‘To take these steps is painful.’ Big 12 bars general public from basketball tournaments
With growing concerns over the spread of coronavirus, the Big 12 will have “limited access” and will not allow the general public at its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in Kansas City starting on Thursday, Commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced on Wednesday.
“What that means for our teams is they’ll have access to 125 tickets,” Bowlsby said. “They’ll be ticketed game by game, and we’ll clear the venue after each game. Our athletic directors have decided that the tickets would go to guests of student-athletes and staff members, and that we do not plan to have have pep bands, cheerleaders or dance teams as part of the group that’s in.
“The attempt is to absolutely minimize the number of people that are here but still to find a way to to conduct the events and actually get the opportunity to play the games. We have done this in consultation with a number of different entities.”
The men’s tournament started Wednesday at the Sprint Center, as fans were able to attend the first session. The women’s tournament starts on Thursday at nearby Municipal Auditorium.
Bowlsby described the process as “painful.” But it falls in line with how the NCAA is handling March Madness with no fan access. Sporting events across the globe have taken similar measures, or been canceled entirely.
“Obviously we don’t do this lightly,” Bowlsby said. “We are blessed to have the best basketball tournament in all of college basketball and to have to take these steps is painful for everyone that’s involved.
“But these are unusual times. We have taken the steps that we think are appropriate. Some of it was at the leadership of the NCAA but I want to reiterate that we have been on the phone with my 85 colleagues. Three times today already and I think you’ll see that most of them are doing likewise.”
The Big 12 does not have insurance for limited fan access at tournaments.
“It’s just about impossible to insure against this,” Bowlsby said. “There will be a very substantial loss of revenue.”
Bowlsby said the conference will go through a refund process for fans who purchased tickets to games. Fans were allowed to attend Wednesday night’s session that featured matchups between Iowa State-Oklahoma State and TCU-Kansas State.
Bowlsby said limiting access on Wednesday was considered, but he felt it could’ve created more problems given how little notice the league would have given fans.
“I just would like to apologize to all of our fans that are not going to be able to be in the venue,” Bowlsby said. “They really look forward to this. I think it’s the best tournament of its kind in the country. And so I’m very sorry to disrupt what I know is a much anticipated weekend for a lot of people.”
Bowlsby, a vetearn college sports administrator, compared the latest developments to when he served on the Division I men’s basketball committee when the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq in the early 2000s.
“The Department of Defense was actually in contact with us about initiating hostilities in Iraq,” Bowlsby said. “We had some very oddly timed conference calls and I always thought it was exceedingly strange that that we would be a part of. Anything that had to do with a military operation but the representatives made us understand just how important March Madness was to the culture of our country and how disconcerting it would be to not play the tournament.
“Certainly from that point, you just get a feeling for how much a part of Americana this tournament is. I consider our tournament an extension of that.”
Other conferences followed suit with similar fan bans. The American Athletic Conference at Fort Worth’s Dickies Arena won’t allow fans when its tournament starts on Thursday.
And Conference USA announced restrictions for the rest of its tournament games at The Star in Frisco.
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 6:51 PM.
