A March Madness Bubble

There's really only one thing about the upcoming college basketball season we know for sure.  There will be an NCAA Tournament at the end of it.  The NCAA cannot afford to cancel its crown jewel again, so, come hell or high water, they'll figure out a way to play through a pandemic and crown a champion, preferably in March as currently scheduled (although some high-profile coaches would prefer moving it as late as May).

Although, as the college football season has proved, there will undoubtedly be bumps in the road.  A number of schools have already had to shut down practices because of positive tests within the program...and we're still in the preseason!  Multiple football games have been cancelled or postponed on a weekly basis, and nobody expects any different once basketball season begins.

We've already seen it.  Pretty much all of the preseason tournaments have been cancelled and some conferences won't be playing any non-conference games at all.  As a result, we're gonna have teams with vastly different-looking resumes when Selection Sunday comes.  But, as long as there are 68 teams that manage to play a reasonable-enough number of games, they'll have a tournament.

The NCAA is well aware of all these problems.  They've seen the issues that football teams have had, as well as those experienced by MLB and the NFL.  It also wasn't hard to notice that the NBA, NHL and WNBA had with their postseason bubbles.  And, since they can't not hold the NCAA Tournament, that was the only option that made sense.

Holding the NCAA Tournament in 13 different cities all across the country simply wasn't going to be feasible.  Things will hopefully be better by March, but there's simply no way of knowing that.  And having teams come in from all over, flying to different states with different infection rates and hoping nobody gets infected wasn't going to work.  So creating their own NCAA Tournament "bubble" really was the best possible solution.  And announcing it now, before the season, gives everyone enough time to prepare.

While they haven't officially said it, all signs point to Indianapolis hosting the entire men's tournament.  That makes sense on a number of levels.  The Final Four was already scheduled to be played in the city, and the NCAA Headquarters are there.  More importantly, though, they have adequate hotel space and a suitable number of arenas that are close enough to each other for the whole thing to work.

Over the summer, some coaches were advocating an all-comers NCAA Tournament, which the NCAA quickly shot down.  One of the reasons that was never gonna work was because there was no way to administer that many games and coordinate all the required testing, etc.  Having 68 teams in the same place will be almost as big of an undertaking, but is definitely manageable.  Especially in a city like Indianapolis.

As they saw with the NHL and NBA, as well as in the MLB postseason, the NCAA can create an effective bubble by giving teams everything they need at their hotel and limiting them to the arena and hotel.  The bubble life wore on the NBA and NHL players after a while, but the NCAA will only need to do it for three weeks, which everyone should be able to do with little to no resistance.

So really it's just a matter of the number of hotels and the number of venues.  For argument's sake, let's assume they put eight teams in each hotel (10 or 12 including the First Four teams).  Half of them are gone after one game, and there's only 16 left after the first weekend.  Then you're down to two hotels.  Point is, that's all much easier to control than multiple hotels in 13 different cities.

And, as long as they schedule enough of a gap between the day and night sessions (which they would have to for TV), they'll be able to get away with only four arenas.  Indianapolis has Lucas Oil Stadium and Bankers Life Field House, as well as Butler's historic Hinkle Fieldhouse and the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, the home of the Indy Fuel ECHL team and site of the Horizon League Tournament.  All of them are NCAA Tournament-quality venues.

Once they hit the Sweet 16, they'll only need Lucas Oil and Bankers Life.  Since they won't be used in the second week, they can have the First Four games at Hinkle and the Farmers Coliseum.  And, assuming crowd restrictions are still in effect, I'd even consider having the Final Four at Bankers Life instead of in the massive football stadium.  Point is, all of this is extremely doable.

In fact, I think the NCAA should do this for more than just the men's basketball tournament.  The women use campus sites, so that will certainly be tougher, but, at the very least, they need to consider a separate bubble for the women's tournament.  The Women's Final Four is scheduled to be in San Antonio, so they'd ideally do it there, but New Orleans--last season's planned site--would work, too.

Moving the entire tournament to Indianapolis is obviously a blow to the cities that had previously been selected as hosts.  But, who's to say those cities still would've been able to host?  And if they would've been able to have fans there.  Besides, they already have a bunch of cities that missed out because of last season's cancellation.  The easy solution to both of those problems is simply awarding a future NCAA Tournament bid to the 2020 and 2021 host cities (they just awarded sites until 2026 and most of them have been already).

None of this is ideal.  The pandemic has impacted college sports more than any other level.  But the NCAA has a plan here, and it's a good one.  Keep it close to home.  Play the entire 2021 men's basketball tournament in Indianapolis.  Then hopefully everything will be back to normal in 2022.