The question has been asked: Who will bring the most fans to the NIT Final Four?
Apologies to Conference USA, but it’s probably not North Texas or UAB. Neither is within driving distance of Las Vegas and neither is all that big a brand. Unless the North Texas Alumni Club of Las Vegas is bigger than I’m realizing, those are probably smaller crowds.
The question, then, is down to Wisconsin and Utah Valley, with a straightforward case for each: Utah Valley is within driving distance of Las Vegas; Wisconsin has a huge, faithful following.
I’m not sure if Utah Valley will bus fans down to the games. If I had to guess, they won’t on Tuesday, but if they beat UAB, they will on Thursday. This is something we see a lot in the NIT Final Four: Bigger attendance for the championship than the semifinals. I think this was most prominent with Xavier last year. It makes sense for a few reasons: It’s hard to do a twelve-hour round trip with a game in the middle twice in one week; and it’s easier to do something like that on a Thursday than a Tuesday, when the week isn’t so close to being over. I do think, though, that there are a lot of Utah Valley people in Las Vegas. It’s a school with 40,000 undergrads. Las Vegas is one of the bigger regional cities around it. Both Las Vegas and Orem have sizable Mormon populations.
Will it matter? I’m not sure. I’d guess Utah Valley has a larger crowd than either of the other green teams, but I don’t think they’re going to pack Orleans Arena. They didn’t pack their own building on Wednesday, even if they got it big enough to look really full. The school is big, but it’s not cohesive. I get a commuter-school impression, or a little bit of a BYU Jr., with the proximity to Provo.
Wisconsin has a devoted fanbase. One of the most devoted in the country. There’s a reason most cities of a certain size have a designated Badgers bar, and it’s not just that there are a lot of Wisconsin fans around. It’s that, too—the school has 35,000 undergrads and a decent following from Wisconsinites who didn’t attend UW-Madison—but it’s also that they show up. When Wisconsin is on TV, Badger fans congregate to watch, for reasons including but not limited to beer-drinking culture in 1800s Germany. I doubt there are a ton of Wisconsin people in Las Vegas, but those that are there? Many will come to the game(s). And it wouldn’t be surprising to see at least some fans make the trip, especially if high school and grade school spring break schedules work out.
Additionally, Wisconsin invests in its athletics. We’ve talked a lot about how they sent the pep band they sent to Oregon, but that does say something. Wisconsin’s own traveling party figures to be the biggest of the week, between administrators and support staff and the band and the cheerleaders. That’s partly resources, and it’s partly choice. Wisconsin chooses to get behind its athletes, which is admirable.
There’s been some isolated backlash to this support, partly from Wisconsin folks of the school of thought that celebrating NIT success is somehow beneath people (congrats?) and partly from fans of Wisconsin haters looking for an easy jab. (There was a Marquette fan on Twitter who made such a jab, and it was a funny thing to say as a fan of a school whose biggest perceived rivals don’t think of Marquette as a particular rival at all.) Overall, though, it plays. Just as basketball players play basketball, basketball fans watch basketball. And Wisconsin has a whole lot of basketball fans.
If we’re being transparent here, I’m worried about attendance in Las Vegas. I wish we’d gotten Arizona State or Nevada or another big, semi-local school. I think Las Vegas is good for all the marketing of the NIT, but is going to be bad for the in-arena and on-screen product because it’s just so far away, and because the NIT is not going to be the only show in town. Along this same line of thought, I’m really excited for Hinkle next year: If the schedules were flipped, I think Wisconsin would have been set to legitimately fill that building up if the Badgers made the championship. The odds of a Big Ten team making the NIT Final Four are pretty good, and I think Hoosier locals love basketball enough and love live sports enough that a segment will show up no matter who plays. This year, though? It could be a little ugly. We’ve got work to do, NIT fans.
