MR. KOJO NNAMDIMarch Madness is often referred to as one of the quintessentially American sporting events, a college basketball tournament that doubles as a yearly vehicle for the athletic equivalent of the Horatio Alger myth, a contest where scrappy underdog teams can claw their way to glory by force of willpower and brains. The final week of this year's NCAA tournament will feature two such stories, Virginia Commonwealth and Butler Universities, two smaller schools who have already outplayed and outfoxed national powerhouses to get to the Final Four.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut March Madness is about a whole lot more than cuddly tales of little engines that could. It's about money and the billions upon billions of dollars that are made in the name of what's advertised as an amateur showcase, which begs the question how American is that? Joining us in studio to discuss it is Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation and author of the book, "Bad Sports: How owners are ruining the games we love." Hey Dave, how's it going?

MR. DAVE ZIRINGreat to be here, Kojo. Thank you.

NNAMDIIf you picked Butler and Virginia Commonwealth to get to the Final Four in your office pools, you probably stand to win a whole lot of money right now. These are two teams who didn't look like they stood much of a chance to go far, particularly VCU, who actually had to play an extra game just to get into the tournament. But there's a lot more money riding on the Final Four than the money people wager in office pools, isn't there?

ZIRINOh, absolutely. First of all, you're talking about a multibillion dollar television contract, and second of all, you're talking about the free advertising that a small university like a Butler or a Virginia Commonwealth gets. Jim Larranaga, the coach at George Mason who took his own team on a Horatio Alger-esque trip to the Final Four in 2006, he estimated that it was worth $600 million in free advertising to George Mason University.

ZIRINThe problem, of course, is that the people who are actually tuning in to watch don't see a thin dime. You said this is a very American. How American is this? It's very American, if you're talking about the America before 1865. And one other point I'd want to make is it's remarkable how much labor power these players actually have. If the best two players on each Final Four team said, we're not gonna go on the court unless we see a tiny piece of the action, I think you would see a mighty fast trip to the negotiating table.

NNAMDITell our listeners why the reference before 1865.

ZIRINWell, because, I think, slavery, basically, a neo-plantation set up. I mean, the most basic definition of slavery is this idea that you produce and you don't get paid. And that is the ultimate description of big-time college sports these days. And for people who disagree with that and say they get a free education, I would just quote a friend of mine, Laron Profit, who used to play for the University of Maryland...

NNAMDISure did.

ZIRIN...who once said to me, we're not student athletes, we're athlete students. Because as soon as we walk onto the campus, we're told expressly what we're there to do and that's be athletes first, students second.

NNAMDIThere's been a fair amount of talk this year about how poor the graduation rates are on some of the most talented teams. Education secretary, Arne Duncan, who played college basketball at Harvard, went as far as saying the teams who are not on track to graduate half their players should be declared ineligible from competing in post-season play. How do you feel about that argument?

ZIRINWell, I disagree with Arne Duncan. I've said that I disagree with Arne Duncan, and I disagree with him because all that really does at the end of the day is punish the players and punish their opportunity to actually play in the tournament. If Arne Duncan really wanted to affect change as secretary of education, there's some very basic things that he could do even short of a system that actually gives the players some form of compensation for their labors.

ZIRINHe could institute a rule, or he could argue for a rule that says that scholarships are renewed on an annual basis, but if you get an athletic scholarship, it actually lasts for four years. A lot of fans don't know that those scholarships are actually renewed on an annual basis, which puts another layer of pressure on players, that if you get injured, if you don't play injured, then that free trip to college might not be there for you come next fall.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number to call if you'd like to join this conversation. We're talking with Dave Zirin. He is sports editor at The Nation, and author of the book, "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love." 800-433-8850. What do you think would create an effective incentive, Dave, for schools to boost their graduation rates and do you think they should be trying to do that?

