![]() “When one team is moving, we have to have a set of staff and signage that says, ‘Okay, we have a holding space to move teams to the side or move staff away, so they can move through clean.’ ” A central hub “I keep using the airport analogy, like airplanes moving on taxiways and runways,” Klein said. All participants are discouraged from leaving the NCAA-approved facilities, which means players will largely be restricted to their hotels, the arenas and the convention center. Teams will use charter buses to travel to most games and can only walk around downtown Indianapolis via skywalks. It’s a massive, 566,000-square-foot space that is connected to more hotel rooms (4,719) than any other convention center in the country, courtesy of a skywalk system. The Indiana Convention Center will serve as a central hub of activity and the lone practice facility for the entire tournament. A “command center” in the convention center and each arena will function like an air traffic control tower, with officials using a radio system to usher teams from place to place. They’ll use a smartphone app to reserve practice courts and shared spaces. Teams will have a detailed itinerary of sorts for each day, instructing when they can move between facilities. The entire tournament amounts to a carefully choreographed dance, where every move is planned both within the city and within each building. ![]() We do not want this to turn into any sort of public health crisis.” A delicate dance “This is not the kind of event where people are going to be running around doing whatever they want to do. “We’re still going to have restrictions at restaurants and bars, social distancing, mask mandates,” Hoops said. That means thousands of people traveling from out of state, increasing the chance of exposure for residents and visitors alike. The state approved limited attendance, and tourism officials hope for an economic impact that tops $100 million. It just so happens the pandemic has shown that it’s a pretty good layout for something like this,” he said. “Much of downtown has been built over the course of 50 years to host major events. It won’t be a strict “bubble,” per se, but organizers are calling the tournament a “controlled environment” as they hope to limit exposure to the coronavirus and quash any possible outbreaks. This year it will be held entirely in and around Indianapolis - a carefully coordinated, highly scrutinized, 19-day affair at a time when coronavirus cases, while falling, are several times higher than they were when the tournament was scratched a year ago. Last year, the event was canceled altogether, dashing championship dreams and costing the NCAA and its member schools hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. The men’s tournament, which starts with the “First Four” games Thursday, is usually staged in 14 cities across the country. “But it’s an exciting one, and one that we’ve embraced.” “When you condense 14 sites into one and bring 68 teams together to play 67 games in three weeks, it’s a logistical challenge,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball. The coronavirus lurks around every corner at this year’s unprecedented NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and officials know that just a couple of positive tests - never mind the possibility of a larger outbreak - can doom the whole thing. And 68 teams, all isolated from one another every second of the day - except for those 40 minutes on the game clock. ![]() ![]() Hundreds of players, coaches and officials scattered across a half-dozen hotels. Sixty-seven games spread across six arenas.
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