The national pastime of complaining while being spoiled has enjoyed a revival this men’s March Madness, and now it’s left to the second-ever Final Four with all No. 1 seeds to stem the whining. Can Duke, Houston, Auburn and Florida present some sort of classic entry into the national consciousness that redefines 2025 as something other than a lack of upsets and overtimes and Cinderellas and other madnesses? When year-long titans hog all the Final Four spots and leave no space for any charming straggler, a save-best-for-last quality can take hold, for at least such a Final Four boasts the utmost quality.

Of the 39 previous Final Fours since the present seeding arrangement emerged in 1985, three had zero No. 1 seeds (including one lately, in 2023), 13 had one, 17 featured two, five had three and only one had all four. When that one arrived 17 long Aprils ago in 2008, also in San Antonio, it brought four teams — Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina, UCLA — with a combined record of 143-9. It got note mostly as a fine novelty, what with everyone’s madness appetite whetted from a delicious No. 10 seed in the Elite Eight, the Davidson of Stephen Curry, the all-time antithesis to the common nostalgic question, Whatever happened to him?

This tournament — with good games here and there but not even close to everywhere, and with only one overtime game, and with its chalk — might or might not serve as a groaning statement about the health of the game. It might reflect name, image and likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal, or it might exist as just one of those years that don’t gush vivid memories. The sample size remains wee, but you cannot expect a nation so adept at whining to refrain from whining when provided with any whining opening. Many whined, after all, two years ago when the tournament hatched a Final Four of a No. 4, two No. 5s and a No. 9.

To end the moaning one way or the other, here comes a Final Four for which Duke and Houston staved off an all-SEC event by shooing Alabama and Tennessee, lest the whining grow even more vociferous. These four remaining teams bring an aggregate record of 135-16, with Auburn’s 32-5 next to Florida’s 34-4 next to Duke’s 35-3 next to Houston’s 34-4. Houston has lost just once since Nov. 30 and went 10-0 on the road in the Big 12 plus 2-0 on pretty much the road at the Midwest Region in Indianapolis against Purdue and Tennessee. Duke has lost just once since Nov. 26. Auburn started 21-1, ebbed a bit and regathered itself; its run from a nine-point deficit Friday night against Michigan looked like all bloody wonder given its energy and its players smiling. Florida began this big bracket as the hip pick to win everything, and if Walter Clayton Jr.’s preposterous surge to overcome a nine-point deficit with three minutes left to beat Texas Tech can’t linger in memory, then surely the spoilage has set in more deeply than realized.

As the country sits around both watching and harrumphing, can these four yield something that’s really something?

That 2008 Final Four also managed to furnish one of that great March’s more long-standing firm memories, its title game. That journey involved Memphis’s 60-51 lead with 2:12 remaining and the great Derrick Rose ruling; Kansas’s push to within 60-56 by 1:49; Memphis’s four missed free throws in the closing 75 seconds of regulation; Mario Chalmers’s famous scramble to near the top of the arc for a tying three-pointer with two seconds left; John Calipari’s sigh of, “All I can say is I thought we were national champs”; and Bill Self’s marvel of, “You know, it’s one thing to win; it’s another thing to win the way we won.”

A year later, in a much-less-remembered Madness, two No. 1 seeds, one No. 2 and one No. 3 turned up at the Final Four for three games nobody much remembers after a tournament nobody much remembered, save for a few tangential thrills here and there. All four No. 1s had reached the Elite Eight. That’s similar to this, even as NIL and the transfer portal weren’t around back then while the country still plied an old system that doubled as a grand heap of lousy unfairness we all cherished.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Florida’s Thomas Haugh said nonetheless of reaching this Final Four, for he, too, had made huge contributions to one of the two great comebacks of this March (the other being Texas Tech itself against Calipari’s Arkansas).

“Yeah, it’s awesome, because just like you said, it’s the expectation almost, because of how it’s been here,” Duke’s Sion James said to a reporter who asked about Duke’s unforgiving environment, one year after an Elite Eight loss to North Carolina State seemed crushing. “But it’s not a guarantee by any means. Just because we go to Duke or play for Duke doesn’t mean we’re going to be in the Final Four every year. It’s a grind.” (Note: Mike Krzyzewski made only a peerless 13 Final Fours in his 42 seasons, the layabout.)

“I felt going in that we were hotter,” Auburn Coach Bruce Pearl said of the Elite Eight game with Michigan State. “I felt we had better players. That’s not a criticism at all. I told our guys right now, we haven’t beaten a team yet that I thought was better than us.”

“The Purdue game [in the Sweet 16] was kind of like a road game,” Houston Coach Kelvin Sampson said. “The Tennessee game [in the Elite Eight] was kind of like a road game, too, with their fans [in Indianapolis], but our kids are so calloused to that so kudos to them.”

Now they join the deeply calloused in the Alamodome and play Sampson’s third Final Four and his second at Houston in Texas just three blazing hours across Interstate 10 from home. Now they’re a year-long stalwart among year-long stalwarts. Now they’re in there with the stars, be they Duke’s Cooper Flagg, a wonder everybody wanted while he remained 17 (until this past December); or Auburn’s Johni Broome, whom nobody much knew when he played at Morehead State; or Florida’s Clayton, whom nobody much knew when he played for Rick Pitino at Iona. In an SEC-heavy year, they’ll see if this Final Four can breathe as a parallel to those two SEC risers, Broome and Clayton: one that can propel this tournament from shadows to shine.