This is life at a basketball tournament being played in a pandemic. The unspoken message: If players came to Indianapolis hoping for fun and games, they are not in the right place—at least not until tip-off.
Tony Hinkle left behind a chance to play for the 1921 and 1922 World Series baseball champions, a team that won four consecutive pennants. All he did at Butler instead was change the sport of basketball—forever.
Waiting in Indianapolis for the tournament to start, some college basketball stars on Wednesday tweeted #NotNCAAProperty as a reference to the ongoing fight to earn money for things like sponsorship deals, online endorsement and personal appearances.
All those delays for COVID-19 cases that 27 of the 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament went through during the season could end up benefitting them now that they’ve arrived in Indianapolis.
The 68-team men’s tournament, which starts Thursday, is usually staged in 14 cities across the country. Here’s how Indianapolis plans to pull off the whole thing all by itself.
Hinkle, Wooden, Knight and Keady form the Mount Rushmore of basketball innovation in Indiana, where successful coaches have spent more than a century testing novel concepts, breaking barriers and polishing philosophies before introducing them to America.
The NCAA said only one of the officials tested positive for the virus, but the other five were “identified as exposure risks due to prolonged close contact.”
Despite the current gridlock, NCAA President Mark Emmert said he is still hopeful the NCAA will have uniform national name, image and likeness rules in place before the start of next football season.
Six of the arenas that helped create Indiana’s basketball legacy will go on full display when the NCAA Tournament tips off later this week.
Athletic Director Scott Dolson said Monday afternoon that the university had secured “private philanthropic funding … for all transition costs and obligations related to the change in leadership.” That’s expected to include a $10.3 million buyout clause in Miller’s contract.
Teams must undergo a quarantine and testing period when they arrive in Indianapolis—and no one from the schools was allowed to make the trip without seven consecutive days of negative tests.
Forty-six teams had arrived in Indianapolis for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament by late Sunday, and each was given a COVID-19 test upon arrival.
IBJ columnist and investigative reporter Greg Andrews explains why the rights to March Madness are so valuable even as the media landscape changes quickly. And he tells host Mason King why it’s unlikely that the NCAA or its broadcast partners will want to renegotiate the deal—which runs through 2032.
Illinois and Ohio State are among nine Big Ten teams to win spots in the tournament, the most of any conference.
Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan earned the top seeds. Kansas and Virginia, two programs hit with COVID-19 breakouts over the past week, made it into the bracket released Sunday by the NCAA selection committee.
The teams are playing for an automatic bid in the NCAA tournament, although both teams are expected to make the field.
Hundreds of people—many of them in town for the Big Ten men’s and women’s tournaments—turned Georgia Street into a destination again, hitting the bars, riding scooters and listening to bands.
Big conference tournament games wound up as glum walkovers when teams withdrew due to COVID cases, leaving the question of whether the big bracket might suffer some similar fate, despite a bubble in Indianapolis.
The media landscape is in the throes of dramatic change that creates uncertainty but also adds to the value of events like the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that attract huge live audiences.
Construction of a convention center, a basketball arena, a football stadium, to start. Countless audacious moves by a long line of political and civic leaders put the city in the position for an historic achievement.
