From the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
UNI takes shot at NCAA mat tournament
By KEVIN EVANS, Executive Sports Editor
CEDAR FALLS – When NCAA officials walked out of the UNI-Dome following the 1997 Division I Wrestling tournament, there was no doubt the event would be back.
it wasn’t so much a question of if, but rather, when.
“Everything was absolutely wonderful, “said NCAA assistant director of championships Stann Tate. “In all honesty, it has been one of those events that I think all wrestling championships will be compared to.”
Sounded pretty good, until the next time it came to handing out bids for the tournament.
Following the 2001 NCAA Tournament in Iowa City, the last year tournament sites were awarded, NCAA Wrestling Committee Chairman Dave Martin, an assistant athletics director at Oklahoma State, said, “I would say it is a longshot for Cedar Falls.”
Well, it’s time for more future sites to be named, and Northern Iowa wants in.
Panther athletics director Rick Hartzell signed off on a bid to host the tournament in 2008, 2009, 2010 or 2011 this week. Now it is up to the committee to decide if it wants to return to a campus venue.
If it does, will UNI, the site of the most successful event ever on a college campus, be given an opportunity?
“We don’t know what everyone is bidding, but I think this is a competitive, pretty substantial, number, “said Hartzell.
The Panthers are offering the NCAA $1.41 million dollars to bring the event back to a place that broke the 90,000 barrier in attendance, a number that still stands third all-time even after seven others have hosted.
The problem for UNI, and others, is the committee seems determined to keep the event in off-campus, big-city arenas.
Ironically, it was the success that UNI had that gave the committee the resolve to test bigger markets.
St. Louis holds the record with 96,994 fans at the 2000 event, but that total slipped by more than 9,000 when it returned in 2004.
Other stops were in Albany, N.Y., (76,843) and Kansas City (91,431).
Given the opportunity, Northern Iowa thinks it can regain the attendance record.
The bid projects 17,000 available seats for each of six sessions, meaning the goal is 102,000 fans for the three-day event. Actually, more than 17,000 could be accommodated, if needed.
Drawing over 100,000 is something few would have even been brave enough to dream about before the 1997 success at UNI.
“We feel like this is an aggressive bid, but a bid we can live with, “said Hartzell. “The only risk is a four-day snowstorm and nobody gets here.”
Possible, certainly, but very unlikely.
A bigger obstacle for UNI will be the mindset of the committee in regard to returning to a campus site. Martin was strong in his opposition, but he is no longer a member of the committee.
“Nobody has any quarrel with St. Louis taking the championships because the arena is good, the transportation is good, and the hotels are good, “said Hartzell. “We understand that.
“But we think the thing ought to be on campus every four years. That is where wrestling is based, on campus. It is based at the University of Iowa, Oklahoma State, Northern Iowa and other places. So I don’t think it should become a city-arena event, and I think a lot of people agree with that.”
What Hartzell and others need to do now is start a lobbying effort to just get the selection committee to agree to a site visit.
That determination is scheduled for sometime next month, and site visits come in April.
“We’ve got to lobby the right people, get the current committee members up with what happened here in 1997, “said Hartzell. “We’ve got to get some athletic directors that support wrestling, including Bob Bowlsby at Iowa, and have them help us. We’ve got to get some wrestling coaches to put pressure on the committee members.
“Our goal is to be able to make a presentation to them. I would be real surprised and a whole lot disappointed if they don’t let us do that, given the fact we hosted one other time and it was successful.
“I think we can put together a presentation making a pretty compelling argument.”
If the UNI-Dome was nearly perfect for the last event, it should be better this time.
By the time any tournament would be held here, the McLeod Center will be up and running.
A lot of the things that took up floor space in the UNI-Dome — warm-up areas, staging areas and other things — would move into that building, making more room for quality floor seating that could stretch the capacity well past 17,000.
Who the Panthers are competing against is anybody’s guess. Hartzell is sure St. Louis, Kansas City, Fresno State and probably Des Moines are bidding. There will likely be an eastern site, too. The question is how much money the others think they can turn over to the NCAA.
The old knock on the Cedar Valley about air transportation and hotel rooms is not a concern, either, Hartzell said.
“We have done some of the demographic work, and only about 25 percent of the fans fly to this event, “he said. “Holding it in the middle of the country probably decreases that some, so I would think Waterloo, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines could handle that.
“The hotel situation is pretty good. That is really not an issue.”
Hartzell said other UNI success with NCAA events — regional volleyball and national cross country meets — puts the school in a good light with the governing body.
“We’ve got a great relationship with the NCAA. We call each other by first name, “he said.
“We think we have a chance. It would be a great event for us to have here again, it would mean a lot to the community economically, and it feels to me like it is a source of pride to be able to host an event like this.”
Few who were around in 1997 would argue with that.
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