The Final Four is not a fan-friendly event (but I still went)
What could possibly go wrong when you put a college basketball game in an 80,000 seat football stadium?
Last weekend, I went to the Final Four for the first time down in Phoenix, Arizona. As a long-time fan of Gonzaga University, the feel-good Cinderella story turned perennial postseason underachiever, I had been psyching myself up for this event for the past few months. After all, Gonzaga had very nearly gone undefeated this season — not losing until their final game in conference play — and had spent an extended stretch as the top-ranked team in college basketball. What’s more, having followed the Zags since their first NCAA tournament run back in 1999, I can tell you that this was the best Gonzaga team I’ve ever seen, with the depth, size and skill to match up with anybody. I really felt they could go all the way this year…and they very nearly did.
But while there was no shortage of on-court drama at this year’s Final Four, with all three games going right down to the wire, being there in person was probably not much better than watching it on TV. I was reminded of the time I took a tour of the NBC studios in New York, and saw the studio where Saturday Night Live is broadcast. It turns out that most spectators can’t actually see some of the sketches from where they’re sitting, and have to watch most of the show on monitors in the stands. Although it’s a live show in spirit, SNL is made for a TV audience more than it is to be seen in person — and I’d say the same for the Final Four. So why in the heck did I come all this way, again?
A Gonzaga fan’s 2,300-mile journey to the Big Dance
Gonzaga University is located in Spokane, Washington, a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Phoenix — but I am much, much, further away. For me, Phoenix is closer to five hours in the air, and that’s if you can get a direct flight. (Factor in a stopover plus a three-hour time difference, and my flight home landed more than 10 hours after I left town.)
Now, it’s generally assumed that most Gonzaga fans either went to the school or lived in Spokane at some point, but my story’s a bit different. I grew up in Western Canada, some 400–500 miles from campus, but close enough to get my network TV stations from Spokane. Once Gonzaga made its first NCAA tournament run in 1999, reaching the Elite Eight, it was all over our U.S.-based channels…and I’ve been watching the team ever since, even though I moved to the other side of the country in ’05. (Online streaming was a life-saver for me!) So instead of driving down to Phoenix, which some fans actually did, I was on a 7 a.m. flight out of Toronto on Saturday, landing around 11:15 local time. Which would be all well and good if Gonzaga’s semi-final matchup didn’t tip off at 3 p.m.
Even when the NCAA Tournament is on the West Coast, the tip times are designed with a national (read: East Coast) audience in mind. So while I could’ve settled in for a 6:10 pre-dinner tip off in Toronto, I was instead left with a mad scramble to just barely get to my seat in time.
Phoenix is not a transit-friendly city, and Glendale is not an easily-accessible arena
You would think that with almost four hours ahead of me, I could make it to the game in time. But Phoenix traffic is pretty bad at the best of times, and even worse on game days. And while the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks have stadiums right downtown, their NHL and NFL counterparts play in the suburb of Glendale, which is about 16 miles away. Even the local light-rail transit could only take you about 10 miles from the stadium. And with shuttle bus service only running every half-hour, I wasn’t about to risk it. FWIW, I did not see a single shuttle on my way to the game.
I did have a hotel on what was basically the outskirts of Glendale, but from there it was still a 25-minute drive…in good traffic. My Uber from the hotel took me almost an hour, and the driver dropped me off with a few blocks to go so I could sprint the rest of the way. Both the lines at the metal detectors and then at the front gates were in very disorderly fashion, and it was only due to the stadium opening an additional gate that I was able to cluster my way inside with a few minutes to spare. But the in-stadium congestion was just as bad, especially if you were sitting behind the basket, an area with much narrower aisles. I was stuck in this area as the telecast started, but managed to make it to my seat right before the player introductions. Many others were not so lucky.
I waited over an hour for a burger and fries!
