NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP : What to Watch in Tonight’s Final: Thin Coaches, Kansas’ Fat Chance

Here is your TV viewer’s guide to things to look for in tonight’s NCAA championship game, the Kansas Jayhawks vs. Oklahoma Sooners. Pay attention, because many of these things represent important modern trends in the game.

Suits. More bench coaches than you can shake a barbecued spare rib at.

It used to be that coaching basketball was a lonely profession. Now it’s as lonely as traveling with Martina Navratilova. Oklahoma’s bench, which is typical, features six coaches in suits and ties, not counting Coach Billy Tubbs, and not counting three more suits on the far end of the bench, presumably the trainers and doctors.

Remember the old days, when if you said a team had a deep bench you were referring to actual players?

What do all these coaches do? Nobody knows. Saturday night, one Arizona assistant kept holding up signs with large numbers, such as 8, 9, 10. These indicated either: a) The number of laps Oklahoma players had remaining before a mandatory pit stop, b) A judge’s rating on impressive shots, or c) The number of Wildcat players Arizona would need to have on the court at that moment in order to break the Oklahoma press.

Why would Oklahoma need assistant coaches, since the Sooners run only one offense, one defense and never substitute?

Well, the duty breakdown of the six Oklahoma assistants is: 1 sketch artist ( a la LeRoy Neiman), 1 Billy Tubbs gag writer, 1 astrologer, 1 Converse shoe contract liaison man, 1 assistant-coach-wardrobe coordinator, 1 guy nobody knows but the other coaches suspect is the university chancellor.

Trim coaches. Larry Brown and Billy Tubbs are both avid joggers, though not during games. Gone, for now, are the days of the wide-body Bob Knights and John Thompsons. This year the Final Four is survival of the fittest.

Tubbs runs every day, logging 1,000 miles a year. He was once run over and nearly killed by a speeding car while jogging. Thus emerged Tubbs’ philosophy of life and hoops: Run faster, something may be gaining on you.

Fat sportswriters. Here is Saturday’s complete menu for the Kemper Arena press snack area: Extra-salty corn chips, extra-frosted hunks of coffee cake, Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars, Coca-Cola and coffee. The menu was selected by the NCAA nutritional consultant, Bongo the Birthday Clown.

Cheerleader-athletes. Female cheerleaders still wear the cute short skirts, but today these students are athletes, not merely decorations. Every cheerleader squad had two or three girls with knee braces or bandages. I don’t know, it just looks funny, like seeing a young woman dressed up for the senior prom wearing a corsage and wrist bands.

Huddles. Before every free throw, the players on the court form two little huddles, arms wrapped around one another in a show of brotherhood. This is a custom believed to have originated with Dean Smith’s North Carolina clubs in the late ‘70s.

What do the players talk about? Do they call plays? Oklahoma has none. Do they sing the school song? Pray? Tell jokes? Discuss that troublesome problem in their calculus homework? Compare agents? Nobody knows. Worse, nobody cares.

Cameras. Many, many TV cameras. All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare said, but nowhere in the world are there bigger hams than in college hoops, where big games are now covered by 70 to 80 TV cameras, including dozens of roving minicams. If you’re at tonight’s game and you don’t get yourself on television, you ain’t trying.

Fans, including grown semi-adults, paint their faces and act loony, cheerleaders approach every game as a Hollywood screen test, coaches should be required to carry Screen Actors Guild cards, and even the benches get into the act. The Oklahoma subs, for instance, call themselves the Cabbage Patch Kids and have more dance routines than June Taylor.

Substitutions. An interesting contrast in team styles here. Larry Brown runs players in and out faster than the stage manager of a kindergarten Christmas pageant. Billy Tubbs will send in a sub only if a starter has fouled out, broken a major bone, been arrested or graduated.

“I hate to break up something when it’s going good,” Tubbs says. “One rule we have at Oklahoma: If you’re having a great game, I’m gonna leave you in. Go for it.”

Timeouts. Again, a contrast. Kansas will call ‘em, Oklahoma won’t.

“We don’t call time-outs,” says Tubbs, who called none Saturday night. “We’ve probably got about 200 timeouts saved up.”

One Oklahoma sub to look for is Jason Skurcenski, a sophomore guard. His nickname is The Fat Lady, because when he gets in the game, it’s over.

An Oklahoma win. Danny Manning is a wonderful player, but Oklahoma is overstocked with great athletes who love to play the game and never get tired. A full house beats one of a kind.