BY JAY HART
Tomorrow night, the men’s Final Four will tip off in the 75,000-seat NRG Stadium. If you’re so inclined, you can get in for $38 via StubHub. And if you want to stick around Houston for Monday’s championship game, it’ll cost you a mere $34.
March Madness has given way to some April Apathy.
For three weeks, this tournament has given us upset after upset after upset, and it’s been awesome. Maybe a little too awesome, because now we’re left with three quasi-Cinderellas and a step-sister who’s not all that mean.
So while we’re guaranteed that either No. 9 Florida Atlantic or No. 5 San Diego State will play for the title, that game doesn’t have the juice it would if FAU were staring down, say, Duke.
This is the Catch-22 of the NCAA tournament: Maybe you cheered when Tennessee took down the Blue Devils two weeks ago, or when Arkansas bounced Kansas, the defending champs. But don’t you kind of wish at least one of the true blue bloods was still around to play the villain?
(And yes, I get that UConn and its four titles is still alive, but the Huskies never had the likes of Bobby Hurley or Steve Wojciechowski or Grayson Allen to heat the schadenfreude up to a boil. They’re also a 4 seed this year, which makes them a relative underdog in their own right.)
The formula that makes the NCAA tournament so different than any other is the pitting of David vs. Goliath … over and over and over again. People weren’t rooting for Fairleigh Dickinson to beat Purdue; they were rooting for the 16 seed to beat the 1 seed.
There will be no No. 1 seeds in Houston this weekend, nor 2s or 3s. In other words, no Goliath for the Davids to slay. Combine that with the comparatively small fan bases of the remaining schools and we’re left with as soft a ticket market as you’ll find for a Final Four.
For comparison, the get-in price for last year’s Final Four — Kansas, UNC, Duke, Villanova — was $368, per TickPick. This year, you can sit in the lower bowl for under $300.
Entering this year’s Sweet 16, the get-in price (via StubHub) for Monday’s title game was around $225 for a nosebleed seat in the upper deck. Then Houston and Texas both lost, and now you can get a ticket in the lower bowl for under $100.
What does this all mean? Well, when it comes to the madness of March, there is a point of diminishing returns. Too much too early can lead to not enough later on.
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