Can someone please tell the NCAA that the winter college season ends Monday night, when the men’s basketball championship is decided?You’d think the NCAA would know this, but apparently it needs to be reminded, because we have to wait another week before we know who the national men’s hockey champion will be.That’s right. The NCAA men’s hockey semifinal is Thursday, April 10 ? with the final two nights later. How silly is this, especially since by then the NHL will have already begun its playoffs?For most people, the college winter sports season ends Monday. Baseball has begun (and it doesn’t help matters very much, too, that MLB starts its season on the heels of winter instead of waiting until there’s at least a hint of spring). The seasons are overlapping beyond control, and here’s men’s hockey ? sitting there like the guest at a party who just won’t leave.I’m sure it’s a challenge to fit the men’s and women’s basketball final weekends, as well as the men’s hockey spectacle, in so that everybody gets a prime-time gig out of the deal. But why that means hockey has to go until the middle of April is beyond comprehension.(For that matter, it seems to defy logic that the women are shoved into a Tuesday-night slot that pretty much guarantees that fans totally basketballed-out from the men’s championship will probably do the shopping, pay the bills, vacuum the rugs, and generally ignore what could be a pretty darn good game.)If the NCAA feels that men’s hockey is the ugly stepbrother of the system, it has no one to blame but itself for that. The men’s basketball tournament is hyped beyond belief from about the beginning of February through the entire month of March ? but you barely notice they’re playing hockey. That could be because there are entire parts of the country where people hear the word “hockey” and ask, “What’s that?”There’s nothing wrong with that. Hockey is not a nationwide phenomenon and it never has been, despite attempts by the NHL and now the NCAA to introduce it to areas that want no part of it. It’s never going to catch on in locales where ponds don’t freeze over in the winter, and it costs too much to outfit a kid, and rent ice. That automatically eliminates a significant segment of the population.But that’s no reason why those of us who love college hockey (and at that level, the game is 10 times better than whatever the NHL is offering) have to wait two weeks from the regional semifinals and finals to the Frozen Four – so-called because the NCAA decided it wanted to compete with itself and limit use of the term “Final Four” to basketball.(Of course, that’s just one more reason the NCAA should be flogged. What a condescending gesture! Why not call it Hockey’s Final Four and allow it to play with the big boys?)So, after all these moves that cry out that “hockey’s not on the same level as men’s or women’s basketball,” the NCAA wants to wait a week to ensure better ratings for its Frozen Four. The only way that could be an issue is if you put the hockey final on at the same time as the men’s basketball championship, and even the NCAA isn’t that dumb.But there has to be some way to put enough distance between men’s hockey and women’s basketball so that both can have their time to shine this weekend without the whole thing going until the middle of April.And if the men’s hockey and women’s basketball overlap even a little, I don’t see it as a huge problem because I’m guessing that the fan bases aren’t 100 percent compatible with each other. In fact, I’ll do even better. There aren’t a lot of casual college hockey fans, nor are there a tremendous amount of casual women’s basketball fans (the only reason why men’s basketball gets the coverage it does is because everyone and his brother is in an office pool). So I just don’t see the possibility of the two events tripping over one another as a huge issue.Let’s end the season with the crown jewel: the men’s championship game. That way, those who win their pools can cou