Athens gets a BIG thumbs down

by Whitey Reid on May 24th, 2012

I’ve made it back from Athens, Ga., the site of this year’s NCAA men’s tennis tournament, and I have just one thing to say: The city and the University of Georgia should NEVER be allowed to host another NCAA Tournament—at least not until there is an improved indoor facility.

The university’s outdoor facility is pretty awesome. It’s definitely the best college tennis venue I’ve ever seen.

However, the indoor one—which features only four courts, hardly any room for fans, and ZERO room for media—is a complete joke.

Why does the indoor facility matter?

Well, when it rained during the semifinals of the tournament on Monday night and the tournament shifted indoors, play didn’t finish up until after midnight (because of the scarcity of courts).

When it rained again during the finals on Tuesday, play didn’t conclude until almost 1 a.m.

But more than the late finishes (which caused newspapers across the country to miss their deadlines), the sub-standard facility essentially changed the whole format and pace of the tournament. Instead of being able to play six singles matches at once, as is the custom in college tennis, teams were forced to play just a few matches at a time.

Please tell me why this should ever happen in the sport’s showcase event?

Moreover, the experience was a miserable one for the fans that I talked to. Not only did they spend roughly eight hours at an event that should have been completed in half that time, but there was no air conditioning inside the UGa sauna, er, facility.

From a sportswriter’s perspective, the experience was without a doubt the worst I’ve ever had in 16 years of covering events. There was no media work room. Print journalists were seated on bleachers that were located behind a concrete stanchion. We were crammed in there like sardines with the fans and there was no place to plug our laptops into.

Oh, and there was no scoreboard in the facility—so it was almost impossible to keep track of all the matches. Just about every college tennis facility that I know of has a scoreboard that instantly updates the scores on all the courts.

This was the NCAA championships for crying out loud!

By the end of the Virginia-USC final, I was sitting on an unused court that was about 100 yards away from the decisive match that was taking place, using binoculars that I just happened to have in my bag from football season.

Now I rarely agree with very much that Roanoke Times sportswriter Doug Doughty ever has to say, but I must admit that he hit the nail on the head when he referred to the whole way that the event was run as “Mickey Mouse.“

I sincerely hope that this blog post gets passed along to somebody at the NCAA. Athens is a cool city and, like I said, has an unbelievable outdoor venue, but until they can upgrade the indoor facility, they have no business hosting an NCAA Tournament.

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