By Aidan Joly
On Friday, we saw a pair of college basketball games played at a pair of distinctly unique venues.
First, No. 2 Gonzaga beat Michigan 64-63 on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, an active Naval aircraft carrier in San Diego. It wasn’t the first time a college basketball game was played on the deck of a Naval ship, but it was the first in about a decade.
It was a cool event, that featured the start of the second half being delayed so the colors could be retired, which was moving to watch.
The second game featured Wisconsin beat Stanford 60-50 at American Family Field, home of MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers. It was undoubtedly a bizarre visual, but that was cool too.
We need more of this in college basketball. We need more unique venues like this.
MLB and the NHL have been doing it well for the past handful of years. You look at MLB’s Field of Dreams game where they drop a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. The NHL played a pair of games in the middle of the forest in Lake Tahoe a few years ago. They are cool, made-for-TV events that will capture the eyes of the casual fan.
A lot of leagues now do international games in order to expand their reach to fans outside of the U.S.. College basketball should be doing this too. We have an international game every once in a while, but why not make it a regular occurrence? NBA has done it, college should be able to too. Basketball is becoming so much of a global game, especially so in the past decade, so why not expose international fans to the college game too?
Some unique venues are to be had in the United States too. I’d love to see a game at New York City’s historic Rucker Park, although an NBA game there might happen first. I did think it might be tough with weather, but on the other hand, the NHL was able to find a way to do outdoor games in Dallas and Los Angeles. I’m sure there’s technology to keep court level at a comfortable temperature. The Basketball Tournament played a section of games at Rucker Park this past summer and it was awesome to watch.
We could play games at school’s football stadiums. Imagine a basketball game being played with 100,000 people in some cases, and doing it outside? It would be awesome.
We could do an event similar to the one in Milwaukee on Friday night and make it into a basketball/hockey doubleheader, maybe even with the same two schools playing, or at least one of them. Put one in the infield and one in the outfield and there you go. I think it’s great way to attract alumni bases, students and casual fans that might just go for one of the games and stay for the other because why not. This is something that could attract new fans.
Play games at the hundreds of legendary high school gyms across the country to pay tribute the grassroots of the game. Bryant and Manhattan were supposed to play a game at NYC’s historic Gauchos Gym this season, but plans for that seemed to fizzle out. There’s gyms all across the country, let’s utilize them.
One outside the box idea I had is playing games at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. If you want to get really crazy, play it on the court inside the hall. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be cool.
The gist of the point I’m trying to make is, less games at neutral sites where there isn’t much of a crowd because neither of the teams interest the locals. Let’s get some games at venues that will get people talking and interested in the game.
AJ Hoops 