Big Dance, shrinking press corps

SEATTLE - A sign of the times:

I've covered a few of these NCAA men's basketball tournaments. And when you have eight teams at one site, any site, you have media. A lot of it.

These days, though, not so much.

It's largely because of the distance from most of the schools here from Seattle, but I've never seen as little media for an NCAA tourney as are gathered at KeyArena for today's four games.

For one thing, there is less media than there once was. For another, there is less media with the willingness or wherewithal to ship reporters to far-flung sites on short notice with sky-high airfares.

Gonzaga is the local team here, but Spokane is on the other side of the state of Washington. Seattle isn't chock-full of Gonzaga grads wearing Gonzaga garb, though the Zags will be well-represented tonight when they play North Dakota State.

Speaking of North Dakota State, it joins Cal-Irvine, Davidson and Wyoming with very little media here. Or anywhere. Davidson is just outside Charlotte and is of significant interest there, but it's 2,800 miles or so from Charlotte to Seattle, and there's a lot of other basketball going on in Charlotte including the hosting of early rounds this week.

Ditto Louisville. A writer from there said there is fewer Louisville media here than he can recall. The city of Louisville is hosting opening-round ball this week, and the main attraction is a Kentucky team that is a pretty good story.

The Iowa media corps here, considering there are two state schools here in Iowa and Northern Iowa, isn't as large as it would have been a decade or two ago.

So support your local newspaper's websites, folks. Especially this one. It took some resources to get two writers and a photographer from The Gazette to Seattle (and one of each to Louisville for Iowa State's unfortunate experience in the NCAAs).

And it will really take some convincing for the bosses back home to supply the scratch to send me back home on Monday.