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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > April > 11
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Kevin Riley: Changes to March Madness could be good for Dayton
College basketball enjoyed its big finale last week. The annual “March Madness” has never been more popular, and the folks in charge of college basketball are looking to make it even more so.
The NCAA’s plan could be a good thing for the Dayton community, its basketball fans and our local universities. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a community where the changes could have a bigger positive impact than in Dayton — where so much of our community psyche is affected by basketball and our universities.
The proposal hasn’t been approved, but it looks like a done deal. With television rights to the annual tournament worth billions, the NCAA wouldn’t be messing with anything it’s not serious about.
Without getting into all the details, it comes down to this: the NCAA wants to put 96 teams in the tournament — 31 more than now.
With that number, the University of Dayton would likely make the “big dance” every season. (On paper, I think you could prove they would have been in the past three seasons, for sure.)
Wright State’s opportunity would dramatically improve, and the Raiders certainly would’ve had a strong argument to be one of the 96 this year.
When considering what this could mean for Wright State’s stature and to its many alumni in Dayton, it’s worth considering this:
Butler was the little school that got all the attention for reaching the championship game this year — the big story of the tournament that all the talking heads compared to the movie “Hoosiers.” The New York Times wrote about the school and its historic arena.
And admit it, if you watched the championship game, you were rooting for them against perennial powerhouse Duke. You were crushed when Butler’s last-second, almost game-winning shot just missed.
Well, Butler plays in the same league as Wright State, and the Raiders finished second to them. (I’d also argue Wright State gave them a tougher game during the season than a couple of the teams Butler beat in the NCAA tournament.)
Butler has built its program to be one of the higher-ranked teams in the country, but it started with opportunities in the NCAA tournament. Maybe, if Wright State got the chance, the Raiders could become a similar story.
But under the current system, only one team from their league typically gets a chance in the NCAA tournament.
The Dayton Flyers have enjoyed recent trips to the NCAA tournament, including in 2009 when they upset West Virginia in the first round. (West Virginia was a Final Four team this year.)
UD faltered late in this season and wasn’t invited to the NCAA tournament, although several teams from their league were.
It seems like each year, UD is one of the “bubble” teams — those that don’t know their fate until the last moment.
This year, fans were disappointed, especially when several teams the Flyers beat during their season made it.
(The Flyers brought UD and our community a lot of positive publicity with its run in the less prestigious NIT tournament, which the Flyers won. They beat some big-name schools along the way, including Illinois and North Carolina, on national TV.)
With an expanded tournament, UD would get off the bubble and could be expected to make the NCAA tournament almost every year. That would satisfy rabid Flyer fans, and, perhaps more important, enhance the school’s national reputation — a goal President Daniel Curran puts at the top of his list.
There’s nothing like being on national television. Just ask Butler.
The change might also improve the Flyers’ schedule, which fans love to gripe about. Typically UD has difficulty scheduling bigger-name schools at its arena. They worry about losing there to a “bubble” team — a loss that might haunt them when the tournament field gets picked.
If UD became an annual NCAA tournament team, a trip to the arena could be less risky.
In the sports world, the debate rages about whether the NCAA should expand “March Madness.” Your bracket sheet will be a lot more complicated with 96 teams. And many worry that the tournament will lose its prestige if more teams are allowed in.
But we’d like a little more madness every March in Dayton.
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Editorial: Dayton needs Husted on board for trains
Sen. Jon Husted’s opposition to bringing passenger trains to Ohio is directly at odds with what’s good for Dayton.
He complains about the costs of a passenger rail system from Cleveland to Columbus to Dayton to Cincinnati. He points to both the federal debt and Ohio’s troubled budget.
Those are certainly real problems. But the Kettering Republican is being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.
His main point is that the system won’t be self-supporting. Like every form of transportation — from highways to airports to transit systems — it will need a government subsidy.
But the projected subsidy for the state is only $17 million a year. That was roughly the cost of the new Stewart Street Bridge in Dayton.
The $17 million estimate very well may be low; there are a lot of unknowns. However, that little bit of money wouldn’t rise to the level of public debate if it were inside the state of Ohio’s budget for roads, schools or prisons. It’s .005 of the state’s transportation budget.
For purposes of comparison, the interstate corridors between the affected cities will see about $7 billion in highway projects in the next few years. (That calculation is offered by All Aboard Ohio, a pro-train group.)
As for the actual construction costs, the money would come from the federal government. The $400 million that Ohio has been awarded is part of the stimulus that was a response to the worst recession in modern times. Even those who oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to prime the economy should see the case for including trains.
This country is way behind others in train service. Trains — including freight trains that will benefit from track upgrades — are well-suited to play a role in the modern economy.
Sen. Husted points out that the first generation of 3C trains will be slower than cars for some trips. Also, initially trains will run too infrequently to encourage day trips to, say, Columbus or Cincinnati — a big problem that the Ohio Department of Transportation needs to fix.
Also, legitimate doubts can be raised about how many people will use the trains and how much will have to be spent to improve the tracks so eventually trains can run faster.
But, in a time when Ohio is behind other populous states in the use of trains, when Columbus is one of the largest cities in the country to have no rail service, when our gasoline supplies are dependent on stability in one of the most unstable regions in the world, when consumers want to cut their use of gasoline, and when Ohio cities have been sprawling toward each other, the idea of rejecting the federal money is astounding.
The stakes are higher no place than in Dayton.
The point about the cost of the Stewart Street Bridge comes from Mike Ervin, the local activist who is heading up the effort to revive and redefine downtown Dayton. He is an enthusiastic supporter of the train project, seeing it as “huge for the city and region.”
On board, too, is the Downtown Dayton Partnership. So is the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
In a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland, the chamber wrote, “As the State of Ohio and the Dayton area continue to successfully transition our economy to support the high growth industries of today and tomorrow, we must look toward innovative infrastructure systems that will support this growth. The Ohio 3C (&D) rail corridor will highlight Ohio as a state that is ‘open for business’ and an attractive location for employees to live and raise a family.”
The chamber, by the way, employs Sen. Husted. He describes his work there as “focused on recruitment, retention, education and training of the local work force.” Hmmm. The chamber needs to send its Jon Husted to lobby Sen. Husted. Sen. Husted says that he’s not the problem for 3C, that he’s not in a leadership position or on the state controlling board, which decides whether to spend the federal money.
But Sen. Husted is a leader of the opponents, some of whom will concede nothing good about this idea.
Moreover, he’s the most visible Daytonian in Columbus. If this project fails to happen in part because Columbus gets the wrong idea about how the leadership of the Dayton area feels, that would be a very special kind of shame.
Dayton is in a special position to benefit from 3C trains, because it’s in the middle of the line, not at one of the ends. It’s closer to two important destinations than are Cincinnati, Columbus or Cleveland.
The 3C is a start that Ohio has to make at some stage. It has risks, but what better time to take that risk than when somebody else is offering up so much start-up money (which, if it doesn’t go to Ohio, will go to somebody else)?
Sen. Husted should put the interests of Dayton before partisan politics.
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