(U-WIRE) SYRACUSE, N.Y.-There’s a scene Jan Quitzau repeats in his mind over and over again: It’s early April, a picturesque spring day and thousands of face-painted fans funnel toward the site of the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four, waving pennants and hooting and hollering.
It looks so familiar, though.
The fans are strolling up Irving Avenue on the Syracuse University Hill toward the Carrier Dome, the centerpiece of the SU campus and the largest domed stadium in the Northeast.
And, patron-by-patron, the Dome swallows the crowd and welcomes it to the pageantry of the Final Four, the grandest event in college athletics.
“The community’s been talking about this from day one when the Dome was built,” said Quitzau, the executive director of Syracuse Convention and Visitors Bureau. “When you have an NCAA championship school and the largest on-campus venue in the United States, you can’t help but say, `Geez, we’ll be able to host the Final Four.'” Not yet.
That’s why Quitzau daydreams this scene.
Despite hosting three successful East Regional finals-the round before the Final Four-since 1997,
Syracuse is never considered among potential locations for the Final Four because it fails to meet stringent criteria set by the NCAA.
The city is woefully short of the 10,000 hotel rooms needed within a 20-mile radius, and the Dome lacks sufficient space to house media and hold press conferences.
Only a handful of cities qualify to host the three-day-long bonanza and its built-in $50 million boost to the local economy.
Syracuse, however, does meet most of the requirements to host a women’s Final Four.
Quitzau said the University will explore bidding for the 2008 and 2009 championships this summer, and Associate Director of Athletics Michael Veley said, “We’d all love to see it happen.”
Efforts within the next 10 years-as well as a successful women’s Final Four, should it happen-could make Syracuse a viable men’s Final Four option around 2011, or even later.
However, plenty of “ifs” cloud the prospects: if the 3.2 million-square-foot Destiny USA mall comes to fruition and brings with it 4,000 new hotel rooms; if the University receives state and federal funding for a $7 million addition to accommodate media on the Irving Avenue side of the Dome; if the NCAA actually would hold the Final Four in Syracuse, a mid-size city on which a blanket of snow dropped during the East Regional on March 22.
“I would never promise anybody that if we got the press space and if we got the hotel rooms up to a qualitative and quantitative level that we’d get a men’s Final Four,” SU Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw said.
“I wouldn’t make that promise. But I promise you we won’t get it without it,” Shaw said.
Dozens of conversations about it have taken place, more informal inquiries than anything else.
Shaw partook in a couple with former Syracuse Mayor Roy A. Bernardi. SU Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel had a few with Bill Hancock, director of Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, which selects Final Four sites.
A dialogue concerned the feasibility of Syracues landing a men’s Final Four, the culmination of the NCAA Tournament that will cost CBS $6 billion to televise until 2014.
And all ended rather abruptly.
“The fact is, at least in the past, Syracuse hasn’t met those two criteria, which are very important,” Hancock said.
