Smallish Butler University (enrollment 4,600) earned a trip to this weekend's NCAA basketball Sweet 16 by dispatching a giant last week, the University of Pittsburgh (enrollment 28,000). It was a promising follow-up to their near conquest of powerful Duke in last year's championship game, but for some of us in Butler's home state of Indiana it was a bittersweet experience.  By Gary Farr, Orion Pictures  Gene Hackman in the 1986 film "Hoosiers."  By Gary Farr, Orion Pictures  Gene Hackman in the 1986 film "Hoosiers."  That's because we gave up giant-killing in the late 1990s, trading in our top-to-bottom high school basketball tournament for a class system based on school size. It might as well have been yesterday, as the sting of this decision has burned Indiana basketball fans every year since.  Our potential Cinderellas only play each other these days, and big schools don't have to worry about being knocked on their benchwarmers by scrappy little schools so far out in the bush that they hitch-hike to Larry Bird's French Lick for a taste of urban sophistication. This is, after all, the state where tiny Milan (that's MY-lun, enrollment 161) beat powerful Muncie Central (enrollment 1,600) for the state basketball championship. That was the game and season that inspired the 1986 movie Hoosiers, starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper.  In Indiana, audiences will still line up to see the movie, but just 12 years after it was released we were forced to watch as the tourney it was based on was dismantled, ostensibly so more kids could win championships. The move was ill-advised. Now instead of one big tournament bursting with intensity, competition, and attendance we have four little tournaments that are, well, not so much.  In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.  Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.  We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.  I saw my first Indiana sectional basketball game in 1968, and came away wide-eyed. The gym was packed and every basket sparked a roar that seemed to suck the breath right out of you. You couldn't have kept a candle alight in that gym; every atom of oxygen was going into sheer volume.  Finally a hard foul in the final seconds emptied the bleachers, spilling a week's worth of basketball frenzy onto the floor. Local folklore for years afterward had a local police officer wading through the roiling crowd carrying a kicking teenager under each arm.  And that was just the sectional. A couple of years before, the local team actually made it to the Final Four in far-off Indianapolis, tantamount to a space shot for our little town. For years, a near life-size team photo of that squad looked out from a place of honor in the local hang-out, the players eternally young, fit and prematurely serious in their home whites and Converse All-Stars.  A few years ago I spoke with the owner of that restaurant, the son of the original proprietor. "I grew up with that picture on the wall," he told me. He can still name most of the players from that 1965 team. Pretty much everybody in town could, even years later. That likely wouldn't be the case today. "When you have four or five state champions it's not the same," he said.  He was right, but the trouble is not that we have too many state champs, it's that we don't have any. Not really. Which of the four separate champs to be crowned this weekend will have bragging rights for all of Indiana high school basketball?  Maybe it's all just sports. But class basketball is hardly the only example of our modern bad habit of settling for the appearance of success: McMansions in foreclosure; honor-roll students who need remediation to manage basic college work; home-run champs confessing steroid use before Congress, which has its own issues of reality and unreality.  Of course it's terribly unfair to put class basketball in the dock with Congress. I have family members who sincerely believe that class basketball just gives the little guy an even break. But others would break your nose for calling them a "little guy." Which puts class basketball alongside grade inflation, affirmative action, and scoreless sports leagues in our ongoing grudge match between equality of opportunity and equality of result.  It's also emblematic of another modern American dispute: the one between ordinary people with a fairly traditional set of priorities and an insulated class of bureaucrats with their own ideas of what's best for us.  In Indiana, the class basketball system was instituted in 1998 by a state athletic board made up of high school administrators. They were unmoved by loud protests then, and have remained so as the once-storied Indiana high school basketball tournament has dwindled into irrelevance.  Go ahead and complain that the tourney's former values of excellence, competition, and grace in victory and defeat have been stripped out and replaced by a new creed built around the greatest good for the greatest number. "You say that like it's a bad thing," they'll answer.  Meanwhile, this weekend Butler is facing Wisconsin (enrollment 42,000), and after that, who knows? Maybe a trip home and the eternal wait for next year. Or maybe Kentucky, Ohio State, even a return match against mighty Duke. There are no guarantees beyond the satisfaction of giving everything in the attempt, and that is its own reward.  If they win, like Milan they'll still be talked about decades from now by anybody who knows anything about basketball. If they lose, well, the same thing, actually.  And what about our proliferating Indiana high school champs? None of this is their fault, of course. But years from now I'm afraid the only place they'll be household names will be in their own households. I don't see a movie in it.  Daniel Lee is a freelance writer in Indiana. He blogs at www.granitesentry.com.  , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor  . 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David can oust Goliath, and school size matters not. It's sports perfection. So why did Indiana ditch its 'Hoosiers'-inspired prep tournament?...