Both the Big Eight Basketball Tournament and the NCAA Final Four will be played, as you know, in the same arena – Kansas City’s Kemper by the Kaw.
What you’ll see if you’re inside for the former won’t be the same, though, as what you’ll see if you’re lucky enough to have a ticket to the latter.
Except for the new scoreboard, that is.
“I was down there today and they were showing videos on it,” Tim Allen, the Big Eight service bureau director, told me on Tuesday afternoon. “It’s huge. It’s similar to the ones you see in ultra-modern arenas with video screens on all four sides and enough room to list all five players with their points and fouls.”
This weekend’s Big Eight Tournament will provide a shakedown cruise for the massive electronic replacement for Jud’s Dud. You remember the old lunker that failed to run off 20-odd seconds when Kansas escaped Michigan State in the NCAA Midwest Regional finals two years ago, much to the displeasure of Michigan State head coach Jud Heathcoate.
Certainly, by the time the NCAA Final Four semis are played on Saturday, April 2, all the glitches and gremlins will have gone the way of, well…the floor.
Traditionally, the NCAA breaks out a brand new floor for every Final Four, then sells it as a barely used commodity. The new floor goes in on the Monday before the semis, then will be put on the market as a prestige item for the school that wants to own the wood from the 50th NCAA Final Four.
Fans at the Final Four will also see plenty of banners they won’t see hanging from Kemper’s erector set ceiling this weekend. In fact, the metal framework might not even be visible because of all the banners – 26 honoring past NCAA champions and 64 more feting the teams that qualified for this year’s field.
The seats? Well, of course, the NCAA won’t be ripping out those dark-blue theater seats….but it will remove many of them on the east side in order to accommodate the horde of print media-types from all over the nation.
“I issue a flood of credentials,” says the Big Eight’s Allen, “but nothing compared to them. It’s maybe a three to one ratio. The Final Four media section will extend back to what they call the rodeo wall. All of those seats will be removed.”
What that means, naturally, is that the Big Eight Tournament will be able to list a higher attendance than the Final Four.
“Theirs will be close to 16,000,” noted Allen. “while ours is closer to 17,000.”
I’m sure you realize, too, that a large group of volunteers known as the Kansas City Organizing Committee will do everything from meet the teams at KCI to staging a non-denominational Easter morning church service in a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency.
Among those volunteers, by the way, are several Lawrence folk – including Maupintour’s Walt Houk and former Kansas athletic director Monte Johnson. Houk will serve as host captain for the East Regional champion; Johnson for the Southeast Regional champion.
here are some of the things the KCOC will provide the four teams that make it to Kemper:
-On-call limousine service for four “VIP members of the official party.”
-Personalized mementos for 22 players, coaches and whoever from each school.
-A large bus on call from the time the team arrives until the time it departs.
-Four full-sized automobiles for use by each team party as it sees fit (Players can’t use them, however).
-Free bus service from the team hotel to Kemper Arena for accompanying fans.
-Nice weather (The KCOC suggest bringing a sweater, jacket and perhaps a raincoat, though).
