When was the first NCAA game to be played in a football
stadium? What did the crowd think? How much were the tickets?
Watching the Duke vs. Utah basketball game on March 27,
2015, in NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, makes me wonder. When did the idea of putting an 82 foot court
in the middle of a stadium designed around a 120 yard field become a great
idea? Clearly it came about because of
ticket sales, but I don’t think I’m alone when positing that it’s not a great
look for college basketball to be played in football stadiums. So what’s the verdict?
A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that “From 1997 to 2013,
the NCAA required that all Final Four sessions take place in domed stadiums
with a minimum capacity of 40,000[.]” That’s not a great help. Anyone who watched the classic Duke vs. UNLV
final in 1992 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota knows that the
football venue was used before that.
We’ve got to go deeper into the Wiki-sphere.
Looking at the venues that have hosted NCAA regional finals,
conveniently collected by our friends at Wikipedia, it looks to me like the
Astrodome in Houston, Texas, the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, is the daddy of
NCAA tourney games played in football stadiums.[1] Per the site, the Houston Astrodome hosted the
NCAA Finals in 1971. This game clearly
followed the success of “[t]he Game of the Century between the University of
Houston Cougars and the UCLA Bruins took place at the Astrodome in 1968 before
a crowd of 52,963 — the record for the largest attendance ever at a basketball
game until 2003. The first National Collegiate Athletic Association regular
season game broadcast nationwide in prime time[.]” Apparently the NCAA Finals in 1971 drew an
average of 31,000 people per game and was the trend-setter for NCAA finals to
come. That seems fair, I guess, it’s a huge
sporting event and why wouldn’t someone with the means and the desire to see
the game want to go? I wonder what folks
at the time thought of going to a basketball game in a football stadium?
The NCAA itself acknowledges that “[t]he first Final Four to
be held at a dome was in 1971 at Houston’s Astrodome, but the temporary-seating
configuration was not available, which resulted in spectators not having clear
sightlines to the raised floor.” Any spectators at the ’71 Finals want to
weigh in?[2] Googling “1971 Finals Astrodome” led me to a
great article in the Houston Chronicle. Apparently if I thought that watching an NCAA
game on TV in a football stadium in 2015 was not the best, that had nothing on
the first attempt. “As Joe Jares, who
was covering for Sports Illustrated, wrote: ‘The Astrodome was far more
suitable for feeding Christians to lions than for basketball.’” Further it was reported, “[t]he elevated
court, intended by the NCAA to deliver the dramatic effect of a boxing ring,
instead left fans in many of the most prized expensive seats craning their
necks to see anything except the players' upper torsos at the opposite hoop and
kept the scrappier, ball-hawking players in a constant state of jeopardy.” I love those descriptions. They may be a bit dramatic, but they express,
which I like.
Just for fun, how much were the tickets for the 1971 NCAA
basketball finals? Found one on Ebay
showing a Mezzanine box for $8.00. I wasn’t able to find the exact seat map for
the Astrodome, but found from the Georgia Dome website that the Mezzanine level
is in between the first and second decks, maybe an idea of etymology would have
saved that trip, but those are the breaks.
Eight bucks seems like a fair price for that level of seats. What do they get today? Ticketmaster shows that seats close to the
middle level of the stadium are going to run you $2,300 or so. I tried to look on Stubhub but, not caring to
go watch a basketball game in a building the size of a blimp hangar I lost
interest.
[1] I’m
aware that the Chicago Bears played an indoor game at Chicago Stadium back in
the day, but the venue in my mind was never intended to be a football stadium
so I’m throwing the 1953 regional finals played there out.
[2] I am
writing this sort of stream of conscious, and am feeling a fair amount of glee
when I post the next couple of sentences.
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