Is it rude of me to have noticed?

The NCAA Tournament just concluded, Monday night … sucked

Minimal drama. No Goliaths slain by Davids. Just a couple of semi-big guys defeated by semi-small people, who were then immediately ushered out in the next game. Capped by a blowout in the championship game.

The point of noting this?

American consumers seemed to have bought into the concept that “March Madness” is guaranteed. That the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, always, always will provide moments of unbelievable achievement and surprise.

Well, it turns out … that isn’t true. The NCAA Tournament can be almost uniformly dull and predictable. And, worse, seems to be trending toward even more dull and predictable.

A year ago, all four No. 1 seeds got to the Final Four. This year, only two of them did, but the other two teams were a No. 2 and a No. 3. Not exactly George Mason, you know?

Also, this year, all 12 teams seeded Nos. 1, 2 or 3 in their regional reached the Sweet Sixteen. So for upsets, you had to grasp at 12s beating 5s or a 4 losing. Wow. Amazing. Not.

The only surprise of any significance I recall was Cleveland State defeating Wake Forest in the first round. Not exactly the Miracle on Ice of upsets, when lots of chatter was out there about how badly Wake Forest had been playing of late. Not when Cleveland State then was immediately ushered into history by Arizona — which, amazingly, was able to position itself as the Cinderella of the regional semis by dint of its low seeding (12). Overlooking its thoroughly blue-blood modern hoops history, which includes an NCAA title and a bunch of Pac-10 championships. And, anyway, our big-dude-in-drag Cinderella was destroyed by Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen, 103-64.

Tournament fans/CBS execs might try to sell us on that Villanova kid’s dash to the bank shot to beat Pitt. But, big picture, this Villanova team probably beats that Pitt team at least 40 percent of the time, so what kind of upset is that? And if you play 64 tournament games (counting the play-in game), shouldn’t at least a couple be decided in the final tick or two? Sure would be the case in the regular season. During November Nuttiness or December Daffiness.

And in the title game, we got a rematch — right down to the same stage inside the same football stadium — of teams that played in December with one of them winning by 35 — the same team that was up 32-11 midway through the first half Monday night, leaving us looking for any baseball game in the cablesphere.

Anyway, the nub of this: I feel as if we have been instructed to believe in March Madness. Like catechumens. “Wild things will happen! Improbably upsets are a certainty! We are somehow different from pro sports!” When, in fact, the gulf between the haves and have-nots in college basketball yawns far wider than that between the top and the bottom franchises in any professional league. Let’s see, North Carolina has Michael Jordan sitting in the stands, and Michigan State has Magic Johnson rooting it on so, yeah, sure, those two programs have never been nowhere and never done nothin’.

So, yes, perhaps it is churlish of me to notice, but that tournament sucked. (As has the women’s, and perhaps moreso, unless Connecticut somehow loses in the title game tonight, which could happen, just as the sun could go supernova before I post this blog entry. I mean, it could happen. Yeah.)

We need a lot more “crazy” before we can call this event “March Madness” without a wink and a smile.