NCAA hoops bubble pegged at P40M

THE National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is staring at a whopping P40 million expense if it wants to hold a men’s 5x5 basketball tournament in a bubble environment for its 96th season.

Businessmirror learned of the exorbitant cost from a top league official, who begged off from being identified sans an official statement from the organization.

The total expense could be divided among the 10 member schools, but Businessmirror again learned that such option would be farthest from the members’ minds because the Covid-19 pandemic crippled the academic community, thus no income from tuition.

The P40 million do not include the cost of conducting a juniors 5x5 basketball tournament as well as 3x3 basketball, which would separately need P8 million to run. The NCAA official said holding the other sports in the league program could be far-fetched at the moment.

The basketball bubble could be a three-month activity, adding more complications for the league to return to action because face-to-face classes remain banned, the NCAA official said.

NCAA Management Committee chairman Fr. Vic Calvo of Season 96 host Letran didn’t confirm the cost of holding a 5x5 basketballonly season, but said that the league would be relentless in staging the Season 96.

“We are not stopping. We meet once or twice a week for four to five hours,” Calvo said on Thursday. “We will come up with what we have.”

The NCAA signed GMA 7 as its official television coveror but neither Calvo nor the NCAA official could confirm if the network would shoulder the cost of holding the bubble.