Monday, March 18, 2024

Final four venues have changed over time

March 31, 2015

The first ever NCAA Final Four took place in 1939 in front of 5,500 fans at Patten Gymnasium in Evanston, Illinois when the Oregon Ducks beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 46-33. Since then, the Final Four venues have changed dramatically to accommodate tens of thousands of fans, including last year's Final Four in AT&T Stadium when 79,444 showed up to break the all-time attendance record for a college basketball game.

This year the Final Four will take place in Lucas Oil Stadium -- home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. It wasn't always this way, though. What follows is a timeline of how the Final Four's crowds got to be the way they are today.

1940s

The 1940s were a time where Madison Square Garden reined supreme when it came to basketball. From 1943-1950, the ~18,000 seat arena played host to seven championship games. But the uncovering of the point-shaving scandals of CCNY and other Bronx-area teams in the early 1950s saw the end of an era and the reduction of its use as a championship hosting venue for college basketball.

1950s-1970s

For the next several decades, the Final Four was still mostly played in old-time basketball arenas such as Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium or Louisville's 18,000-plus capacity Freedom Hall. However, in the middle of legendary head coach John Wooden and UCLA's dominating run in the 1960s and 70s, a crowd of 52,963 at Houston's Astrodome watched Houston beat UCLA, 71-69 in a 1968 game since dubbed as "The Game of the Century." A few years later, the Astrodome played host to the 1971 Final Four.

1970s-1996

The next few decades saw a mixture of championship hosting venues -- everything from the 17,327 capacity Pit in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1983 -- to numerous trips to the massive 60,000-plus capacity Superdome in New Orleans. However, 1996 remains the last time the Final Four was played in an arena rather than a dome -- the 19,229 capacity Continental Airlines Arena within the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey.

1997 - present

Since then, the NCAA has required that the Final Four venue be played at a dome with a seating capacity of at least 40,000. While this has limited the number of cities that can host the Final Four, it has seen the event play in front of mammoth crowds at places such as Detroit's Ford Field (72,922), Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium (70,930) and Arlington, Texas' AT&T Center. There has been outcry of late to make the move back to arenas but current and future football stadiums in Phoenix, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Indianapolis have already been locked up for the years 2017-2021.

Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.

Discussion

Share and discuss “Final four venues have changed over time” on social media.