Imagine that you've got about 300 seats to this year's Men's or Women's Final Four. They're good seats, too -- first three rows, in fact. Suddenly, the word gets out and you're inundated with about 900 requests. You've got to figure out how first of all turn to people away, then divvy up the seats you do give out as fairly as you can. Tough job?

It's what the NCAA media coordinators for those events face every year.

The process starts months in advance of the Final Fours. Credential application forms are sent to the national media in January with a March 1 deadline. The primary factors for determining whether a media entity is granted a seat include the circulation of a given publication, the number of years the media entity has covered the event, and assurances that the media entity will cover all rounds of the tournament. That's the easy part.

The complication is that there are about 300 courtside seats at both the Men's and Women's Final Fours. That seemingly would be enough, but once the regional winners advance, those schools' local media armies are entitled to attend. Factor in the media from the host site and the scads of "fringe" media who decide to feature an aspect of the event at the last minute, and space becomes a crunch in a hurry.

"Somehow it all seems to work out," said James A. Marchiony, director of media for the Division I Men's Basketball Championship.

Marchiony and his counterpart for the Division I Women's Basketball Championship, Cindy Van Matre, along with their respective staffs, work tirelessly most of the winter to make sure as many media outlets as possible are accommodated before the Big Dances tip off. But try as they might, the week of the event is hectic at best.

Alex Wolff, who writes for Sports Illustrated and serves as the current president for the United States Basketball Writers Association, said Marchiony's "somehow it all works out" comment is typical of his humility.

"(The media coordinators) are faced with conundrums because of how to apportion the credentials," Wolff acknowledged. "There are so many papers now, some of which publish six days a week, some seven -- some double their circulation on Sundays. Then you have overseas publications -- there's some feeling that domestic papers ought to have credential preference, but then when we go overseas we like to be treated with that same fairness. I don't envy (the media coordinators') decisions."

Perhaps most challenging for Marchiony and Van Matre is not even who gets a seat, but who gets a seat where. That wasn't always as much of a problem as it is today. But as the number of media has ballooned, so has the number of media who feel they need to be as close as possible to the action in order to do their jobs. However, as the courtside media section grows, the atmosphere of the event is potentially affected because the cheering fans are moved farther back.

The encroachment became so pronounced a few years ago that the Division I Men's Basketball Committee cut nearly in half the number of courtside rows of media. In setting that limit on the number of table-top seats, the committee created an overflow area that makes up the first row behind both media sections. There's no writing surface in the overflow area, but media can still be courtside and, in addition, not detract from the "look" of the event.

But even the overflow area isn't enough. Some media are placed in upper press box areas or in the media room watching the games on television monitors.

Marchiony said some of the decisions regarding who goes where are easy -- a reporter assigned to do a specific feature on a player doesn't need to be as prominently located as a national media member there to do game stories on all three contests.

But there are "bubble" media members just as there are "bubble" teams on Selection Sunday, and Marchiony and Van Matre sometimes have to make some unpopular calls.

"But very rarely does somebody complain about where they're sitting," Marchiony said. "My experience has been to diplomatically ask, 'Who should I remove from a particular seat in order to accommodate you?' Most of the time that ends the conversation."

Room with a view

Every once in a while, the number of media at courtside during the Final Fours will be called into question. But according to Wolff, there are any number of compelling reasons for their location.

"A point that I make frequently is that each pair of eyes stands in for hundreds of thousands or even millions of other people who can't be there," he said.

He pointed to several examples of how his reporting was enhanced by the courtside access, so much so that a level of accuracy would be lost without the location. One in particular was in 1997 when the University of Arizona's Miles Simon played the last couple of minutes with a loose shoelace.

"That represented how loose and carefree Arizona was, which helped them win," Wolff said. "And when Scotty Thurman shot down Duke with that jumper in Charlotte back in 1994, in the first half he was complaining to the referee about a call and the referee told him, 'Hey, just play.' Scotty kind of nodded his head and he did play, to great effect. Those are just two examples of what you can only get while courtside and that I could share with 18 million readers."

"The media have different needs than the other people attending the Final Fours," Marchiony said. "They are the eyes and ears of millions who can't be there to watch the games. That's a huge responsibility -- and it's up to us to do what we can within reason to allow them to do their jobs without creating unreasonable demands for the coaches and players involved in the games."

Media policies at the Women's Final Four mirror those at the Men's, primarily because the media numbers are increasingly equal at both events. It's no coincidence that the rise in popularity of the Women's Final Four is proportional to the increased demand for media coverage. Van Matre pointed to a couple of key years that brought the event into the media limelight, including the 1993 finals in Atlanta, which provided a national boost with four teams that had never advanced to the semifinals before (Texas Tech University, Ohio State University, the University of Iowa and Vanderbilt University) as well as Sheryl Swoopes' record-scoring championship game.

"The event sold out the week of the finals," Van Matre said. "Each year since then, the Women's Final Four has been an advance sell-out and media requests have increased."

Van Matre said 1995 also was another key year because the University of Connecticut went undefeated and won the championship in a close game over the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Because of Connecticut's proximity to New York City, Van Matre said the championship received more exposure there than ever before.

New challenges

The Men's and Women's Final Fours also share the same media concerns, one of which is what to do about Internet-based media. The new wave of information suppliers presents a challenge for the media coordinators who are uncertain how to classify those outlets. Do they need a presence?

Marchiony said in recent years, there has been more interest expressed by online entities requesting credentials, but the men's and women's basketball committees have decided not to credential them at this time because it's too difficult to define what is a legitimate Web site and what isn't. Marchiony also said there's no universally accepted way to measure readership with online services like there is with a newspaper. Logistically, too, there isn't enough room, either in the arena or in the hotels.

"You can't say yes to one and no to everyone else," Marchiony said.

Another concern is how to keep the courtside sections full throughout the event. Some reporters are there just to cover one team, and if that team is a semifinal loser, that particular reporter may not attend the final. This scenario exists for the preliminary rounds as well as the Final Fours. Many seats must be reassigned to prevent gaps in the premium seats.

"The coordinators also have done a good job creating the limited access or Friday-only credential," Wolff said. "That distinguishes between writers who need to be there for just a part of the Final Four (as in writing a specific feature, or working a particular locker room or an interview room) or for the whole weekend."

It's all part of a daunting task that doesn't end until the last on-site story is filed well after the championship games have ended. And it's every bit as challenging as staging the event itself -- perhaps even as challenging as participating in the event. But to the media coordinators' credit, the postgame stories almost always are about the competition and not how the reporters were treated at the competition.

Like Marchiony said, somehow it all works out.