NCAA weighs using fewer March Madness venues amid coronavirus outbreak
The men’s tournament is expected to be played in 14 cities.
ATLANTA — Faced with the United States’ surging coronavirus caseload and mounting public fears, college sports executives have discussed in recent days whether to reduce the number of venues at which games are played during the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments that begin in less than two weeks.
A narrowed list of playing sites is one option NCAA executives are studying as the association prepares for the tournaments, which are among the marquee events in American sports and are scheduled in dozens of cities in the coming weeks. Executives and medical experts are also considering other possibilities, including holding games without spectators and proceeding normally but with enhanced efforts to promote public health, such as hand sanitizer stations.
“We’re playing out every possible scenario, ranging from ‘OK, we’re full-go’ to modified-go to ‘Are we playing a game and we’re certain that everyone in the arena is clean and there won’t be any public?’” Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, said Saturday.
He said it was “hard to imagine” the tournaments being canceled.
As recently as Friday, Hainline said, officials talked about whether they could lower the number of tournament sites during what is known as March Madness. The men’s tournament is expected to be played in 14 cities, including Atlanta, the site of the national championship game that is scheduled for April 6. The women’s tournament, slated to conclude in New Orleans, is planned for even more cities.
A consolidation of sites, Hainline said, would pose formidable logistical challenges and be “a difficult option to carry out.”
Conference tournaments have already begun, and more are scheduled for the coming week. NCAA officials are expected to scrutinize those competitions for possible lessons to apply during the national tournaments.
The men’s tournament is scheduled to begin in Dayton, Ohio, on March 17 before expanding over several weeks to sites nationwide, including at least nine states with confirmed coronavirus cases. The first round of the women’s tournament is scheduled to start March 20, with the initial games taking place at the top 16 seeds.
Tournament brackets will not be announced until March 15 and 16, and NCAA officials said they believe they had at least a few more days to assess the crisis and its possible impact.
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