The NCAA announced on Friday that it would welcome fans – tens of thousands of them – in Indianapolis and San Antonio, where all the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be held this season. further spread of the coronavirus to and from distant regions of the country.
The 68-team men’s tournament, which begins on March 18, will be played in Indianapolis in front of crowds of up to 25% capacity in locations ranging from the picturesque Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the film “Hoosiers” was filmed, to the cavernous Lucas Oil Fieldhouse, which in a normal year could host up to 70,000 fans for the regional finals and the Final Four.
The 64-team women’s tournament, which begins on March 21, will allow up to 17 percent of the capacity of the regional semifinals until the championship final in San Antonio. The games will be played at the Alamodome, which has a capacity of 31,900 people in basketball. (Crowds at the first and second round games, some of which will be played in small arenas, will be limited to several hundred friends and family.) Capacity limits were decided after consultation with local health officials, the NCAA said.
Still, several public health experts said they were baffled by the decision.
“I see no good reason to do this, and I see many bad reasons to do that,” said John Swartzberg, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied infectious diseases and served as an adviser to the Pac-12 Conference. “Bringing people from all over the country into a congregational environment is crazy.”
The NCAA made the decision to relocate their entire tournaments, which are normally played at more than a dozen locations across the country, to Indianapolis and San Antonio to create a more restrictive environment for the dozens of teams involved and to give out elimination tournaments. a greater chance of avoiding interruptions due to positive tests.
Extensive measures are being put in place to play the games. All athletes, coaches and team members will be required to do seven consecutive negative coronavirus tests before arriving in Indianapolis or San Antonio on a chartered plane or bus. Once they are there, the tests will continue. All meals will be served in hotel rooms or in rooms with separate seats. Players, coaches and team members must also use contact tracking devices throughout the tournament that measure whether someone is less than two meters from an infected person who also uses a device.
Previously, there were plans for family and friends to attend games with each player, and for coaches and staff to receive six tickets each. These guests would be prohibited from interacting with players, coaches or team members during the tournament.
But having thousands of fans arriving from all over the country without the same measures creates the risk of turning tournaments into over-broadcasting events, said Ana Bento, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Indiana University School of Public Health.
Fans will only be required to wear masks and practice social distance in the arenas.
“At this point in the epidemic, we can no longer say that we don’t know enough,” said Bento. “We know what to avoid to minimize the risk. This is something that carries many risks. “
Said Kathleen Bachynski, assistant director of public health at Muhlenberg College: “When you start bringing in thousands of people who have not gone through these protocols ahead of time, you are really adding a much higher level of risk.”
“And with what benefit?” she added.
A benefit to the NCAA could be to obtain a portion of the ticket revenue that would be expected in a normal year, and running each tournament in one location should reduce some of the travel costs that the organization covers for teams. The NCAA said last month that its revenue fell by $ 600 million last year – a 50 percent drop – largely because of the cancellation of the men’s basketball tournament. The vast majority of the NCAA’s revenue is redistributed to colleges, but the reduction has forced the organization to exploit reserves, cut salaries and institute licenses and layoffs. His team is about a quarter smaller than a year ago, NCAA President Mark Emmert told The New York Times last month.
The NCAA said it would announce information about ticket sales for basketball tournaments next month.
The decision to allow fans comes at a fluid moment in the pandemic. The known cases are decreasing and thousands of people are being vaccinated every day in the United States, but these steps forward can be offset by new variants of the virus that spread more aggressively and may not be so easily combated by some vaccines. At the moment, many cities are trying to figure out how to fully open schools.
Circumstances can change either when tournaments start or when they close – with up to 17,500 fans watching the men and around 5,500 spectators for the women in the final games.
But some things will not change: the virus is more easily transmitted inside the home, making a basketball arena more conducive to spreading the virus than an outdoor football stadium. And fans, even if they are masked and sitting at a recommended distance from each other while watching the games, will engage in other activities in the host cities.
“It’s not just about having all these people in the stands,” said Swartzberg. “All of these people are staying in a hotel, eating in a restaurant and drinking in a bar. Indianapolis will probably celebrate what is going on. All of these things don’t make sense in the middle of a pandemic. “
He added: “I can understand the argument for players’ parents or siblings to attend. But open it up to 25% of capacity? The only reason for doing so is not the safety of the player or the family – it is to sell tickets ”.