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Find out more about Jacob: Jacob is a college sports reporter who currently writes for SI.com's Extra Mustard. He has previously worked for CBS College Sports and SI on Campus. In the last two seasons Jacob has covered over 200 college basketball games. |
Confused friends always ask me why I like college basketball so much more than professional basketball. "Why wouldn't you just watch the best players in world?" they ask.
My answer is simple. I don't watch basketball because of the talent level. I watch basketball because of a feeling it gives me. The kind of feeling you get sitting on bleachers in an overcrowded gym that smells like sweaty socks and next to you straight-A students scream and yell and foam at the mouth like ravenous beasts. I love watching two squads of amateur athletes compete not for money, but for pride. And also because half their family is sitting up in the 15th row.
Don't get me wrong. Talent level is a factor in my enjoyment of basketball. However, it is not the only factor. Setting and atmosphere matter just as much.
But with college basketball bringing in millions of dollars, there's a growing trend -- especially during the NCAA Tournament -- to play these amateur basketball games in massive, professional arenas. And not even basketball arenas, but football arenas converted to basketball arenas.
Just recently, the NCAA announced that the 2014 men's basketball Final Four will be played at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2009 and will have a seating capacity of 80,000.
Do you know what it's like to watch a college basketball game in an enormous football stadium? It is the equivalent of watching a ping pong match in an airplane hangar.
Upcoming NCAA Final Four locations:
Last March, I was at Ford Field in Detroit -- capacity 80,000 -- covering the NCAA Midwest Regional Games for CBS College Sports. Sitting in press row, I had a great view of the action. So did LeBron James, who was sitting one row behind me. But as I looked around, I couldn't help but notice that the arena felt different, like all this space had killed the vibe.
The student section barely existed. The band's music got lost in the cavernous space. And most of the fans were so far away from the court, they looked like dots.
Before the Davidson-Wisconsin tip-off, I wandered up to the upper-deck seats to check out the view. Sure enough, up in the nosebleeds, the only way to see the actual basketball was with binoculars. And the fieldhouse at that layer of the stratosphere was so quiet, like the sound from the court couldn't quite reach the upper deck.
This wasn't the college basketball that I loved. This was some diluted corporate-sponsored entity that was killing its product for ticket sales. And what bothered me the most is that it was only going to get worse. Ford Field will host this season’s Final Four on April 4-6. Next season the Final Four will be at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and in 2011, it will be played at Reliant Stadium in Houston.
I know that hosting basketball games at professional football arenas allows the NCAA to sell more tickets. And I know that it allows more people to go to the games and provides more exposure for the players. But it kills the college basketball experience for the fans.
OK, so it's not feasible to play Tournament games at small college gyms. The demand for tickets would be too high. Let's at least play these games at arenas that are meant for basketball, like they do during conference tournaments and the first rounds of the NCAA Tournament. When you put a basketball court in a football stadium, even if you raise it five feet off the ground as organizers did in Detroit last year, you lose the intimacy that makes college hoops special.
In the end, it's all about common sense. We don't play football games in basketball arenas, so let's not play basketball games in football arenas.
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