ZIRINWell, I think the number one thing that would create an incentive, it doesn't start with the NCAA. It actually starts with the National Basketball Association, and the National Football League. It's no coincidence that the lowest graduation rates are in these two revenue producing sports. And that's because the NBA and the NFL depend on our colleges as a de facto minor league, so players can gain a degree of audience identification, become branded if you will, another bizarre slavery term that's used in the advertising industry, and become known entities before they enter the professional leagues.

ZIRINNow, you talk to folks who don't live in the United States and you explain to them that, yeah, our college system is the minor leagues for our professional franchises, I mean, they look at us like we're nuts. I mean, it is a bizarre system that has been so normalized, we don't take a second to say, well, wait a minute, the NFL is a $9 billion business. Can't they just start their own minor leagues, so kids who are interested in just playing football have that option, and kids who want to get an education can go to college?

NNAMDIOne of Arne Duncan's suggestions is to restructure the NCAA's revenue distribution formula. How do you feel about that idea?

ZIRINWell, I think it does need to be redistributed, particularly at the level of the NFL, because there is such a pressure on conferences to do well, and to actually not beat each other. There was a famous incident in the NCAA football world this past year where Boise State was unbeaten and lost to, I believe it was Utah at the buzzer, or at the final gun, last second field goal. And by beating Boise State and preventing them from going to one of the vaunted bowl championship series games, they actually cost all the colleges in the conference significant amounts of money.

ZIRINAnd once again, it's a bizarre system. Because you go to some of these colleges, you talk to college presidents as I've done, and it's really like a casino mentality that says, if the football team does well, then we all get paid. But if it doesn't do well, then not just the athletic department, but all kinds of programs on campus actually suffer.

NNAMDIWhat do you think the success of teams like Virginia Commonwealth University and Butler, which will be playing in its second Final Four in a row, says about the current state of college basketball?

ZIRINVirginia Commonwealth, VC who -- as I've come to calling them. Well, it says something that I'd like to quote Gary Williams, the coach at the University of Maryland, who said, you know, there really are no such thing as mid-majors anymore. I mean, parity has become the norm in the NCAA and there are two very basic, very easy explainable reasons for that. The first is the one and done syndrome, which means that the best players out of high school invariably play only one year at the NCAA level, and then immediately go on to the pros, to the NBA.

ZIRINNow, what that means in practice is that you can get a team like Butler or like VCU that has a lot of upperclassmen, a lot of seniors, and it becomes men playing against boys basically, people who have a level of maturity, both physical and mental, to really do well in these key contests with so many eyes on them. And the second reason is the three-point shot. I mean, the three-point shot means that anybody can shoot their way into the Final Four.

ZIRINI mean, just look at the game the other night where Virginia Commonwealth hit 12 of 25 three-pointers against Kansas. And it just -- it made it -- it was the difference in the game. It was the difference in the game, and you're never gonna see again a team like UCLA winning ten championships in 12 years being led by seniors like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Bill Walton.

NNAMDIWhat you have are teams like Kentucky, loaded with freshman last year, loaded again with talented freshman this year, the one and done guys, but they made it to the Final Four. It's notable that the two powerhouse teams on the other side of this bracket, Kentucky and Connecticut, both feature coaches who have been the subject of NCAA investigations.

ZIRINYes, absolutely. I mean, it really is interesting. I mean, you really have a situation now where out of one bracket you will get David, and out of the bracket you're not only gonna get Goliath, but you're gonna get Goliath crossbred with Tony Soprano. I mean, both the teams, Yukon, as well as Kentucky, are teams that have flouted NCAA years. The joke about John Calipari in Kentucky is that this is the first Final Four he's ever made. It's not, but the other ones had to be vacated because of recruiting violations.

ZIRINSo officially, it is the first one he's ever made. It's going to create a scenario where I think a good portion of America, other than the diehards, are rooting for either Butler or VCU, and the other side will be -- will just have very few people in their corner.

