Catholic hoops in a BCS college sports world

I saw this article online and it had resonace for me being a sports fan and a Catholic. While I went to a state school too (University of Wisconsin Class of 1994), the love of the underdog in me wants to see these schools, even Marquette compete well as the try to beat the Powers that Be in college basketball. Heck, one could say the Big East, with Georgetown, St. John's, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall, Villanova, Providence and Notre Dame, has become a virtual Catholic League (sad to see Boston College go to the ACC). I've long advocated that Catholica Colleges form their own conference. You could have those schools plus Xavier, Dayton and St. Louis too. It would be great to see Catholic clannishness once again. Go Catholics!

--- Sean Scallon

Catholic hoops cropper
Frank Deford, SI.com


Today is Ash Wednesday, and if recent history is any guide, once again Roman Catholic colleges will be giving up the NCAA basketball championship for Lent.


It's been 21 years since a Catholic school last won the title, and since then only three Catholic colleges have even made the Final Four. But before then, Catholic schools enjoyed great success beyond their relatively small numbers and resources. Holy Cross, La Salle, San Francisco, Loyola of Chicago, Marquette, Georgetown and Villanova all won championships, and during the heyday of the National Invitational Tournament, when it was a valid rival to the NCAA, 11 times did Catholic schools take NIT titles.


However, this recent hoop drought continues a trend in the diminution of Catholic sports dominion. Only Notre Dame and Boston College even field Division I-A football teams anymore, while in the mid-20th century, Catholic schools regularly competed at the top gridiron level. Would you have any idea, for example, that the following schools once played in major bowls: Duquesne, Georgetown, Holy Cross, Catholic University, Santa Clara, Fordham, St. Mary's and Marquette?


Athletics, you see, were very important to the recognition and pride of Catholic colleges. Most of them had grown up to help educate the emerging immigrant population. Their endowments were small, resources limited and academics modest. No Catholic college was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa until 1938. Especially because so much of the Catholic population was urban, the colleges were invariably downtown -- crowded and spare. When Bill Russell's University of San Francisco teams won two NCAA titles in the 1950s, the Dons didn't even have their own gymnasium. Football became prohibitively expensive for most Catholic colleges.


Because basketball is one of our nation's cheapest games, Catholic colleges could, however, continue to be competitive on the hardwood. Ah, but then the NCAA expanded its field, big television money came in, and large state institutions that had never cared much for basketball wanted a bite out of the apple. The Deep South and Southwest had been strictly football territory. But chomp, chomp ...


Today, all over the country, the members of the football Bowl Championship Series, the BCS behemoths, dominate basketball too. The small schools -- religious and secular -- have taken to calling the NCAAs "the BCS Invitational."


Even the richest Catholic colleges have trouble competing for the best players when the big-time public schools can offer state-of-the-art practice facilities, special team dorms, even chartered game flights. Frankly, it's taken a lot of the fun out of college basketball when the little guys have such a hard time making a fair fight out of it.


This year, though, two Catholic schools are genuine contenders. Gonzaga of Spokane, Wash., is the best team in all the west, with perhaps the national Player of the Year: Adam Morrison. And Villanova, from the Main Line of Philadelphia, plays a four-guard offense that buffaloes most everybody. Also, Villanova is heavy on history. The Wildcats were in the very first Final Four, in 1939, and they were that very last Catholic school to win, in '85. Perhaps at the end of the NCAAs this year, some white smoke will rise above the domed stadium in Indianapolis.