DALY: Mid-majors’ deep tournament runs becoming the rule

Is it just me, or has the sight of a mid-major going deep into the NCAA tournament begun to lose some of its novelty, some of its romance? Thanks a lot, Butler. You too, VCU. You’ve taken one of the best things about the tourney - an improbable run by a Certified Underdog - and made it seem almost routine.

It’s not supposed to work that way. Mid-majors are supposed to bow submissively when they receive their bids, express gratitude to the committee for not throwing them on the NIT scrap pile and then lose in the first or second round to one of the Big Boys (who are invariably seeded higher because of their membership in one of the cool clubs like the ACC or Big Ten).

For more than two decades, the formula was rarely tampered with. Oh, a mid-major would sneak into the Elite Eight every now and then, just to give the NCAAs that 1954-Indiana-high-school-basketball-tournament-feel; one year, UMass actually reached the Final Four. (Its accomplishment was later vacated because a star player ran afoul of NCAA rules.) But generally speaking, the tourney was about the rich getting richer - and the poor getting pummeled.

Not any more. Look at what happened to the Big East the past two weeks. The conference received an unheard-of 11 bids and was widely considered the Most Beastly Collection of Ballers in recent memory, if not in all of hoops history. Then the whistle blew and …

Villanova lost to George Mason.

Louisville lost to Morehead State.

St. John’s lost to Gonzaga.

Georgetown lost to VCU.

Pittsburgh lost to Butler.

That’s four losses in the first round and one in the second (Pitt) to mid-majors. Indeed, only two Big East teams got as far as the Sweet 16. The city of Richmond, I’ll just remind you, also had two teams in the Sweet 16.

If this were merely an aberration, it would be easy to shrug off. After all, Indiana State and Penn made the Four Four in 1979, and it didn’t lead to any seismic shift in the sport. But this isn’t an aberration. Butler was in the Final Four last year, too, and George Mason got there in 2006. Then there’s Davidson, the littlest engine that could, which lost by a basket to Kansas in the ’08 Elite Eight. And let’s not forget Xavier, which came up three points shy against Duke in the ’04 Elite Eight.

We’re at the point where a mid-major is expected to make a serious run at the title - and if one doesn’t, we feel shortchanged. (That was certainly the case two years ago, when Xavier and Gonzaga, the last survivors, were knocked out in the regional semis.)

The situation has reached such crisis proportions - for the major conferences, at least - that we’re beginning to hear such mutterings as: “There’s no such thing as a mid-major anymore.” This, of course, is pure silliness. In terms of revenue and TV exposure, college basketball is clearly divided into an upper class and an underclass. In fact, a mid-major is probably best defined as: one of the schools the big conferences didn’t want a few years ago when they were gobbling up programs the way Joey Chestnut inhales hot dogs.

Granted, not all mid-majors are Shawnta Rogers-sized. VCU, for instance, has as many undergrads as any university in Virginia, and Mason isn’t far behind. But Butler (4,000), Davidson (1,750) and Gonzaga (4,700) could pass for D-III schools - as could St. Joseph’s (5,000), which missed the Final Four in 2004 by a bucket. It all plays into the fairy tale, into the sheer incongruity of, say, a program from the Horizon League reaching the national championship game.

More and more, though, the Impossible Dream looks like the Inevitable Dream, even the Imminent Dream. Butler, remember, nearly won it all last year, and either the Bulldogs or VCU will advance to the final this year. You get the sense that, someday soon, a mid-major will rise up and finally slay the dragon.

Maybe that day will be Monday in Houston. If it isn’t that Monday, though, it’ll definitely be another Monday. What George Mason started, someone will finish. These mid-majors are just too good.