I loved the thought of fans from 68 teams converging in the same city for the entire March Madness schedule in a non-COVID world. As an attending fan, it would be awesome to be able to pick and choose which games to attend on a given day. I’m not sure how many cities could handle all 68 teams coming to town, but I’m encouraged that they may consider it for Sweet 16 and beyond in future years.
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I hate this. LA/SoCal usually gets a region and it is an awesome birthday tradition for me
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We got lucky 2 years in a row with the Staples Center and Michigan being in the West. Well, sucks I had to watch them get absolutely slaughtered by Texas Tech, but man those games against Texas A&M and FSU were incredible.
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As a SoCal resident born in March—YES! Need more Michigan games out here. I only got to go to the FSU game but it was rad. Also—the UCLA game at Pauley in 2016 (?) that was an absolute shootout in the first half. So fun until they ran away with it. Love the SoCal fanbase—I can’t walk around LA with Michigan gear on without at least one person giving me a “go blue”!!
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Keeping Sat-Tues for the sweet 16 and elite 8 would rely on having those teams in the same city as the final 4, otherwise the turnaround time from Tuesday to Saturday is really difficult. I would bet the ratings project to be really good with not having as many overlapping sweet 16 games. Cash makes these decisions in the end.
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Keeping the first round games Thursday/Friday and second round Saturday/Sunday at several sites would be good. I think the sweet sixteen and the rest of the tournament starting the next Saturday in one city would be fantastic for fans. Basically a city would only need one extra arena besides the Final Four site to accommodate the games.
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The other thing is that in non-pandemic conditions, guys are expected to go to class part of the week. That wasn’t an issue this year with everything online but probably would be next year. Only a team whose school is on spring break could just stay there all week.
Meh. You wouldn’t get as many fans to the games. Spreading out the first two rounds has the advantage of putting some games at least within driving distance of more fans, an important bit of access that a single-site-for-63-games format would lose. Just imagine if Michigan has a #1 seed team and the host location is… Phoenix. Instead of a couple of rounds in Cleveland or Chicago or something any fans who want to attend games have to go to Arizona, and they either have to stay or make the trip three separate times.
I guess I’m more meh about combining the regionals and the FF in that fashion. Still, I long for a tournament game to be played close enough to me to go.
If the whole tourney is in Phoenix, we start a GoFundMe for @BigBoutros and all the other west coast Michigan fans and make sure they have enough to hold down the fort for three weeks. Fire the UM money canon. Easy peasy
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