SAN ANTONIO -- When it comes to college hoops, it seems a number of fans want to have their basketball and dunk it, too. Or something like that.

For three days now I've combed the streets of San Antonio during the Final Four festivities, asking attendees young and old about the current state of men's college basketball.

Is the game better than it used to be?

How's the coaching?

What are the biggest problems?

After a season in which we've had the Kelvin Sampson scandal, several coaches looking for their next big pay day and players getting paid, I thought I'd sit down in front of my laptop with a wide variety of topics to discuss.

But that's not the case. At least not this trip.

Of the 50 to 60 folks I struck up a conversation with this weekend -- believe it or not -- nearly all of them had basically the same two things to say:

1. The players today are better athletes.

2. I wish the players would stay.

In fact, I kept hearing the same verse of the same song so often, I was beginning to wonder if I was just running into the same people.

But then, when you see a team like Ohio State go from the national championship game a year ago to the NIT after losing its two prized freshmen, or UCLA and Memphis get all the way to the Final Four riding the backs of rookies, you know exactly what they're talking about. The players are a lot better. And because of that, the NBA's calling them earlier.

That's not an indictment of either entity. It's simply another by-product of a culture in fast-forward. The acceleration of technology means that generations span a few years rather than a few decades. Athletes are ranked nationally before middle school. And monikers such as "Chosen One" and "The Truth" are stitched on onesies.

Stick around? Yeah, right. That's like career suicide.

Infatuation is a fleeting thing. Mike Conley Jr. had to come out last year: otherwise, Derrick Rose or Eric Gordon would have taken his place as the NBA's next must-have point guard. It's nice that Stephen Curry is staying in school, but chances are, come next tournament, the nation will have found a new media darling to coddle. And barring a 30-points-per-game season or a Davidson appearance in the Final Four, Curry's junior year will be viewed as a step back. Or worse, he could actually take a step back, like Georgetown center Roy Hibbert did this season.

None of this is news, of course. Still, it's just fascinating how fans are helplessly and begrudgingly accepting this new permutation of the men's game.

"When I heard about Brook and Robin Lopez coming to Stanford as top-five recruits, I hoped they would at least stay until their sophomore season," said Noah Weiss, a Cardinal fan attending his first Final Four. "They did, but that hope was already a concession to the state of the game. You can't get too attached for long to any great player.

"Ten years ago, I would have had four years of the Lopez brothers holding down the paint to look forward to. It's no surprise that the two most exciting tournament championship teams of the past decade were filled with upperclassmen who stayed longer than anyone expected: [Raymond] Felton, [Sean] May and [Rashad] McCants for UNC, and [Joakim] Noah, [Corey] Brewer and [Al] Horford for Florida."

This is the 11th Final Four that Gary Hogrefe has attended. He and his wife Connie, who has been to five Final Fours, say while the fundamentals seem to have been traded in for highlight-worthy manuevers, the biggest irritation is the speed of the revolving door.

"It's just harder to build a rivalry, to build a following when the faces are changing as often as they do," said Gary, a Florida Gators fan. "When all of our guys came back that was huge, just because we knew them. Then to win it again just proved what a great team they were. That's the problem: so few guys care about that kind of stuff. They just want their dunk to be on 'SportsCenter' and then leave."

But in true college basketball fashion, Gary, Connie and their good friends Kathleen and Ted Fitzgeorge showed up in San Antonio, despite not having a dog in the fight. As a matter of fact, they don't even have tickets to the fight.

"We just love the atmosphere. There's nothing like it," Connie says.

No, there really isn't. Which is why, no matter what changes the game goes through, those who love it will always continue to do so -- whether or not those who play the game feel the same way.

LZ Granderson is a Page 2 columnist and a senior writer with ESPN The Magazine, as well as a regular on ESPN's "First Take." He's also host of the Page 2 video series, "LZ's Cafe." He can be reached at l_granderson@yahoo.com.