Fortunately, the Bulldogs were up to the task in the semi-finals. Although they very nearly let a 14-point lead slip away to South Carolina, they held on with a late run to punch their ticket to the national championship. With my view from Row 31 (more on that later), I could sort of see some of the action at the far end — anything underneath the near basket seemed like it was right under the basket, and I sometimes needed to check the scoreboard to see if a shot went in. We were seemingly outnumbered by Gamecocks fans, too, although the late-game heroics of freshman Killian Tillie were the cause of many high-fives in the rows immediately above and below me.
As the post-game celebration made its way into the locker room, I figured I’d have enough time to get something to eat between games, although the closest concession stand was around the corner from the congested area behind the basket. And with all the South Carolina fans heading to the exits, the congestion was pretty bad. When I finally got to the Gridiron Grill, the lineup barely moved for half an hour. Once I finally made my way to the front, there was no more ice in the drink machines, they were all out of lids for the drinks, and their supplies of bottled water and candy bars had also been exhausted. And this was all before, or rather during, the second game of the evening. I finally made it back to my seat around the under-12 timeout of UNC-Oregon.
You can’t buy beer here, but if you go across the way…
Now, I knew ahead of time that the Final Four was a dry county. I had been to a couple of NCAA basketball events in previous years where there was also no beer — including the West Coast Conference tournament in Vegas, where about the only place you couldn’t drink openly was inside the arena. And hey, I get that three-quarters of U.S. university students are below the legal drinking age…but I’ve been to plenty of NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA events on both sides of the border, with fans of all ages in attendance, and did not bear witness to a scourge of underage drinking. I mean, it’s not like you could buy booze from a concession stand without showing your ID, and the beer vendors usually check if you don’t look old enough.
What made this situation all the more bizarre was that there was a row of beer vendors in regulation attire lined up at the entrance of the NCAA Fan Fest, just a stone’s throw from the stadium itself, after you go through the security gates. So, they weren’t going to sell you beer inside of University of Phoenix Stadium, but you could buy it from a University of Phoenix Stadium vendor outside just a few feet away.
Row 31 isn’t as close as I thought it was
Now, compared to the Super Bowl, which was hosted in the exact same stadium two years ago, Final Four tickets were much more affordable. Although I didn’t go to the game in Glendale, I did see the Seahawks beat the Broncos in NYC the year before — and I can tell you that what I paid for tickets to all three Final Four games was about one-third of the price of a single Super Bowl ticket. And these seemed to be fairly comparable seats, too…or so I thought. But it turns out that Row 31 is much further away than it would be at your average arena.
First of all, you’ve got seven or eight rows of student-section courtside seats behind the basket. Then, there’s a bit of a gap before three rows of broadcast desks for the media. It’s only behind all the announcers that they start counting up the rows for the general public — I actually think the nosebleeds at the Air Canada Centre might be closer to the court.
Now, I will say that I was way too far away to see Kennedy Meeks’ other hand touch the sideline during that late-game tie-up, but the refs certainly should’ve caught it from their vantage point!
Maybe next year?
At the end of the day, there’s something to be said for seeing The Big Game in person. One thing you won’t get on TV is the atmosphere of seeing a game live with over 75,000 other people. I went to the Final Four with the intention of watching Gonzaga win its first-ever national championship, so seeing them come up just a bit short against North Carolina was a major disappointment. I don’t feel that it was a wasted weekend, but it certainly ended on a sour note.
So, would I deal with the crazy crowds, the long lines and the questionable sightlines if Gonzaga makes it back to the Final Four next season? That may be a pretty big if — with starting center Przemek Karnowski graduating and his freshman backup Zach Collins projected as a possible top-10 NBA pick, the Zags could be left with a big hole in the starting lineup next year. (Make that two holes if PG Nigel Williams-Goss declares for the draft, although it seems he’d be better off returning for his senior year.) And even if Gonzaga has a great team next year, making it back to the Final Four is hardly a given. But, y’know, there just isn’t a really good place to watch the Final Four here in Toronto; even at most local sports bars, it’s kind of an afterthought. So if I knew they had a good chance to win it all, I would probably want to be there in person again. I just hope I don’t have to go all the way to freakin’ Phoenix next time — whenever that next time may be.
