- Slug: Sports-Final Four Slam Wrap-up, 1,000 words.
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By Sammy Nute
Cronkite News
PHOENIX – As confetti fell Monday from the State Farm Stadium rafters, bringing three weeks of hectic college basketball to a close, the UConn Huskies were crowned back-to-back NCAA Tournament champions.
However, the Huskies weren’t the only team celebrating at the end of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Final Four.
JoAn Scott, the NCAA vice-president of men’s basketball, and Jay Parry, CEO of the Phoenix Local Organizing Committee, also had reason to pop a cork.
The pair worked with their teams over the past 10 months to put together the best event possible for the athletes playing Saturday and Monday and the fans who came to watch the show. After a total of 149,143 fans packed State Farm Stadium over the three games, Parry and Scott called their team’s efforts and execution a success.
“As a host committee, our goal was to provide unforgettable memories to these student-athletes and really show them the Arizona that we love,” said Parry, who met with reporters along with Scott on Tuesday.
“We think we did that. We also wanted to give those special memories to our local fans and our visiting fans that came from around the world to be a part of this iconic event. We wanted to take advantage of the incredible platform of the men’s Final Four to tell Arizona’s story to the world.”
The Final Four was just the culmination. The Phoenix Local Organizing Committee has been busy over the past two years, switching its focus to the Final Four immediately following the 2023 Super Bowl, also at State Farm Stadium.
The Final Four planning began as far back as September 2022 but really ramped up last June.
It’s the ability of Phoenix to successfully pull off the biggest events in sports that has made it one of the premier hosting cities in the country. The Valley played host to the Final Four in 2017 and has been the site of four Super Bowls, most recently in 2008, 2015 and 2023.
Additionally, Scott specifically pointed out the number of NCAA bowl games the city hosts, including national championship games in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, as a reason the NCAA believed the city would come through.
“It was tremendous,” Scott said, “The convention center has so many conventions. The stadium has so many events, not just football, by the way. And there are so many bowl games here. You need hotels, public safety and transportation, so you have to have a good infrastructure for this to work. And it just works seamlessly.”
When beginning planning, Scott and Parry identified making the event special for the athletes as their main focus. Besides UConn’s plane running into some trouble on its way here, the event went smoothly as the committee “rolled out the red carpet” for the athletes playing in the biggest games of their lives.
As for the fans, the Phoenix Local Organizing Committee put on nearly 40 events across the last two weeks to craft the Final Four into the best possible experience for anyone attending the games.
The FanFest in the Phoenix Convention Center was set up for the weekend and a major success. Additionally, the Music Fest held at Margaret T. Hance Park near downtown Phoenix played host to thousands of people across the three days of music from Friday to Sunday.
“A lot of the success is how well it’s executed,” Scott said. “Hopefully, there are not a lot of things that we have to pivot the week of. How well we plan is really important, and I think that comes hand-in-hand with a lot of events here. They know how to plan and are prepared even with contingencies.”
Now, with Phoenix’s time in the spotlight over, the attention turns toward San Antonio and the 2025 tournament.
The Fan Jam, a mobile truck that serves as a pop-up mobile event, transports hoops and a court to be set up across multiple locations in the host city. It began its 980-mile trek on Interstate10 to its new home Tuesday. Scott and Parry handed the keys – literally and metaphorically – to Manny Sanchez, the San Antonio planning committee’s leader.
The home of the Alamo is no stranger to hosting the tournament. San Antonio followed Phoenix in 2018 and has hosted the Men’s Final Four four times, more than any other Texas city, in 1998, 2004, 2008 and 2018.
Sanchez spent the last week taking notes on how Phoenix pulled off the event. Now he takes those lessons back with him for the event that starts 361 days from now.
Asked what lessons he learned, Sanchez said, “The preparation of the whole event.”
He said the FanFest was well organized with volunteers outside collecting signed waivers from the fans before they entered, and he said the game-day organization was equally impressive.
“For the game, getting into the stadium was super simple, and it seemed like wayfinding was set up super nice,” Sanchez said.
The Fan Jam will stop at multiple colleges along its trip on the I-10, beginning with a few final activations at ASU, GCU and Arizona before finally making the trip east and hitting multiple Texas schools along the way.
“It’ll be great to give the college students a first look at the truck,” Sanchez said. “And, as a staff person, I’ll be able to experience the college campuses. “We are going to establish those grassroots and get everyone hyped up for the San Antonio Final Four.”
State Farm Stadium saw the third-highest attendance in NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship final history with 74,423 fans spread throughout the facility’sl three decks.
Now, San Antonio faces pressure to build upon this year’s success when “One Shining Moment” is played at the Alamodome.
“San Antonio has certainly hosted before, but we said, ‘Just use all the time you have laying the foundation to make it a really successful event like we’ve done in Arizona,’” Parry said. “You have to use every day, every week, every month leading up to it to prepare.”
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