Pod System for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Illinois is in the East Regional but is playing in Omaha Nebraska. While on Thursday it played the second game that finished in the afternoon, today's game starts in the evening.  It is the second to last game of the day.  I puzzled about this some and then went to the ESPN Website for today's schedule of games.   For the purpose of this post, which might be more interesting to an economist than a basketball fan, the interesting columns are Location and Time (all those times are Central, as I have it set to my own preferences in case I want to watch the game).  There isn't a column for region, but that information is provided in smaller font under the match-up. 

There are four sites for the games today.  (Note there are NIT games listed as well.  I'm not including them in the discussion here.)  Those sites are Charlotte NC, Pittsburgh PA, Omaha NE, and Salt Lake City Utah.  From the perspective of time zones, the first two are in the East, the third is in the Midwest, and the fourth is in the Mountain zone.  There is no location in the Pacific zone.  This must somehow be related to why some of the conferences are realigning to include a few west coast teams.  But I definitely don't have the full story on that

A naive view would have the Locations and Times correlate, but it seems that today the correlation is negative as the first two games are in Salt Lake City.  I will give my conjecture on why that is below.

Another issue is whether any of the sites really offers a home court advantage for the favorite team.  North Carolina is playing Michigan State in Charlotte.  Here is a Google Maps view of the drive between Chapel Hill and Charlotte.   There and back seems do-able in the same day, with watching the game in between.  It might require the designated driver to not imbibe at all, but it is still do-able.  Also, I don't know this for sure but I'd speculate that UNC fans are distributed all around the state (except in Durham) and one might make a similar quick study for other locations that have a significant number of fans.

Here is a similar Google Map for the drive between Ames and Omaha.    It's a bit longer than the other though not by too much and if the weather cooperates it is definitely do-able.  (One point of geography I learned from this is that Ames is further north than Omaha.)

Now to the conjecture.  I'm not sure how the tickets get distributed to the schools but I assume that each school gets its own allotment, which in turn get allocated mainly to season ticket holders.  And then there are some tickets held for sale to the general public.  Some locals may want to go to the game.  Within the first group, tickets to the first two rounds are issued and those fans get hotel accommodations or something equivalent, hoping their team will make it to the second round.  

But, of course, half the teams lose in the first round.  That's the nature of the beast.  What happens to the tickets that fans of losing teams have for the second round?  Intuitively, they will resell them to fans of the winning teams.  That might very well happen face-to-face right after the first round game concludes, or there are scalpers who serve as middleman to get the market to work.  The NCAA would like as many seats filled as possible for the second round games.  That must mean there are many fans at those games who weren't present at the first-round games.

Salt Lake City is in the middle of nowhere.  For the sake of this argument, I would say that very few will drive there just to see a second round game.  The vast majority will fly and given the vicissitudes of air travel these days, they will fly in the day before.  Making the games early there might allow these fans to fly out day of the game.  

For the games that are later today, those who aren't driving will fly out tomorrow.  That includes Illinois fans who have gone to Omaha, whether driving or flying.   

I don't know how big the Iowa State fandom is, but it will be interesting to watch and see whether they fill up the arena for their game.  If they do win this game, those who aren't driving back tonight might stick around to watch Illinois play Duquesne and get a sense of the Sweet Sixteen match-up.  

I do suspect that the Michigan State vs North Carolina game will be pretty much like a home game for North Carolina.  There will be some Michigan State fans in the stands, but they will evidently be a minority.   

And if this analysis is making some sense, I would expect the Pittsburgh arena to be less than full of fans.  It's drive-able for Oakland fans but not really for the other three schools, definitely not for Oregon.  And with three double-digit seeds in this region, you have to wonder about how intense the fandom is about seeing the game. 

The NCAA in coming up with this system has to balance fairness to the teams with filling the seats for the games.  Because the driving distances are greater in the West, the later requirement creates a bias against west coast teams.  

Tomorrow Purdue gets the home court advantage with a game in Indianapolis.  So I don't want to say that the bias is for certain conferences.  But I think there is too much advantage to teams that get number one seeds.  

Yesterday, in the Northwestern vs. FAU game, I thought the refereeing was terrible, and that was a game without the locational bias, as the game was in Brooklyn.  Since I still remember Illinois playing Kentucky in the Elite Eight back in 1984, with that game played at Rupp Arena, I really don't want fan pressure to be one of the important variables that impacts the refs.  But given that filling the seats is a need, I'm afraid that sometimes we're stuck with that.