An inside look at March Madness
Sequestered in hotels scattered across the Indianapolis and San Antonio regions, college basketball players spent the past few days passing time.
The NCAA placed 68 men’s teams in Indiana and 64 women’s programs in Texas, testing and monitoring players, coaches and officials with eyes firmly fixed on crowning two national champions in two weeks.
So the student-athletes — college kids
competing on a national stage — isolated in a hotel room before practicing late this week. They have their PlayStations and Netflix accounts, they have TikTok and Instagram, they have school work.
And they wait.
“We play cards and we play UNO,” UConn’s Christyn Williams said.
Welcome to March Madness, COVID style.
The NCAA is closely tracking the movements of players and teams. There are no group outings or sightseeing, only practices and training and eating as a team.
It’s a striking contrast to past tournaments. The Final Four and regional sites have staged parties — for fans, media, participating teams. Not this year. “There's definitely a significant difference in the general atmosphere,” said UConn athletic director David Benedict, who is with the men’s team in Indianapolis. “(Past years), it's a really celebratory atmosphere, most of the time, because there's a lot of media involved, a lot of volunteers and people around who are excited to have everyone in their locations, a lot of pomp and circumstance. None of that is taking place.”
In Indianapolis, security is stationed throughout team hotels. The general public is funneled to specific areas and there’s little access.
“It’s an extremely controlled environment,” understated Morgan Snyder, director of public relations for VisitIndy.com.
The regions hosting the events still expect an economic impact, even with few fans — there are a limited number of tickets available for games, and capacity will include family and friends of players and coaches.
The reward for the athletes? An opportunity to compete for a title.
The reward for the NCAA? The opportunity to fulfill a media rights contract that generates about $1 billion from March Madness content.
After canceling the tournament a year ago, the NCAA has been focused on completing the season and staging a spring tournament. How are they doing? The early results are spotty.
The process: Testing and isolating
The NCAA protocols required all Tier 1 participants — players, coaches, support staff, school officials — to test negative for COVID seven consecutive times before arriving at the host site. Teams quarantined for two days upon arriving and testing continued.
At hotels, each program at each site was assigned its own floor. Teams also had dedicated meeting rooms for meetings and meals.
Teams will travel by bus together to and from its hotel to practice and games sites. Tier 1 participants are also required to wear masks and practice social distancing.
The UConn men share a hotel with 11 other teams in Indianapolis. Practices are held at the Indiana Convention Center and the team travels by bus.
All men’s and women’s team members are carrying a device known as SafeTag, which has been used by the NBA during its bubble season last year. The device monitors how long a person is in close contact with another person, which will expedite contact tracing after a positive COVID test.
The device, worn only at team activities such as meetings, practices and games, will not track the location of those wearing it.
“These ultimately are college students,” said Dan Gavitt, NCAA senior president for basketball. “We need to do everything we can to keep them safe and healthy and be ready to compete. Yet the committee and staff didn't think it was appropriate to be monitoring young men and women 24 hours a day.
“They're responsible adults that can make decisions on their own. You always look at what the unintended consequences are of a decision. The criticism that could come, the discomfort from studentathletes of being essentially monitored 24 hours a day when they're in their hotel rooms by themselves studying or sleeping or resting, was not something the committee or staff were comfortable with.”
UConn women’s associate coach Chris Dailey said the Big East tournament at Mohegan Sun provided preparation for the bubble experience in Texas.
The isolation and other inconveniences have not been an issue.
“Our players have taken it all in stride,” Dailey said. “I feel like they’ve handled it really well.”
Benedict, who was with the men’s team in New York for the Big East tournament, compares the setup to what players experience on campus — living in dorms, moving through the world in their bubble of teammates.
