Parity check. One quick and dirty way to measure parity is to see how often the top-ranked teams lose. Here is the number of losses for the top 10 and top 25 teams in the AP poll at this point the last four years.

Losses by top 10 teams:

2002: 25
2003: 18
2004: 23
2005: 26

Losses by top 25 teams:

2002: 105
2003: 85
2004: 75
2005: 87

I'm not sure you can draw much of a conclusion from those numbers.

One thing that might be helpful to keep in mind is that there are probably two different senses of the word "parity." It might clarify the discussion to separate them.

The first sense: at any given point in time, how much of a difference is there between the top teams and lower teams? I.e., how much better is the #1 team from the #20 team and the #50 team; how likely is it that an unranked team will beat a ranked team; etc.

The second sense: over a long period of time, are there different teams at the top? I.e., do the same teams end up in the Final Four every year; do the same teams win their conferences every year; etc.

Imagine that this year, LSU were undefeated and had always won by at least ten points. With a dominant team far better than anyone else, you might not say that we had parity in the first sense. But, because the dominant team was someone other than UConn or Tennessee, you might say that we had parity in the second sense.

My sense is that much of the parity talk this year is more about parity-2 than parity-1. Both kinds of parity are important for the long-term health of the game. But the second sense, in particular, may come with growing pains in the short term.

If the national championship game this year is between teams like Ohio State and Baylor, we may well have substantially lower TV ratings. It's not that there's anything bad about those teams -- it's just that they don't have big media markets, and they won't generate the national attention that another Geno-Pat showdown would.

So if we have some newfound level of parity-2, and if that leads to some new blood in Indianapolis, don't be surprised if we also have some press in April talking about how women's basketball is struggling, how it's losing fan interest, how no one cares now that Diana has graduated, and so on. Just tune it out.