The questions have been posed: What's the big difference between basketball today and basketball in 1952, when the University of Kansas won its first national championship, and what was it like, covering the Jayhawks in the Final Four in Seattle?

First things first. Television easily has made the biggest difference in the game, and just how far it has come in creating its incredible following is reflected in some remarks by the former executive director of the NCAA.

Walter Byers was the strong man of college sports for many years, and after the NCAA refused a television station's request to televise regional playoff games in Lawrence, he said, in effect, "Who needs TV?" This was in 1958, six years after KU and Seattle, and the interview is from a column I wrote at the Final Four in Louisville.

Speaking of television, Byers said, "The amount of money involved is not large, and we frankly don't need it. And, the trouble it causes certainly doesn't make it worthwhile for us. We've talked it over with the basketball tournament committee and there is a possibility our television policy will become more restrictive than ever."

Another member of the NCAA tournament committee said, "Television may be banned entirely at regional playoffs and permitted only on the national championship game -- provided it's sold out."

Byers long ago retired to his Kansas ranch, and he must be amazed by what happened when the NCAA decided to go to the trouble of allowing its games to be televised. Television today pays for everything the NCAA does, with plenty left over, and in return pretty much does as it pleases in the postseason, once the NCAA determines the tournament teams.

Without TV, the games probably would be played on week nights, as they were in 1952, taking care to avoid competing with the high schools' Tuesday and Friday night games.

It was television that sent the NCAA seeking the biggest arenas in the country to accommodate the fans the tube created. The Final Four became one of the toughest tickets in sports, but none of that was part of the scene when KU, St. John's of Brooklyn, Santa Clara and Illinois got together on the University of Washington campus.

The night before the semifinal games, Bert Rose, sports information director at Washington, tossed a party for the visiting press -- in his home, and it wasn't crowded. Next afternoon, the Kansas media delegation toured Seattle, and found one of the treasures of the Northwest.

Her name was Marvann, star of the stage show in a rather seedy theater that only sports reporters of the era would seek out. She did her act on the top of an upright piano and, while it wasn't tap dancing or ballet, what she did was pretty spectacular. As a tribute to her talents, we all went back the next afternoon.

On the theater's screen, between stage shows, there was a cartoon featuring "Lips Fox," who talked a lot, and was funny. So, the tournament became dedicated to "Lips" and Marvann, and to this very day reporters who were there are likely to call each other "Lips" and talk about Marvann.

Getting to Seattle was no problem. The KU entourage flew by way of Minneapolis, and when coach Phog Allen leaned back and went to sleep, All-American Clyde Lovellette placed a fake flower in his hands, folded on his stomach, and made him look like he was ready for his final resting place.

I flew through Denver with Larry Ray, the sports voice of Kansas City, as my seat mate. He talked so much he was a preview of "Lips."

Jerry Barker, radio teammate of Max Falkenstien at Topeka's WREN, traveled the hard way. He was in a single-engine plane with Topeka contractor Charley Bennett and Phog Allen's son, Mitt, which ran into snow and had to make an emergency landing, with Barker at the controls, in tiny Laketown, Utah.

They left the plane there, took a bus to Salt Lake City, and flew an airliner the rest of the way.

It also was Barker who was an eye witness to what has to be the strangest story in the history of KU basketball. Very early on the morning of the semifinal game, Barker, up with the roosters, was in the lobby of the team hotel reading a newspaper when Lovellette walked in the front door, went to the elevator and up to his room.

Barker kept Lovellette's secret, and when it was revealed, years later, it wasn't very racy. It turned out Clyde had a fraternity brother who was a Coast Guard officer serving on a ship anchored somewhere near Seattle, and he invited Clyde to dinner on the ship. The story goes that when it came time for Clyde to leave it was too foggy to get him to shore, and he had to spend the night aboard. Clyde and KU have stuck to that story for 50 years, so it may be true.

Allen and his solid gold assistant, Dick Harp, who meant so much to the Seattle experience, are gone now, and so is Don Pierce, who set standards in all directions as KU's sports information director. He did things his way, some of them hard to believe even when you saw it, but the time I spent with him is unforgettable.