Inside the ‘can-do attitude’ that brought the NCAA Tournament to Las Vegas

“Getting the initial feedback, there was probably a little more pushback than we anticipated. You’ve got to realize that, in this industry, people aren’t willing to make big changes for somebody else. So it was, ‘OK, we’ve got to go about this differently. How do we get the industry to think about Las Vegas differently?’ ”

D.J. Allen, former UNLV associate athletic director

Andre Agassi made the rounds in a private suite of an Orlando, Fla., hotel repeating the same message to anyone who would listen, and perhaps even some who didn’t want to. ¶ “Las Vegas has a can-do attitude,” the tennis legend and local native told some of the most influential executives in college athletics. ¶ This was in the summer of 2015, almost eight years ago, as a collection of Las Vegas officials had started to put the full-court press on the NCAA to bring some of its championship events to Southern Nevada. Representatives from Las Vegas Events, MGM Resorts International and a pair of former UNLV athletic directors had traveled to the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) convention to push their cause.

Agassi was being honored at an adjacent gathering in town, and a plot to bring him in as a reinforcement for Las Vegas’ sales pitch materialized. The group reached out to Agassi through his longtime confidant, Cisco Aguilar — now Nevada secretary of state — and didn’t have to fully explain the mission before the eight-time Grand Slam champion agreed to it.

Agassi had “absolutely no hesitation,” he recalled in a statement, as he was not only bought in but also equipped with his own catchphrase.

“For Andre to be able to talk to so many people and say, ‘Vegas has a can-do attitude, we’ll find a way to do this,’ you could just see the doors open and people willing to have different conversations,” said D.J. Allen, former UNLV associate athletics director who had been contracted to help with Las Vegas’ NCAA efforts at the time. “You could feel in that moment, in that suite, that the perception of Las Vegas was changing.”

The evening amounted to one of many small victories that added up over the years, if not decades, to ultimately bring the NCAA to Las Vegas after it long resisted the idea. A new era will begin Thursday when the NCAA’S most prestigious event, the men’s basketball championship tournament, arrives at T-mobile Arena for three games through Saturday to determine the winner of the West Region and a Final Four participant.

Las Vegas has now hosted, or will host, many of the biggest events in sports, but few required more man hours to secure than the NCA A Tournament.

The athletic directors’ annual meetings were once held here, in the early 1980s, before the NCAA had gone out of its way to emphasize a hardline stance against anything involving Las Vegas.

The national organization, buoyed by its opposition to gaming, didn’t budge even when leagues like the Big West and Western Athletic Conference became pioneers by holding their conference tournaments in Las Vegas during the 1990s. City officials never gave up on their basketball dreams but for many years were content with taking what

COURTESY A contingent of Las Vegas advocates pose for a photograph at the 2015 National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Convention in Orlando, Fla. From left are Dan Rush (MGM Resorts), current Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, Vincente Rivera (MGM Resorts), Tennis Hall of Famer Andre Agassi, Dale Eeles (Las Vegas Events), Jim Livengood ( former UNLV athletic director) and D.J. Allen ( former UNLV associate athletic director).

STEVE MARCUS FILE (2016) The NCAA Tournament arrives Thursday at T-mobile Arena for three games through Saturday to determine the winner of the West Region and a Final Four participant.