Mike Celizic

It’s not easy winning an NCAA basketball title, and no one knows it better than the four men who are spending their week watching film until their vision blurs and trying to find the magic formula to win just two more basketball games.

They are the coaches of the Final Four teams, George Mason's Jim Larranaga, LSU's John Brady, UCLA's Ben Howland and Florida's Billy Donovan. And as much as their players have to gain from winning, each of them has even more at stake.

Win the tournament as a coach, and you’re an instant hero, joining a very short list of live human beings who have done that. But the real payoff for winning is that if you win it once, you have a chance to win it twice. If you can do that, you instantly get to add the honorific “Great” to the front end of your name.

But as much as all of them have to win, none of them can gain as much as Billy Donovan. None of them can lose as much, either.

That’s a lot to say, but it’s true. Howland came to UCLA from Pitt trailing a load of high hopes of recapturing past glory. Brady is well ensconced at LSU, where getting to the Final Four is a high achievement. Larranaga is playing with house money, the custodian of the biggest Cinderella the tournament has seen in maybe forever.

But Donovan is the boy wonder, the kid who made Rick Pitino famous — and vice versa — 19 years ago at Providence, a 40-year-old coach with 12 years under his belt and more victories than Pitino or even Mike Krzyzewski had at the same age. Only two men have played in the Final Four, been an assistant coach in one and coached in one, and Donovan is one of those two.

He’s been at Florida for 10 years, recruiting prime athletes, going to the tournament, getting to the final in 2000 and racking up wins. That’s long enough for the wonder to be not that he’s so young and doing so much, but that he hasn’t done more.

Win this one, and Donovan cashes in the young stud card. Win it and he’s riding a monster wave that can carry him through the next decade. Win it and he’s on his way to being called one of the greatest ever.

Lose it, and listen to people ask why someone with that much talent can’t win it all.

It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.

March Madness slide shows AP   Title time Best images from Florida-UCLA in men’s championship game. AP   Turtle wax Top images from Maryland’s overtime win over Duke for its first NCAA title. Reuters   The Final Four See images of Saturday's games where four teams become two. Getty Images   Eight is great Click to see images from the Elite Eight round of the 2006 NCAA tournament. Getty Images   Super Sweet 16 The best images from NCAA Tournament's second weekend. AP   Round 1 & 2 Best images from opening weekend of Big Dance.

When you look at how many years it took coaches like Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim to finally win a title, and when you think of someone like Dean Smith, rightly called one of the greatest coaches ever, and realize he won just two NCAA titles, you get an idea of just how hard the task ahead of these four men is.

We act as if Jim Calhoun has been winning NCAA trophies every other year at UConn, and he’s had a lot of good teams, not least of which was this year’s edition, but he has just two of them. Boeheim, Williams and Michigan State's Tom Izzo have one each. Mike Krzyzewski, who generally gets credit for being the greatest coach alive, has three.  Rick Pitino, who gives himself credit for being better than Coach K, has been to the Final Four five times and has one lonesome title, the same number as Lute Olson and Jerry Tarkanian.

And don’t forget Bobby Knight, who was thought of in his day the way Krzyzewski (three titles) is today.

What I’m saying is that you don’t win an NCAA title just because people call you a great coach. And even if you actually are a great coach, you may have to work most of your life to win one, and you can count yourself as fortunate as a lottery winner to win as many as two.

So, if it’s multiple titles you’re after, the best way to reach that goal is to start young. It’s a simple matter of opportunity and math. You can’t win your second until you win your first, and given the enormous difficulty of winning the tournament in any one year, the earlier you get that first, the more time you have to get the second and start working on the third.

MEN’S NCAA TOURNAMENT RESULTS Championship game Florida 73, UCLA 57 Final Four games Florida 73, George Mason 58 UCLA 59, LSU 45

This is where Donovan has so very, very much to gain. He’s not yet a great coach; he’s too young to be called that and his teams, while long on talent, have fallen in the tournament earlier than they should too many times. He made the Final Four and then the title game in 2000, but didn’t win. In ten years at Florida, this is his first year back to the Final Four.

But he’s still just 40 years old. Win a title at a big school when you’re 40, and you can be assured of quality recruits for a long time to come. Donovan already is a master at landing talented players. Think what he’ll be able to do if he can show prospects a championship banner hanging from the rafters of the gym.