Opposites are attraction of Duke-Butler title game

INDIANAPOLIS -- Brad Stevens is familiar with the story. He knows the future king of Israel struck the Philistine with a stone and cut off the warrior's head. He understands the tale's motivational significance in moments like this.

"You know," the Butler basketball coach said, "it makes me feel good.

"David won."

The game in many ways is secondary tonight, incredible when you think Butler plays Duke for the national championship at Lucas Oil Stadium. Both teams can win. Both have good enough players. The difference in skill isn't substantial, if at all.

But what this final creates is a David vs. Goliath matchup in the arms race of collegiate athletics, that in a time when university presidents are adamant there must be more oversight into the excessive spending on salaries and facilities and trying desperately to discover more ways to win, college basketball's biggest evening offers such an incredible contrast in the haves and have-nots.

UNLV beat Duke for the national championship 20 years ago this week, when the labels of good and evil were assigned the Blue Devils and Rebels.

How ironic. Two decades ago, Duke was the lovable team America cheered. Tonight, that role belongs to Butler, and it is Duke for which most watching will feel contempt.

"You know, we don't play because somebody might not like you," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "I know a lot of people who like us."

On the surface, those who root against Duke hold fairly straightforward opinions. Krzyzewski is preachy. His team gets all the calls. The entire Duke Nation drips of arrogance and favoritism.

But at a deeper level, Duke against Butler symbolizes the inequities that have been constructed within a Bowl Championship Series climate.

Consider: Duke's basketball budget is $13.8 million. The next closest nationally is Marquette at $10 million.

Butler's basketball budget: $1.7 million, which ranks 142nd nationally and places the Bulldogs between Santa Clara and Marshall.

Consider: Butler will spend $2.3 million less on basketball this year than Krzyzewski will collect in salary.

Prior to this NCAA Tournament, Butler's team chartered to three road games this season. Duke might charter to pregame meals.

Duke has a $15.2 million practice facility spread over 56,000 square feet that is named the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center Dedicated to Academic and Athletic Excellence. Butler has an auxiliary gym spread over two courts that the team's booster club serves chicken fingers on before games and is named well, Auxiliary Gym.

"If we can be an inspiration, then we are really honored to carry that flag," Stevens said. "But if not, I think there are a lot of teams like us capable of doing this. I really do ... I understand why teams build practice facilities and want to compete (financially) with who you're recruiting against.

"Butler is a great school in a great city. We have a good tradition in basketball and play in a fieldhouse that embraces the history of the game. We need to remember who we are. I really think that's why we are here.''

There are many reasons to love this final, one between two private schools whose players go to class and act responsibly, teams that don't pay for talent or embarrass their universities, coaches who do things the right way.

There is also this: Myles Brand like no NCAA president before him pushed for academic reform, and seven months after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer, two institutions of such high academic standing as Duke and Butler will meet for the championship not three blocks from where Brand had his office.

All of that means something tonight.

But more than anything, it is a chance for a small school with a limited budget to match itself against one of the game's most storied and successful programs, the one which spends the most on basketball, with everything at stake.

The arms race won't change if Butler wins. Duke won't suddenly spend only $8 million annually on basketball. Kansas and Michigan State and Kentucky and Syracuse won't start slashing budgets. They won't tear down the Michael W. Krzyzewski Center Dedicated to Academic and Athletic Excellence.

But for one evening, life will seem a little fairer and college sports a little purer.

"If that's what the story is going to be, we'll accept it," Butler sophomore Gordon Hayward said. "We're up for the challenge."

Think about it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the star of One Shining Moment was named David?

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.