Jim Mashek

TRUST ME, THE SUPERDOME IS THE PLACE TO BE TODAY

Traditionalists don’t like it.

It’s a massive structure, built for pro football, the Essence Fest, Mardi Gras balls and the occasional, big-budget concert.

(Saw the late, great David Bowie in what was then the Louisiana Superdome. Back in the late ’80s. The Glass Spider Tour. Lots and lots of people. Massive traffic jams in the French Quarter and the Central Business District beforehand. Average, at best, acoustics, and even worse sight lines. My friend Angie and I were in the nosebleed seats …

(And it didn’t matter one bit.)

That’s why you should pay no mind to any criticism of playing the NCAA’s Final Four, its signature event and an endangered species (in a manner of speaking) this weekend in New Orleans.

It could be glorious.

It features four blue-blood programs, including the bluest of those entities, the Duke University men’s basketball team. Coached by the retiring Mike Krzyzewski, Duke has beaten two traditionally tough opponents, Michigan State and Arkansas, to get here. The Blue Devils are on a veritable roll.

And standing in their way, as fate would have it, is its archrival just eight miles down Tobacco Road, or whatever highway separates Duke and the University of North Carolina.

The Tar Heels.

Basketball royalty in its own right.

They’ve never played one another in the NCAA Tournament, not even once, and now, in Coach K’s farewell season, they’re dueling in the 13-acre expanse in downtown New Orleans now known as the Caesars Superdome.

Duke and Carolina. UNC and the Dookies. The 75-year-old Coach K and um, well, oh yeah, Hubert Davis.

It’s starting to feel like this whole thing is a little preordained.

Duke is playing its best basketball when it matters most, and for that matter, so is North Carolina. The Tar Heels had to knock off Saint Peter’s, the Jesuit Little Engine That Could from New Jersey, to get to New Orleans.

Ah, but to get to the championship game, the Blue Devils have to conquer their mortal enemy. North Carolina and their baby-blue unis. The late, great Dean Smith, and his “Four Corners” offense, from back in the day. North Carolina’s public school with the highest of academic standards. (Or, at least that’s the narrative.)

They did so in resounding fashion.

Saint Peter’s was a long shot, to crash the party in The Quarter, but the No. 15 seed Peacocks had already preened past, in order, 1) Kentucky, 2) Murray State and 3) Purdue. Every time they took the court, they made some history.

The Tar Heels were none too impressed.

So, it’s the will of the basketball gods, that Duke and its hated rival, North Carolina, square off in a game that will determine a berth in Monday night’s national championship game.

Of course, it had to be that way.

And yes, I know there’s another semifinal, another clash of the tradition-rich titans, in the opening game between the Kansas Jayhawks and Villanova University, another huge state school vs. the academically superior private institution, and I mean we’re talkin’ about an annual endowment exceeding 1.1 billion dollars.

That’s $1.1-something billion (with a ‘b,’ homeslice …) and that’s a lot of private tutors, postgraduate programs and private-school cache’ … not that far removed from the high-and-mighty Ivy League.

So, hell yeah, let’s do this in New Orleans.

Every time I covered a Super Bowl or a Final Four in New Orleans, people visiting the city for the first or second time would tell me, “They oughta have it here every year,” and while I knew that was impossible, I understood the sentiment.

This is a city built on tourism.

This is a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

This is a city built for big events.

Muhammad Ali fought here. They had a World’s Fair, in the ’80s. They’ve played the Sugar Bowl here, each and every year, with the notable exception of 2006, roughly four months after the devastation left behind by deadly Hurricane Katrina.

They play the Super Bowl here from time to time. (Once upon a time, a lot more than that.)

Lots of four- and even five-star hotels and great restaurants. Plenty of, uh, nightlife. Whether it’s Magazine Street or Bourbon Street, it’s pretty easy to find something to do, at night. Keep an eye on your wallet, especially in the Quarter, and understand that they do things a little different down there, and you’ll be fine.

