NCAA Sweet 16 is "noncommercial"
Posted by billhoward
NCAA Sweet 16 is "noncommercial"
Posted by: billhoward (---.hsd1.nj.comcast.net)
Date: March 23, 2011 10:47AM
Newark's Prudential Center (the Rock) is one of the NCAA basketball Sweet 16 sites. The Newark Star-Ledger / NJ.com has been covering the story with all the enthusiasm and boosterism of the Iowa town award this year's 4H festival. Today's story details how the Rock is transformed for the event. A Page 1 photo notes the director or events "keeps a 300-page manual detailing what the NCAA requires of host venues and organizers." (Kneel or curtsy when an NCAA official enters the room?) The Rock's basketball hardwood court isn't good enough; it's replaced with an entirely new court with the NCAA logo. The paper says the site becomes "a world athletic officials hope is devoid of commerical influence ... the building has beens scrubbed ... of corporate imagery ... 'to provide the NCAA with a high school gym [atmosphere].'" NCAA logos don't count, of course.*
To be fair, Monday's Star-Ledger lead story included a big graphic showing all the promised hotels, restaurants, parks, and pedestrian bridges around the Rock that remain promised yet unbuilt. Someday Newark could be a viable, revitalized city. The mayor is young, smart, energetic, and so far appears to be keeping his fingers out of the till (all of them improvements) with the Rock and federal buildings and various improvements reaching three blocks in one direction to Newark Penn Station and in the other direction to the NJIT / Rutgers / UMDJ / Seton Hall Law academic concentration. It could happen.
Anyone who was at the Cornell-Colgate game last Thanksgiving weekend saw what a nice arena it is and how the immediate surrounding area was safe, at least during Pru Center events. It wouldn't be a terrible venue for the ECAC hockey tournament; you could shop or sightsee all day in NYC, then be at the rink 25 minutes later by train or subway (PATH). And the ECAC allows beer unlike the NCAA.
* NCAA logos in abundance at last year's Sweet 16 game at the Carrier Dome:
[clear]
(... sometimes a zoom lens suffers spherical aberrations and other distortions at wide apertures. Yeah, that must be it.)
To be fair, Monday's Star-Ledger lead story included a big graphic showing all the promised hotels, restaurants, parks, and pedestrian bridges around the Rock that remain promised yet unbuilt. Someday Newark could be a viable, revitalized city. The mayor is young, smart, energetic, and so far appears to be keeping his fingers out of the till (all of them improvements) with the Rock and federal buildings and various improvements reaching three blocks in one direction to Newark Penn Station and in the other direction to the NJIT / Rutgers / UMDJ / Seton Hall Law academic concentration. It could happen.
Anyone who was at the Cornell-Colgate game last Thanksgiving weekend saw what a nice arena it is and how the immediate surrounding area was safe, at least during Pru Center events. It wouldn't be a terrible venue for the ECAC hockey tournament; you could shop or sightsee all day in NYC, then be at the rink 25 minutes later by train or subway (PATH). And the ECAC allows beer unlike the NCAA.
* NCAA logos in abundance at last year's Sweet 16 game at the Carrier Dome:
(... sometimes a zoom lens suffers spherical aberrations and other distortions at wide apertures. Yeah, that must be it.)
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