The changes the COVID-19 virus has forced upon the sports world involve not only the way games have been played and attended but also how they’ve been covered by the media.
The far-west-side club will also receive new basketballs and backpacks full of school supplies and Degree deodorant and antiperspirant products.
The Indianapolis Colts are among the 50 companies that have donated money to the Indy Championships Fund to help bring three huge sports events to Indianapolis: the NCAA Tournament underway now, the College Football Playoff National Championship in 2022 and the NBA All-Star Game in 2024. But the Colts have done more than donate. Pete Ward, the team’s chief operating officer, is on the fund’s board as well as the board of the Indiana Sports Corp., which is coordinating the effort.
Social isolation effects will be compounded by an isolation bubble with a reduced number of fans, restricted zones of access and restricted contact with family, friends and spectators.
“Hoosiers” made Hinkle Fieldhouse famous by Hollywood standards, but in the college basketball world, the home court for Butler University basketball was already a star.
Strict limits on crowd sizes in Mackey Arena at Purdue University for the NCAA tourney will dampen the tourism impact, but the games are still the biggest events to hit the West Lafayette area since the pandemic started.
The teams had barely landed in Texas when complaints of unequal treatment in the women’s and men’s NCAA basketball tournaments roared over social media posts.
Texas Southern beat Mount St. Mary’s 60-52 in the NCAA opener, while Drake topped Wichita State for its first NCAA win in 50 years. Also, Norfolk State survived Appalachian State 54-53.
They’re not underdogs. They’re hardly unknown. What they are is a group of new teams with well-recognized names in the NCAA Tournament, and they’re hoping to keep making life hard on some of the programs that have long had a stranglehold on March.
NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt responded to athletes’ renewed demands for compensation Thursday by saying he supports and encourages their right to free speech within the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament’s rules.
Along with a morale boost, the NCAA Tournament will serve as a major economic boost for our downtown businesses and outlying areas.
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.
From the moment fans land in Indianapolis, there’s no denying the tournament’s excitement—with prominent March Madness signage placed throughout the terminal, pop-up retail shops with apparel and memorabilia, local artwork and live musicians. It’s genuinely a pre-game to the experience in downtown Indy and throughout the host sites.
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 is giving fans an opportunity to buy cardboard cutouts of themselves to be sent to the games at a cost of $100 apiece, with a portion of the purchase price going to the United Way of Central Indiana’s COVID-19 relief effort.
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.”
