Home sites for the first two rounds, guaranteeing good crowds and rewarding teams for good seasons.
Two sites for Regionals is perfect, though it would be nice if they were in places that were easy and relatively cheap to fly to. Even the men have trouble selling the third and fourth rounds at four sites, so this makes much more sense.
The downside, on one hand, is that a team could wind up with homecourt advantage in the Regionals due only to the fact that the school was willing to bid high enough to host, but the upside is that a home site will boost the crowd for all the games.
What I don't like is the SuperRegional one-west-one-east location dynamic. That West location unless maybe it's Vegas I imagine would still be a hard draw for those east of the Rockies, which will be a vast majority of everyone. Instead, there should be one east location and then one either west or midwest location.
And then you have 2026 where one SuperRegional site is Sacramento and the Final Four that year is in Phoenix. That just seems ill-advised, even if both cities are perennially warm locations.
Meanwhile, none of the sites are scheduled to be held in Vegas, which is bizarre.
I think it'd be okay if all the later-round Tourney locations were east of the Rockies some years.
I hadn't looked at the actual sites ... in some ways, I think it would be great to have permanent sites, with Las Vegas being one and maybe Atlanta (cheaper flights?) the other. My sense is that it's hard for fans of particular schools to suddenly buy plane tickets and get hotel rooms after the second round, but with a permanent site, fans of the game as a whole could get cheaper flights and rooms in advance.
Post by Cardinal22 on Aug 23, 2022 16:23:12 GMT -5
I wonder if some of the thinking around Vegas is that the Pac-12, MWC, and some other conferences already host their tourneys there -- so it seems challenging to do host both in such a short span of time?
Perhaps not, but I wonder if that's in line with some of the thinking.
Though I haven't been to Vegas for any of those events (I really hate that town) everything I've heard from people who've gone is positive. It's easy to get there, there's plenty to do and it becomes a "scene."