Saturday, March 22, 2014

Please Change The NCAA Tournament Courts

Every year I complain about this.  Please listen, NCAA.  Sure, I may be the only person out there who cares but I care a lot!

CHANGE THESE COURTS!  THEY ARE BORING!

You can see the photo to the left.  That is how every court looks.  The "left" side of the court has the name of the city on the baseline.  The "right" side of the court has the name of the arena.  Aside from that and the logo of the host school or conference in the corners of the out of bounds area, there is no different between courts.

Turn to the Saint Louis-Louisville game in Orlando ... or the North Dakota State-San Diego State game in Spokane and you can't tell where you are at.  And that's a shame.

Not too long ago, the courts were pretty much like the school or arena's normal court look, minus some sponsorship ads and adding some NCAA graphics.  I liked that.  It gave every arena a flavor and helped differ the games for the viewer at home.

After all these years of complaining, I will concede something:  Keep the design if you want.  But change the color.

Fine.  Have the boring, uniform courts.  But at least let's change the colors.  Ditch the black and blue everywhere.  Below are the cities that the tournament is held in and the colors (baseline, free throw circle) that they should use.  I'm trying to make it the colors of the host school.

Buffalo:  Purple, gold (after Niagara)
Milwaukee:  Yellow, blue (after Marquette)
Orlando:  Black, blue (normal Orlando colors)
Raleigh:  Red, white (after NC State)
San Antonio:  Black, orange (after UT-San Antonio)
San Diego: Black, red (after SD State)
Spokane:  Crimson, gray (after Washington State)
St. Louis:  Blue, white (after Saint Louis Billikens)

Anaheim:  Red, black (normal Honda Center colors)
Indianapolis:  Red, gold (after IUPUI)
Memphis:  Blue, black (after Memphis Tigers)
New York:  Blue, orange (normal MSG colors)

Dallas:  Blue, gray (after the Dallas Cowboys)

If you have any other combinations that would work, feel free to change them.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Couldn't agree more. Been saying the same thing for years. But sadly, the NCAA doesn't care about the fan experience, they only care about making money and their "Corporate partners"

That guy said...

No, you're definitely not alone.

It may help to come up with a solution to realize that they literally have eight (or more, maybe 12) courts that they pull out each year and install in the buildings. Therefore, making them particular to the host institution would involve a lot of repainting. I could settle for just having a green court, a purple court, a red court, a yellow court. Anything to make it feel like a national tournament instead of 68 teams playing in a TV studio.

I have to think this was the result of some corporate consultant focusing on "branding" and generally not getting why the tournament is so great.

-PhilipVU94