1979 MILESTONE WAS NO CLASSIC.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

You'll hear a lot of people reminiscing today about the game that gave college basketball legs. It's interesting how hindsight has effectively whitewashed the facts, giving a second wind to an NCAA Final that wheezed and staggered into history.

The NCAA Tournament has given us more compelling theater than the title game that took place on this date 20 years ago. Indiana State versus Michigan State is memorable mostly for being a key player in the fastbreak that produced office pools as a rite of spring, Cinderella cliches by the carriage-full and Dick Vitale.

The 1979 matchup between a Spartans team led by Earvin ``Magic'' Johnson and an unbeaten Sycamores squad powered by Larry Bird produced boffo television ratings, outstripping any NCAA men's basketball championship before or since. (Even that fact is somewhat misleading, the rating (24.1) and share (38) a product of a time before televisions started collecting in households like cobwebs.)

The game attracted a large audience. But as far as drama goes, it didn't come close to ``Dynasty,'' the prime-time-player of its day. Think Denver's John Elway and San Francisco's Joe Montana in the 1990 Super Bowl and you get the idea. In the 75-64 loss that ruined Indiana State's bid for an unblemished 34-0 season, Bird would go 13 minutes without a field goal, miss 14 of 21 shots and finish with 19 points, 10 below his nation-leading average.

On this night Bird wasn't just eclipsed by Johnson (24 points, seven rebounds). He was embarrassed by the Michigan State guard he was assigned to defend. That would be senior Greg Kelser, who contributed 19 points and nine assists and then collected more NCAA All-Tournament team votes than the Sycamores' stoic senior.

Bird's last shot as a collegian was a missed jumper. So inconsolable was he afterward that he refused to address a roomful of reporters despite the pleadings of NCAA officials, who told him that talking to the press was ``in the best interests'' of college basketball.

Johnson met every media obligation with a smile and a warm handshake but wasn't so accommodating when it came to his commitment to Michigan State. He passed on his final two years of school for the NBA, paving the way for the steady exodus of underclassmen to the pros that no less an authority than John Wooden worries is undercutting the game today at both levels.

Johnson and Bird were wondrously talented basketball players and fiercely competitive. Without question the seed of the rivalry planted in the Special Events Center on the University of Utah campus in 1979 reached full bloom in the NBA, with Bird's Boston Celtics or Johnson's Lakers winning the championship in eight of the ensuing nine years, thrice at the expense of the other.

What we dispute is the notion, spread like manure over the past 20 years, that Johnson and Bird were veritable sons of Zeus, who lifted the collegiate game to prominence on their broad shoulders. The meeting of these two superlative players in the NCAA Final wasn't a slam dunk. It was more like the outlet pass that cable TV took and converted into March Madness.

If not viewed through a cable TV lens, it's impossible to properly frame the Indiana State-Michigan State game in college basketball's big picture. It'd be like trying to explain Muhammad Ali's popularity without the context of the Vietnam War. Or Tiger Woods' heroics minus the circumstances of his multiethnicity. Or last year's home-run derby between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa outside the framework of the 1994 baseball strike.

But don't take our word for it. Listen to Billy Packer, who worked the telecast of the 1979 final. Said Packer, who has had a courtside seat for a quarter of a century of college hoops history, ``When I'm talking about all the NCAA Tournaments I've done, the most nondescript one is 1979. Now people are trying to rewrite history and say it was the best only because of what happened afterward.''

What happened was Johnson and Bird blew up as pros and cable TV sports exploded into our living rooms. The 1979 NCAA Tournament would be the last of the P.C. (pre-cable) age. By the time Louisville and UCLA met for the NCAA title in 1980 - in the first of eight championship games in the decade that were decided by five or fewer points - ESPN was up and running and trampling all over the two-minute sportscast shoehorned into the regular networks' nightly news.

It wasn't long before the cable outlet was showing every tournament game and coating its coverage in layers of analysis because, well, with all those endless hours of air time to fill, it could.

The networks responded in kind, and gods and monsters were born. The blanket coverage piqued the interest of the public, and that caught the attention of advertisers, who poured money into the men's NCAA Tournament coffers, which raised the viability, visibility and volatility of college basketball.

What price, progress? From freshmen who weren't eligible to play, the game has evolved, if you will, to underclassmen whose eligibility is maintained with the help of tutors who ghostwrite their term papers while school athletic officials look the other way.

That scandal rocking the University of Minnesota should give fans of college basketball everywhere cause to glumly wonder: Was the 1979 NCAA Tournament final the beginning or the beginning of the end?

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Photo

Photo: The 1979 NCAA final featuring Larry Bird (top) and Magic Johnson was not a great game.

Associated Press