when, the Web site tells us, "Orange becomes the university's official color after a search of Baird's College Manual reveals that no other American university has adopted orange alone as a school color. SU's original colors, rose pink and pea green, were not particularly popular."

Stanford's beginnings, according to its Web site, are inextricably linked with typhoid fever.

From the university Web site: "Jane and Leland Stanford established the university in memory of their only child, Leland Jr., who died of typhoid fever at 15. Within weeks of his 1884 death, the Stanfords determined that, because they no longer could do anything for their own child, they would use their wealth to do something for 'other people's' children. They settled on creating a great university, one that, from the outset, was untraditional: coeducational in a time when most private universities were all-male; nondenominational when most were associated with a religious organization; and avowedly practical, producing 'cultured and useful citizens' when most were concerned only with the former."

And what's more useful than very tall twins, like those anchoring this year's team.

Duke's growth was founded by tobacco money. Go figure.

The clear meaning of all of this is not very clear. But it is at least as relevant and interesting as some of the other stats you're hearing as March Madness is oversliced and overdiced.