If the main concern for the NCAA Committee is getting fans at the games, why not just let the top 4 seeds in each region host the first two rounds? Split up the ticket allotment to the 4 teams that are at each site. Give the home team a slightly larger amount of tickets as a reward for hosting the games and split the rest equally to the other 3 teams. If they don't sell their allotments, then make the tickets available to the public. The home team will guarantee that the games will be sellouts.
Example using current bracketology.
1 Kentucky
16 Montana/Texas Southern
8 Cincinnati
9 NC State
Kentucky would host this grouping. With Rupp Arena's capacity around 24,000, give Kentucky 9,000 tickets and the other schools around 5,000. The 16 seed likely wouldn't sell all of theirs so they would become general admission tickets.
The only negative would be if the host team loses the first game, but I would bet that top 4 seeds rarely lose in the first round. They probably win 80%+ of the time. If they lose, is it really any different than if they lose somewhere else? People will just sell their tickets to fans of the winning teams. Maybe they can do a buyback system to where your ticket goes into general admission and if it sells you get back a percentage of the sell price. The host school makes a little more money by getting a seller's fee and you don't have to take as big of a loss or try and sell it yourself.
Schools would just have to make sure their arenas are available for 1 more week of the year. If for some reason the top seed at that site can't/won't host or can't find an alternate site (like us hosting at Memorial Coliseum when Rupp wasn't available for the NIT), then you move to the next highest seed and give then the option to host. Unfortunately it wouldn't do anything to solve the geography issue. They would still try and put the top 4 seeds where the closest regional site is located.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
Example using current bracketology.
1 Kentucky
16 Montana/Texas Southern
8 Cincinnati
9 NC State
Kentucky would host this grouping. With Rupp Arena's capacity around 24,000, give Kentucky 9,000 tickets and the other schools around 5,000. The 16 seed likely wouldn't sell all of theirs so they would become general admission tickets.
The only negative would be if the host team loses the first game, but I would bet that top 4 seeds rarely lose in the first round. They probably win 80%+ of the time. If they lose, is it really any different than if they lose somewhere else? People will just sell their tickets to fans of the winning teams. Maybe they can do a buyback system to where your ticket goes into general admission and if it sells you get back a percentage of the sell price. The host school makes a little more money by getting a seller's fee and you don't have to take as big of a loss or try and sell it yourself.
Schools would just have to make sure their arenas are available for 1 more week of the year. If for some reason the top seed at that site can't/won't host or can't find an alternate site (like us hosting at Memorial Coliseum when Rupp wasn't available for the NIT), then you move to the next highest seed and give then the option to host. Unfortunately it wouldn't do anything to solve the geography issue. They would still try and put the top 4 seeds where the closest regional site is located.
Posted from Rivals Mobile