WILL THE 2010 TOURNEY CONTINUE MARCH "MADLESS" TREND

In last year's tournament, for the first time in the 25 years of the 64-team era, all 12 one-through-three seeds made it into the Sweet 16. It was also just the second time over this same span that all the Elite Eight contestants were among the top three seeds.

Now, go back just one year to 2008, when every top seed reached the Final Four. That, too, was unprecedented in the modern tourney era. A year before that? The 2007 tourney was by far the most upset-free and predictable dance since 1985.

What's happening to March Madness? Why is so, sane? Maybe the new rule forcing young phenoms to play at least a year of college ball has made the rich programs richer, and safer bets to advance in the dance. Maybe the Selection Committee is just getting better at slotting teams in their rightful seed positions. Maybe the nature of the college game has changed to favor more reliably successful teams.

Before we get too carried away with finding reasons why March has become Madless, it's worth examining just exactly how devoid of craziness the last three years have really been. There's a fairly simple way to measure the madness. I call it the "Madometer." It works by measuring the seed-position differences between actual winners and perfect high-seed success or failure in all six rounds of the dance. If the higher seed advanced in all 63 games of the tourney (perfect sanity), the cumulative seed value of the winners would be 203. If the lower seed always advanced (sheer madness), their cumulative seed value would be 868. The difference between the two, 665, is the predictability range.

Take last year. If you added up the seed positions of all the teams that advanced through the tourney, the number would come to 264, certainly closer to perfect seed dominance (203 positions), but still 61 positions toward madness along the 665-point predictability range. That works out to a Madometer reading of 9.2 percent. To put that number in context, the average tournament over the 25 years of the 64-team era has deviated from by-the-seed results by 13.7 percent.