Without underdog, the allure is gone from all-No. 1 Final Four

SAN ANTONIO — This is the greatest place in America for underdogs and there is not a one in sight.

Just a few blocks from where March Madness will finally finish — The Road Ends Here, promise all the banners — the Alamo squats amid modern clutter, pale, out of place and unimpressive, not at all like the four college basketball teams remaining.

It is almost an affront to the legacy of the place, where shouts of “Remember the Alamo” came to signify and have echoed since that courage means as much as might, that less may not be more but it can be enough, that no bracket is too big to bust.

The Final Four teams — North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Memphis — are all Santa Anna, the great bully. They’ve left the carcasses of brave and outmanned souls behind — ah, brave Davidson, so like Davy Crockett, doomed, and poor little Mount St. Mary’s, crushed early. They are here now to strut and confirm their prominence.

Their blood is bluer than their collars, and their uniforms, all of which feature some shade of blue or other.

Although, Memphis took its turn at the top of the college rankings during the season and lost only once, the Tigers are the commoners here. They do not have any of the 17 national titles shared by the other three, and just three Final Four appearances compared with 48 among the others. It has made the title game just once before, 35 years ago.

One of the Memphis guards said something like this: “It’s just little ol’ Memphis against all those prestigious programs. Just little ol’ Memphis.”

Oh, no. Not today, not this year. Memphis is every bit as worthy, just as potent and no more entitled to plead poor than a lottery winner.

This is exactly as it was supposed to be, the four best teams at the end. And where’s the fun in that?

Where’s George Mason? Where’s Florida, for that matter? The first time the Gators won, they came from the side yard. Villanova, the greatest of the upsetters, may have lost by 20 to any of these teams, but how awful if it had never had the chance.

You think not of the predictable when considering the Final Four, you think of the upsets, of Duke knocking off undefeated UNLV or Arizona whipping Kentucky, or Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State bunch getting the best of Houston’s Phi Slama Jamas.

There will be no upsets here. Chalk meeting chalk results in only more chalk.

The charm of March Madness — so huge it can no longer fit entirely in the month of March — is the Alamo idea. Fight to the finish, no surrender, little guys against the odds.

The odds are these: The best team will win, even if it beats a little better team.

Even before it is played, this is being called the Greatest Final Four Ever, this because it has managed to cough up the four No. 1 seeds, the top four ranked teams, the clear and obvious best teams.

So, where’s the mystery? Who dunnit? Who cares?

Though I think North Carolina will win, if it does not, the winner will not much echo beyond the evening or outside its campus.

UCLA is making it third straight try for a title as a Final Four-ist, but if it loses again, will there be lasting shame? None. Those 11 other championship banners will still hang proudly.

Roy Williams could not win a title at Kansas, but he did at North Carolina. Is there revenge to be had by Bill Self, the present Jayhawks coach? Is that the best story here?

No Kansas coach’s story is much after that of famed Jayhawk James A. Naismith, who not only invented the game of basketball but, more or less, Phog Allen.

This not so much the end of the road as a familiar reunion, a private affair without the much needed scruffy gate crasher, like one of those souls daring danger on the walls of the old mission up the street.

They played tough at the Alamo. Col. Travis and Crockett and ol’ Jim Bowie, the whole overmatched few, D’d up and blocked out and hung in, and let us not forget that they lost the battle.

Yet their legacy to this day is they are remembered as winners.

When this ends, we may shout “Remember the Tar Heels.”

But it will not be quite the same.