NCAA "First Four" to take place in Dayton

Today the NCAA made one of the more logical decisions they've made in some time. They have decided to hold the four first round play-in games at the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.

While this is a logical choice for many reasons, most of which I will get to momentarily, I would like to point out that the NCAA is developing a terrible habit of not taking any of my advice. I have all the answers to the conference expansion conundrum, yet they refuse to return my emails. I even petitioned to have William & Mary change their mascot from "the Tribe" to "the Honey Badgers" and they shot me down. (OK, I'm lying. But isn't that an awesome name?)

But I digress. The NCAA did get it right with this decision.

With second and third round games taking place in Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Tampa, Tulsa, Tuscon, and Washington D.C, the first round site should be as central as possible to all the sites, and Dayton, Ohio is smack-dab in the middle.

The UD Arena holds roughly 14,000 which is an ideal size for an opening round game. Last year, the official attendance for the play-in game featuring Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Winthrop was 8,205. In 2009, when Morehead State defeated Alabama State in the play-in game, the attendance was listed at nearly 11,000. As I've mentioned before, there is nothing worse than seeing a bunch of empty sections in the upper deck, so an arena with a 14,000-seat capacity is perfect for basically a meaningless tournament game.


Now, with four games instead of one, the attendance in 2011 is sure to increase. If the NCAA had decided to have four different sites host play-in games, there is no guarantee that attendance would improve. In fact, I would guess that the attendance might actually decrease if they did this, unless the NCAA decided to have the last at-large teams play in the opening round instead of the lowest-ranked teams. The last at-larges tend to be bigger schools with bigger followings, hence more fans attending and watching the games.

Dayton is no Gotham City, but it is suitable enough for a two-day tournament session. The University of Dayton had the highest average attendance of any Atlantic-10 team in 2010, with 12,260 fans showing up for each home game. Overall, UD was 28th in home attendance last year, which was higher than Georgetown, Kansas State, Wake Forest, Missouri and a bunch of other BCS-conference schools. In short, Dayton has basketball fans, and even if the Flyers aren't playing, there will certainly be enough fans to fill the UD Arena.

In the past, the play-in game had been held on ESPN, which is available on standard cable. The first four games in 2011 will be nationally televised in primetime on Turner Broadcasting’s truTV, as part of the NCAA’s 14-year broadcast agreement with Turner and CBS. Now, I don't watch a lot of television, but I consider myself pretty up-to-date on pop culture. But up until right now, I had never even heard of truTV. If I had to guess, it's probably located on the dial somewhere between the Home & Garden network and whatever channel airs Ninja Warrior.

My only other complaint with the NCAA on this subject is the naming of the play-in round. Instead of naming it the "First Four", the "Opening Round", or even the "Play-in Round", they have decided to call it the "First Round". Thus, the real first and second rounds will be known as the second and third rounds. How can you have a first round in which not all the teams participate?

But in general, the NCAA made the right choice. Now I just have to determine which way to point my rabbit-ear antennae in order to get truTV.