March Madness has ended with the Florida Gators taking home the 2025 National Championship 65-63 over the Houston Cougars. The final four marked the second time in tournament history that all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four.
All four No.1 seeds traveled to San Antonio on April 5 and 7 to play in the 2025 Final Four at the Alamodome. The Alamodome is a 73,000-seat football stadium modified to host the most prominent basketball tournament in American sports.
It continued a trend that the NCAA Tournament has been in from the Sweet 16 onwards: most sites are moved to football stadiums rather than college stadiums, where the rest of the tournament is played.
One example of this change can be seen in the matchups between Houston and Purdue and Tennessee and Kentucky in the Sweet 16. Games were held in Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Colts, not the NBA’s Indianapolis Pacers, located two miles down the road.
Many fans have found this venue selection confusing, as the games held in the West and South regions were in the arenas of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks, respectively. The East Regional games used the Prudential Center, a multi-purpose New Jersey stadium hosting basketball and hockey games. Thus, many fans do not understand the NCAA’s decision to host the Midwest Regional games inside a football stadium.
Before understanding why this decision was made, let’s look into how this was done. After all, the synthetic turf of the field in Lucas Oil Stadium covers 93,900 square feet, whereas the size of the court needed to host basketball games is only 7,200 square feet.
How is it even possible to play basketball in a football stadium?
They assembled the court using 262 first-grade northern hard maple panels from Michigan.
A crew takes around four hours to put the 42,000-pound court together on a raised platform above the field. Video screens and scoreboards are installed, and curtains are hung to block off the unused half of the stadium.
The real question, though, is why? Well, first of all, Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Pacers’ home stadium, was not available, as it was busy hosting high school state finals. Second, even using only half the stadium, the 35,000-person capacity is much larger than the maximum capacity of purpose-built arenas. Third, the increased capacity decreases fans’ ticket prices. Tickets for Midwest games cost half of those in Atlanta.
The pros above outweigh the cons that many fans have raised against using football stadiums. The most commonly mentioned negatives by fans include affected sight lines, the different atmosphere and the depth perception for the players.
For the first two, the slight sacrifice of sightline atmospheres is worth it to attract more in-person fans at a lesser cost to each individual fan. In the latter issue, I have listened to and read the opinions of the collegiate players, and practically all of them do not believe the depth to be a big concern.
Kentucky’s freshman forward Trent Noah puts it perfectly and bluntly.
“I feel like all that stuff is kind of mental,” Noah said. “It’s the same size hoop. It’s the same size ball. You just gotta find some way to put the orange ball through that thing.”
Lucas Oil Stadium will be used again for the 2026 and 2029 editions of March Madness, hosting the Final Four games as it did in 2010, 2015 and 2021. When the stadium hosted Final Four games in the past, it filled at 70,000 by placing the court at the 50-yard line, allowing even more fans to attend and, in my opinion, creating an excellent “big game” atmosphere.
While the differing atmosphere and poor sightlines with some seating are good reasons not to use football stadiums, the pros of lower ticket prices and a larger venue may outweigh those cons.
Lucas Oil Stadium will be used again for the 2026 and 2029 editions of March Madness, hosting the Final Four games as it did in 2010, 2015 and 2021. When the stadium hosted Final Four games in the past, it used the full 70,000 capacity by placing the court at the 50-yard line.
