As soon as the composition of this year’s men’s Final Four was settled, it was already possible to project the human interest angles of stories that would run throughout the week:

With Texas, the angle would be that coach Rick Barnes had reached his first Final Four and, perhaps, finally created hoops mania at a school where the three most popular sports have always been football, spring football and football recruiting.

With Kansas, the story is that Roy Williams—the guy that the media privately (or not so privately) roots for—may finally win the title that has long eluded him.

With Marquette, it’s that no one expected the Warriors to move out of a bracket that included Kentucky—and that, somewhere, Al McGuire is not only smiling, but pontificating to some eye-rolling angels about what the losers would have done had he only been coaching them.

OK, when you get down to it, finding a human interest angle in a Syracuse team coached by Jim Boeheim is going to be tough.

But that at least illuminates the story you won’t read much about this week: With rare exceptions, the Final Four is a closed party. The hosts may have issued a nominal invitation to Cinderella, but they do so in the certainty that she’s not going to show up at the ball.

Oh, every once in a great while a real servant girl escapes the attic and gets into the big soiree. Almost every year, a surprise team is among the Final Four. Marquette, for example, is this year’s surprise. But as a third-seed in its region, the Warriors are no Cinderella. That shoe just doesn’t fit.

Over the past two decades you can count the true Final Four Cinderellas on one hand: the improbable Villanova team that slew Georgetown; Rick Pitino’s Providence team in 1987; and Pennsylvania, the last Ivy Leaguers to reach the final weekend, way back in 1979.

They’re the exceptions that prove the rule. Almost all of their carriages turn back into pumpkins long before midnight. The madness, remember, is associated with March. The Final Four usually doesn’t happen until April. And playing in April is reserved for corporate basketball programs that have deep financial resources and operate like big business enterprises.

There’s a reason we don’t touch this theme during Final Four week. It’s too much of a downer, especially after the exhilarating upsets of March. More than that, it dispels a myth we like to cherish.

It is almost an article of national faith that any team, except for 16th seeds, can win a tournament game—and that almost any team, given enough determination and luck, can make it to the Final Four.

Luck and pluck, however, will take you only so far in Bracketville. To win four games and reach the Final Four you must also have serious talent and plenty of it. To get that kind of talent these days requires serious resources and exposure. Cinderella, Gonzaga, Central Michigan and Creighton need not apply.

In this sense, the NCAA Tournament almost perfectly mirrors our political competitions.

To win a major elected office in America, you need money, money, money and organization. Unless you come by the first three of those independently, you also need deep-pocketed backers—which often means that some of their values and priorities become yours. Even if you have the money, you won’t have the organization unless you work within one of the two major political parties—which further circumscribes what you can say, do and be.

Given these parameters, it’s little wonder that we wind up with political leaders whose main constituencies are cash-flush interest groups and who couldn’t utter a thought independent of their party’s line if their lives depended upon it. (I’ll bet you $5 right now, secure in the confidence that the following propositions are untestable. Were George Bush to nominate a javelina hog to the Supreme Court, Bill Frist and Lamar! Alexander would effusively praise the pig’s qualification. Of course, had Tom Daschle declared the sky was purple with green polka dots, Bob Clement not only would have squawked in assent but would have weaseled his way into the photo op.)

In that same way, the main differences between the participants in the Final Four—the whole Elite Eight, for that matter—are of degree and not kind. Sure, there are distinctions. Jim Boeheim, for example, once demanded that his young assistant coach, Rick Pitino, leave his new bride on their wedding night to discuss basketball. It’s hard to imagine such behavior from Roy Williams. Kentucky’s Tubby Smith and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo expect more in the classroom from their players than Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, who has failed to graduate a single player during his tenure.

But those differences only mask the deeper similarities. All of the last eight in the pool, even Marquette, are elite programs that epitomize the transformation of college basketball into corporate entertainment businesses.

Increasingly, men’s basketball (women’s, too) is ruled by an oligarchy of big programs and CEO coaches. It’s possible to break into the oligarchy if you’re a member of a major conference and invest sufficient millions in your program. It’s dang-near impossible if you’re a member of a small or “mid-major” conference and lack the same resources.

Consider Gonzaga as a typical case of how the deck is almost hopelessly stacked in favor of the NCAA’s overdogs. The Zags play in a small conference, which means they get little or no TV exposure during the season, which affects both their ranking and recruiting. After a surprising tournament run four years ago, they (like many other overachieving underdogs) lost their coach to a corporate program that could triple his salary.

Luckily for Gonzaga, new coach Mark Few has remained loyal to the school, and the program has remained successful. Unluckily, that very success has meant that few big-dog programs will dare to schedule Gonzaga (and risk the real possibility of losing).

As a result, the Zags’ power rating—the holy grail for the NCAA Tournament selection committee—was misleadingly low. And as a result of that, Gonzaga drew a lower seeding (ninth) than it deserved and had to face top-seeded Arizona in the second round.

The Zags lost that game by one point in double overtime and showed they were as good as anybody. But had they received a higher, more appropriate seeding, their tournament run might have been longer.

Among this year’s field, teams like Gonzaga, Butler and Holy Cross embody the spirit of college basketball. But, realistically, they never had a chance beyond the first round or two. By April, the spirit is mostly gone.

The Final Four will still be fun. As fans—and as voters—we don’t demand all that much, at least not as much as we should. As long as the Butlers and Gonzagas can win a game or two, and the UNC-Wilmingtons can almost eke out upsets, as long as we get a taste of equality, we can go home content in the belief that every team can win it all and that any child in our democracy can grow up to be president.

We’ll loyally watch the April coronations. But the wild rides of March are what we love.

Correction: Within 30 minutes of the Scene’s posting online last week, I received an e-mail from Kathie Hormby pointing out a mistake. As any loyal Dodger fan knows, Sandy Koufax’s number was not 22 but 32.