Arena Will Be Plenty Good In Big Dance

You can’t beat the evening-on-the-town crackle and pop - or other beverage of your choice - of a Saturday night hockey game. If Spokane has a signature social event, that probably qualifies.

We’ve witnessed the pull of five nights of Garth or a single shot of Reba. The wrestling trials were a big draw, the rasslin’ nonsense a bigger draw and if they ever figure a way to put Stone Cold Steve Austin on figure skates, it might be the biggest draw ever.

But the NCAA Basketball Tournament is why the Spokane Arena had to be built.

Four years hence, on the same weekend in March, Spokane will be there in America’s sporting consciousness and its living rooms with Boston and Indianapolis and Tampa and Nashville, big-league cities all.

Ours, too, by association.

“From Reunion Arena in Dallas,” CBS’ Greg Gumbel will intone on a Saturday afternoon, “we take you to the Spokane Arena where …”

Where what? Well, where Idaho tries to match baskets with Duke, perhaps. Where the next Valparaiso or Santa Clara - maybe even Gonzaga - becomes the flavor of the month at UCLA’s expense. If host Washington State has revived its program by then and makes the field, great, though the NCAA mandates host schools take their chances someplace else.

And if a local team doesn’t make it, well, what a consolation prize. For two days in March 2003, we be dancin’.

The rubber stamp will come soon enough, but last week’s recommendation by the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee that first- and second-round games be awarded to Spokane offered the final validation for our 1991 vote that allowed workers to start mixing the mortar.

The people who did Spokane’s bidding won’t say that, exactly. But their facial expressions say it for them.

And speaking of those people, their dogged pursuit of this sweaty grail deserves sustained applause when doubters - like this one - felt the Arena wasn’t big enough and the politics too big for Spokane to crack the NCAA’s rotation.

It’s still a legitimate question, though: Why now? The Arena isn’t any snazzier than it was the two other times Spokane wanted to be a part of March Madness.

“I think it all goes back to setting a precedent with the NCAA Volleyball Championship,” said Eric Sawyer of the Greater Spokane Sports Association, “once we showed (the NCAA) the community would come out. We had to kick that door open and we did.”

But a conversation with Bill Hancock, the NCAA’s director of Division I basketball championships, suggested bids are a function of politics as much as performance.

“Volleyball was a factor,” he admitted, “but not a major factor.

“The basketball committee thought Spokane might be able to do well with the tournament before. There were just other places that needed to have the tournament.”

Needed? Boise - which has been a host in 1989, ‘92, ‘95 and ‘98 - “needed” it again in 2001? Salt Lake City, which has had first-round games eight times since 1985, is needy? Seattle needs the event this spring because it only had, what, three Final Fours in 12 years?

Maybe it’s ego food, but the NCAA seems to like to have suitors in the anteroom just to have them.

“We brought Bill out four years ago,” Sawyer remembered, “and he toured the facility and looked at the community and I put him on the airplane. As he left, he turned around to me and said, ‘Eric, don’t worry. We’ll be there. It’s just a matter of time.”’

Indeed, there’s no indication Hancock’s assessment of Spokane has changed since that first visit.

He still thinks the Arena “is a tad on the small side” - and, yes, Spokane and Boise are the only two buildings with capacities less than 13,800 in the NCAA rotation the next four years. He loves all the “backstage” space - the extra locker rooms, the media and production areas. The hotels and airline connections all passed muster.

Now the only questions seem to be:

A) Can we sell all the seats?

B) Do we need more seats to make this happen again?

It seems silly to discuss the difficulty of marketing March Madness, but venues often don’t sell out - especially the weekday afternoon games. Neither Hancock nor Sawyer expect that to be an issue in Spokane, however.

“The history is, when the tournament has gone to a new place, there’s a great demand,” Hancock said. “That’s especially true in the smaller markets - Wichita, Oklahoma City. It’s the thing to do in those cities that week.”

Sawyer even noted that the marketing budget for the NCAA Volleyball Championship was $40,000; for this, the local organizers are projecting just $10,000.

“This event has a following,” he said. “There’s no question we’ll be able to sell it out.”

Bold talk, given how pitifully college hoops here has drawn of late. It would be a mistake to underestimate Spokane’s nonchalance, especially before the ticket prices are published.

But assuming this is an easy sell, will it provide the impetus to install those extra 2,000 seats in the Arena’s upper west deck?

Not likely.

“We’re not above putting them in,” said Jim Ray of the public facilities board. “We are above putting them in just to put them in. There are very few things we’ve lost on financially because we didn’t have more seats.”

The recent WWF extravaganza may have been one, he said. Neil Diamond could have sold more because he performs in the round rather than on the west-end stage. A handful of hockey games have had turn-away crowds.

The board has actually put away about $1.5 million toward extra seating. Ray said a 1995 estimate put the price at $2-3 million, so it’s likely higher now - particularly with the cost of putting in extra restrooms and moving the video screen and scoreboard. The board is already looking at the possibility of a ceiling-hung scoreboard and video system in anticipation of expansion.

But the fact is, this building is plenty good enough for the Big Dance as is.

And it always has been.