(Full disclosure: I lived within a 90-minute drive of the French Quarter and the CBD, the backbone of New Orleans hospitiality, from 1985 until 1990 (while working at the morning paper in Baton Rouge) and from 1994 until 2011, where I worked at the Biloxi-Gulfport newspaper, until being laid off and thrown out with the garbage on May 3, 2011.

(Wait, I had to walk the plank for three weeks, to get my severance pay. It was May 20, 2011, my last day. A Friday. Worked another hour or so after The Big Man walked past my desk, toward the break room and into the parking lot one last time. Hell, yes, I remember.)

Forgive the rant.

New Orleans is the place for these events.

In 1982, Michael Jordan hit the game-winning shot for the Tar Heels against Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas in the Superdome. One of the Hoyas key players, Eric Smith, was a friend from my high school who won Maryland state championships in football AND basketball while competing for the Churchill Bulldogs.

Driving over from Houston, I met some high school buddies, from Potomac, Maryland, in New Orleans for that Final Four.

It was my first.

I was working at my first newspaper job, the Baytown Sun, on the outskirts of Houston, and I was getting married that summer. My, uh, fiancee’, told anybody who would listen — I certainly didn’t — that it was my “last fling” or something as a bachelor. It was, believe it or not, my first trip to New Orleans.

They say you always remember your first.

I certainly do.

The Houston Cougars, the upstart, the sixth seed from the NCAA Midwest Region, were facing North Carolina in the first semifinal. Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, the skywalkin’ brothers from Phi Slama Jama, were a worthy opponent (no pun intended), but James Worthy and the Tar Heels took a 68-63 decision.

Then the Hoyas, with Ewing, Eric Floyd and the aforementioned Eric Smith, squared off with the University of Louisville in the nightcap.

Turns out, the late John Thompson’s Georgetown squad would turn back Rodney McCray, Scooter McCray and the talented U of L Cardinals 50-46.

It was a grind-it-out, half-court affair, and remember, this was several years before the advent of the 3-point field goal, and even more from the implementation of the shot clock.

Outside the Superdome, that night, fans of the University of Houston and the University of Louisville were unloading their upper-deck seats for a song, anxious to drown their sorrows and get the hell outta Dodge in the morning.

There was plenty of buildup to the championship game, even though ESPN was in its infancy and the Superdome was a grand experiment for the Final Four. It’s a football stadium, after all.

Well …

The Tar Heels won in a nailbiter, with a sinewy, 18-year-old Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot, an 18-footer from the left wing, that sent North Carolina to a 63-62 victory.

The Hoyas’ Fred Brown then mistook Worthy for a teammate, and passed the ball to the UNC forward, who was fouled in the confusion. Worthy missed two free throws, and Georgetown’s Eric Floyd got off a desperation shot from nearly the length of the court before time expired. It was off the mark, and Dean Smith, the masterful coach from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, had his first national championship.

A couple hours later, my buddies and I ran into Dean Smith, Michael Jordan and a handful of other Tar Heels players near Bourbon Street. I gave Jordan his props and he actually gave me a high-five. It was, I gotta admit, really cool.

Going back to Texas the next morning, in that bomb Chevy Citation X-11, fire-engine red (yeah, now I know, cops LOVE that color of car) with the leaky sun roof, I said to myself, “Man, that was some Final Four …” and “New Orleans … can’t wait to get back …” )

I’d hoped to get down to New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, for this weekend’s Final Four, but some daily lower-back pain told me to postpone my trip. Jazz Fest is right around the corner, and …

If you’re there, in New Orleans, you know what I’m talkin’ about. You really don’t even have to be in the building, but it’s perfect for these kinds of events. Kentucky won the only national championship of the John Calipari Era down there, in 2012, and the Final Four will no doubt again unfold in New Orleans somewhere down the road.

Prediction?

Villanova 66, Kansas 60.

And North Carolina 78, Duke 73.

I can’t pick Duke. Just can’t. And won’t.