Monday, June 23, 2003 | 9:45 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
College sports don't get any better than this: Rice playing Stanford in the College World Series and a best-of-three format to decide the championship.
I appreciate everything about it.
I've enjoyed the games -- Rice won 4-3 Saturday and Stanford pulled back to even with an 8-3 win Sunday -- and so have the people in Omaha, Neb., who established an attendance record with their ravenous support.
The NCAA has to be euphoric at what fate has wrought: two excellent, fundamentally strong teams representing two revered universities meeting to determine which has the best ballclub in the country.
They'll settle the issue this evening with a 4 p.m. game on ESPN.
But there won't be a loser, not when a season can come to such a natural, enviable conclusion.
I know it isn't practical to do this in all sports, but I like the best-of-three aspect that the NCAA employed for the finalists in the World Series. It was the first time since 1948 that anything but a single-game showdown was used and, in my mind at least, it brings an element of fairness to the tournament.
Don't be so sure that TV, which pays the bills, won't someday jump on the best-of-three bandwagon and promote its use in men's basketball. If there's big money to see Syracuse beat Kansas 81-78, which wrapped up the most recent Final Four, there's even more money to disperse if Syracuse and Kansas play a best-of-three series.
It also eliminates the notion of a "fluke" champion, although no team playing for a championship truly deserves that label.
But at least the college baseball season will end without any quibbling over which team is the best. And the NCAA will be pleased either way, as Rice ranks No. 1 in the nation in graduating athletes (at 91 percent) and Stanford -- along with Duke and Notre Dame -- is right behind (at 90 percent).
Who says intellect and athletics don't mix? Stanford routinely challenges for the Sears Cup that goes to the country's best overall sports program, and Rice just as routinely puts up a good fight in a number of sports in spite of its equally stiff academic requirements.
The Owls, however, will be looking to provide Rice with its first national championship in any sport, and as a reporter with at least a distant connection to Rice head coach Wayne Graham -- I used to cover a junior college team he coached -- it would only add to my pleasure to see him and his team get it.
Graham is the poor man's Sparky Anderson. By appearance, vocabulary and background, they are amazingly similar. Even the statistics in their brief major-league careers are alike: Anderson hit .218 as an outfielder with Philadelphia in 1959, and Graham hit .127 over parts of the 1963 and '64 seasons as a spare third baseman and outfielder with the Phils.
Sparky captured the public's fancy but Graham is just as passionate and exuberant. He went a little overboard in getting kicked out of Sunday's game after arguing a call with the home-plate ump, but he went quietly and without incident after getting his marching orders.
Maybe all he really did was violate the Cardinal rule: Don't mess with Stanford.
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