By Nate Sanchez
Columnist
For the men of CSU Bakersfield’s basketball team, the season is done, as is former-Athletic Director Jeff Konya’s prediction for the Roadrunners.
I’ll never forget that moment. The Roadrunners just joined the Western Athletic Conference as full-time members. Konya was fresh off of his “How do you like us now, Bakersfield?” speech. (Hint: You’re the only state university in town. They like you just fine.) During our discussion of the future, he told me his vision.
“We won’t rest until we’ve brought an NCAA Championship to Bakersfield. I’d like to see this team cutting down the nets at the Final Four.”
Since then, the Roadrunners have never advanced farther than the second round of the conference tournament, and Konya left CSUB a year into that five-year contract he signed in 2013.
The WAC Basketball Tournament is excessive. Don’t get me wrong; I like basketball. God knows I love conferences. But if it were up to me, it would cease to exist in its current form.
The Roadrunners are far from a Top-25 team, so they wouldn’t get an automatic bid. The WAC is a mediocre basketball conference, so our bid has to be fought for.
My grievance with the tournament is the excess. They say opulence is sin; and no other city in the world epitomizes the two like Las Vegas, the current location of the tournament.
Like I said before, the WAC is a mediocre conference when it comes to basketball. The conference has been monopolized, and the winners are a non-factor in the NCAA Tournament.
New Mexico State University’s men’s team has won the WAC Tournament five years in a row, even with the recently-changing landscape of the conference. Surely such a dominant champion would do well among the other schools at the Big Dance.
Unfortunately not.
The University of Nevada was the last WAC representative to advance past the first round of the NCAA Tournament. They beat Creighton by six points in overtime.
By the way, this was back in 2007.
To put things in perspective, Akon, Daughtry and T-Pain were not only relevant, but among Billboard’s Hottest Artists in 2007.
For the conference to put on as big a show as it does for a winner that was and historically has been the NCAA tournament’s whipping boy is excessive. I posit that one of the schools should host the tournament.
It would foster far more interest from communities surrounding the schools, attract more fans and stimulate local economies.
It would even help out the schools hosting the tournament. Remember when CSUB hosted the WAC Volleyball Tournament? Senior Assistant Athletics Director for Internal Relations Keith Ford said CSUB got to keep what was brought in after expenses.
According to WAC Deputy Commisioner Connie Hurlbut, all of the participating schools are required to buy enough tickets to offset the cost of the neutral site, regardless of whether they sell them or not. There were a lot of unsold tickets.
CSUB apparently sold all of their tickets, 200 at $100 apiece. Assistant Athletic Director for Communications Corey Costelloe wrote in an email that the conference paid for the majority of the tournament and CSUB was only on the hook for $2,800 dollars for gameday workers and VIP hospitality.
Let’s look at attendance.
The Orleans Arena has a single-event capacity of 9,500 spectators. Only a recorded 7,129 showed up for the entire tournament. That’s nine “sessions” over three days of expensive Las Vegas real estate that was paid for, but mostly unused.
I understand the impossibilities of filling an arena to capacity for every event, so let’s try some lower numbers. For nine sessions at capacity, the arena could hold 85,500 people for the entire tournament. Taking 1,500 off of capacity would result in an ideal attendance of 72,000 for the tournament.
Going back to the actual recorded attendance, it’s still less than 10 percent of what could be, even with lowered attendance expectations.
There may be an explanation as to why attendance was so low. Las Vegas is a hub for college basketball conference tournaments. Costelloe said that the WAC is one of four conferences simultaneously holding their tournaments in Vegas, the other three being the PAC-12, Mountain West and the West Coast. The WAC can compete with one of those three.
“It creates a great experience for the fans and student-athletes,” Costelloe said. “It’s nice to be a part of that college basketball buzz… plus for us it’s an easy bus ride for our student athletes, which cuts down on missed class time and expenses.”
Too bad that class time was the week of finals.
I would like to see a participating school to host the tournament. It’s time to face the ugly truth. We are not an elite basketball powerhouse, and our conference champion basically serves as a bye game for a four-seed in the Big Dance.