NNAMDII have a friend who says they should have never stopped John Chaney. That's an inside joke. In 1994, the coach of Temple University, John Chaney, tried to choke the coach of now, Kentucky, John Calipari when he was coach of the...

ZIRINMaking the threat on camera.

NNAMDIMaking the threat on camera. I will kill you.

ZIRINQuote/unquote.

NNAMDIQuote/unquote from John Chaney at the time. Do you think the powers that be are upset that half the teams in the Final Four lack that national audience drawn by teams like Kansas or Florida? Is that going to be bad for ratings?

ZIRINNo. Because I think it creates a counter narrative that is about the mythology of the NCAA tournament. And I want to be clear about something. It really is a mythology. I mean, it's only really been in the last couple of years that these small mid majors have been able to advance so far with George Mason in '06, and Butler last year, and now doing it again this year. Before that, March Madness was pretty fraudulent in terms of how it was marketed.

ZIRINI mean, you would have all these upsets in the first round, and sometimes even in the second round, but by the time you got to the final four, it was pretty much, to use an athletic term, chalk. You had the best teams ending up in the Final Four, and you saw that in President Obama's bracket this year. He predicted that either a one or a two seed was really gonna make it all the way to the Final Four. And that's how I think most people fill out their brackets.

ZIRINBut I think Gary Williams is absolutely correct. I mean, this is a bold new day. Butler has now made it to consecutive Final Fours, and Duke has not. This is a new day in college basketball that says if you have upperclassmen, and if you have a very, very good coach, you can shock the world every single time.

NNAMDIOne of the stories that received a lot of attention coming into this tournament, involved Jalen Rose, a former Michigan player whose team played in the Final Four nearly 20 years ago. He stirred a controversy when he said that when he was in college, he considered that the black players at Duke University to be Uncle Toms. You've written that people really have missed the point about this debate, and that it's really about class, not race. Why?

ZIRINMuch more about class. Because what Jalen Rose was talking about was saying that, look, I was -- if you listen to the whole interview, he said, I was a poor kid growing up in the inner city of Detroit, and I just wasn't the kind of player that Mike Krzyzewski, the coach at Duke, would try to recruit. And he was really talking about the elitism at Duke University, and the way players carried themselves relative to other school.

ZIRINNow, Grant Hill, who Jalen Rose had mentioned by name, wrote what I thought was certainly a very well-written and very sharp, but also a very uncharitable op ed in the New York Times, where he called Jalen Rose's comments pathetic and garbled to use a couple of choice phrases. And really did this amazing mind meld of both his pride at being African-American, but also his pride at being a Duke Blue Devil, these things walking hand in hand. It was a very skillful exercise in rhetoric.

ZIRINThe problem with it though is that it didn't account for the fact that Jalen Rose was really talking about his perceptions as a teenager in the early '90s, and those perceptions were very shared at that time, and the Fab Five who Jalen Rose was a part of, with their swagger, with their baggy shorts, with their bald heads, going up against Duke, I mean, that was a moment where it really was more than just a game in the NCAA finals.

NNAMDIThe men's tournament may not include any more of the top seeded teams, but in the women's tournament, all of the favorites are still alive. What do you make of how the women's tourney has been shaping up so far?

ZIRINWell, I think it's fascinating, and I think Yukon is in a very precarious position. They just beat the women at Georgetown 68 to 63...

NNAMDIJust barely.

ZIRIN...despite a tremendous performance by the Georgetown Hoyas, led by Monica McNutt who had 17 points and had a terrific game. And they squeaked through in the second half. Now, Connecticut has probably -- I would make the case arguably the greatest women's player to ever walk the earth in Maya Moore. I mean, if you've never seen Maya Moore play, you need to see her play. But it's a very thin team after Maya Moore, so Yukon, which has been so dominant over the last few years, can be beaten. Watch out for Baylor, their 6'8" center.

NNAMDII love Baylor, yes.

ZIRINBrittney Griner dropped 40 points the other night.

NNAMDIDave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation, and author of "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.