“Most of us that are staff, we obviously don't live on campus so you have your life to go home to, and your home,” Benedict said. “Here, there's a much more isolated feel to the situation. You're spending a lot of time in your room, by yourself. Which for some people might be a good thing, but over a period of time, and if you look at the Big East tournament — I don't know how many days it's been, but it feels like a long time since we left for the Big East tournament, and now here. It's a long time to be in a situation where you're really by yourself a lot, not interacting with people.”
Revolt in Texas
There was unrest bubbling in Indianapolis early in the week, as players began commenting on social media about the food options. That was also an issue in Texas, although Williams said the food at UConn’s hotel has been fine.
“I’ve heard some horror stories from Indianapolis,” UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma said. “You know how kids are. There's never enough food for a kid. I don’t care if you let them loose in a supermarket overnight. They’re going to come out in the morning and say I’m hungry.”
Food, though, was only a portion of the problem in San Antonio. Social media posts displayed the lack of a proper weight-training facility, especially compared to the men’s setup in Indianapolis. There was also comparisons to food and gift bags.
Players and staff shared pictures and videos. The posts gained traction and NCAA officials responded, first with a statement and ultimately with contrition during a Zoom press conference on Friday.
The gender inequity was clear. The players used social media to pull the curtain.
“There is a social media rebellion,” said Donna Lopiano, the Connecticut native and former head of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “The athlete’s voice has always been ahead of us old guys. It’s never been a press release, it’s never even been verbal. It’s been Instagram and Twitter and things that we don’t really understand. … They’re standing up now. They’re not exhibiting blind obedience. This is a direct function of their new-found voices.”
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, a former standout college and professional player, said the NCAA’s view of women’s basketball was revealed long before the tournament.
“It makes you go back to the very beginning, when the NCAA rolled out that the men were having their tournament in Indianapolis, and then we rolled out a month later,” Staley said. “There is a disconnect with that. If you’re going to have a championship for both men's and women's, wouldn't it be best to roll it out at the same time? … You've got to ask the powers that be that made the decision to do that, because it makes you think about every single thing now.”
Said Southern Utah professor and sports economist David Berri, “I think it is still the case that 50 years after Title IX, there are people in the NCAA that still think that having women’s sports is doing women a favor. That this is all charity. Whatever we do for the women is us being nice.”
But the NCAA has reacted. It took nudging from the athletes, but don’t underestimate what unfolded this week.
“It is really a big deal,” Lopiano said. “What the NCAA has always had was fear on the part of those athletes, that they were going to lose scholarships or lose the instructional attention of the coach or lose their starting job or be punished. There was this blind obedience environment that we always thought was OK, that is being challenged to the hilt. And intercollegiate athletics will be the better for it.”
“Pure greed”
Lopiano, who served as an athletic administrator at Texas, calls the tournaments “minstrel shows” because of the high percentage of Black players on Division I basketball rosters (56 percent in 2019).
“I don’t think we should ignore the racial undertones of this,” she said. “You’re seeing kids brought back in the middle of COVID, to make money for intercollegiate athletics. This is entertainment and there are people paying for this entertainment. There are the sponsors who are making out on this. There’s the NCAA who’s making out on this. … I think the racial undertones are unmistakable.”
And the driving force to stage the tournament, Lopiano said, is money.
“Pure greed,” she said. “It’s the power of the money. You don’t get the television distribution, you don’t get the sponsorship distribution unless you play. … Nobody cares about the lowpaid labor force. The whole billion-dollar NCAA budget is dependent upon the Final Four.”
Berri, who has written extensively about women’s sports and the WNBA, wonders why the tournaments are not held in a few months when COVID numbers are likely to improve further.
“Their attitude is, the money is there, we’re going to get it,” he said.
But this strange, bubble tournament may be seen as a turning point. Change is percolating in college athletes, as legislation is moving forward that would enable athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness (NIL). Athletes have used March Madness to share social media posts with the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty.
And that movement began before the women’s players enacted change in San Antonio.
“If change is going to happen ... it’s going to happen because legislation and court cases,” Berri said. “So this is a good time to talk. The talking makes a big difference.”