I remember in the late ‘70s when Al McGuire was doing college basketball games on NBC and often talked about how one day college basketball games would be played in domed arenas and draw 50,000 fans.
As the late coach and commentator looked down on Monday night’s national title game he was likely beaming at the 72,000-plus at Detroit’s Ford Field to take-in UNC and Michigan State. Granted, that smile would turn to a frown as he saw a game that turned-out to be a clunker.
But the fact that college basketball’s Final Four has moved exclusively to domes in recent years and has been drawing better than 60,000 fans since the ’82 championship was played in the Super Down in New Orleans really lends some perspective to how far along the whole thing has come.
When UCLA won John Wooden’s last title in 1975 the games were played in a very familiar place for the Bruins: Pauley Pavilion, their home court in L.A. Back in the day the NCAA wasn’t sure what kind of turnout the games would get so campus sites were used pretty much throughout the tournament.
The appeal of the event went to a new level 30 years ago when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird took their respective teams (Michigan State and Indiana State) on magical runs in the ’78-’79 season and eventually collided in the national title game, a contest that proved anti-climatic as Michigan State rolled.
However, it galvanized the NCAA Tourney as an “event”. From that point forward the field expanded from 40 to 48 teams then to 53, 64, and 65. CBS jumped-in in 1982 and has paid billions since.
The fact that more than 100 schools have jumped up to Division I in order to get that chance to get to the Big Dance gives you an idea of the impact of getting to the NCAA Tourney has from the money side of things and for exposure.
And from being concerned about filling-up college buildings that held between 8,000 and 12,000 they can now get more than 70,000 to buy tickets for a Final Four and a championship game.
And a guy who sounded a little funny to most and was a little off the wall both as a coach and commentator saw it coming before most others did.
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