The NCAA Final Fours have been played in football dome stadia for over a decade, but the places that have them are in "fly-over country." Here's the NCAA championships boss Mark Lewis.
"I don't know where this will lead, if anywhere, but the right thing is to sit down and have these conversations and see if we want our championship in more than eight cities or do we like playing exclusively in domes," Lewis said.
"None of the cities where we play our championship is named New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami," Lewis said. "We don't play on a campus. We play in professional football arenas."
If you go through the list of the domes, most of them are in red states (Atlanta, Dallas, New Orleans, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Pheonix) or untrendy blue states (Detroit, Minneapolis). It's an interesting quirk that a big coastal city has yet to build a dome.
At least in the US. Vancouver and Toronto have nice domes; the academic types that make up the NCAA presidential rank and file might feel right at home at BC Place or the Rogers Center.
It's interesting that the NCAA folks are bemoaning the fact that the coasts and Chicago are getting overrepresented. We're used to that on TV; no one's beating down the door in Hollywood to do Grand Rapids Hope or CSI-Des Moines.
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