Back in the dark days of the NBA lockout, I came up with an idea for a winner-take-most tournament consisting of pickup-style teams made of NBA players at AT&T Stadium. Was it a great idea? Some people say yes, others say definitely. You don’t have to re-read the entire thing. Unless you haven’t had your socks blown off by a combination of wit and entrepreneurial acumen today. Then you probably should. Anyway, today I want to take a small piece of that idea — that the early rounds of the tournament would feature games happening simultaneously on side-by-side courts — and repurpose it for an idea that, if you can believe it, makes even more sense.
The idea: next December, on a Saturday after college football is finished with its regular season and before the real bowl games and playoff happens, AT&T Stadium should host two college basketball games happening simultaneously on side-by-side courts. (I couldn’t figure out a way to reword that.) Maybe Home Depot or Lowe’s sponsors it and we call it the the Home Depot (or Lowe’s) College Hardwood Two-by-Four. Or something. Haven’t settled on anything yet, and it would probably be best to wait on a sponsorship deal before we get too attached.
For teams: I think SMU would agree (and having top recruit Emmanuel Mudiay would make them an attractive choice — plus, maybe Allen Iverson shows up to support his old coach!). You want to keep it local, you can get TCU or maybe even Texas to come up. For the other two teams, you’d want, ideally, teams with a bit of national profile, but you don’t necessarily need to lock up Duke or UNC or Kentucky or whatever. The games themselves — just like when teams play outdoors or on a aircraft carrier or whatever — are beside the point. The actual event is the thing. You get a pair of teams from a prominent conference and you’re gold.
The stadium is plenty big enough for this. Between the courts would be four rows of captain’s chairs, spaced and offset, so the people who get those special seats could swivel and take in both games. The giant video board would, obviously, be showing both games on split screen. Speaking of video, ESPN or Fox’s new sports channel would have a field day with this. (I’m thinking ESPN could show a game on ESPN proper, the other on ESPN2, and then a split-screen broadcast on one of its other channels.)
As always, my cut is 1 percent of the gate and a commemorative t-shirt.
