Why are they playing the state championship games in basketball and football in Lexington every year?
Why Lexington
- Thread starter KozmasAgain
- Start date
Bc the rest of the state hates louisville!
It's almost to the point where they could rotate it around and it would be fun. With Basketball, Louisville, kenSucky, WKU, and NKU's arenas are all big enough to host it. Attendance has dwindled and the KHSAA cannot be making that much money off of either from attendance. Therefore, if sponsorship is where they are drawing the revenue, you'd think it would be beneficial to include other areas and demographics from around the state to draw more fans/sponsorships.
How would anyone know as they've never been held at the YUM or anywhere else.
Attendance is going to based on what teams are in the games because of travel locations. It seems as if sUcK wants it in Lexington for a recruiting advantage for in state athletes. I have been in Rupp Arena and it is not comfortable at all way to cramped. They should rotate it every year that way we would know where you get the best attendance.
the KHSAA offices are there. State track, state tennis, state cross country, state football held there
The attedance this year was terrible.
There are multiple long time outs and over a hour between games in the SAME SESSION.
Food at the game is very expensive and very mediocre
Not many good "walkable" restaurants from the arena. We walked down to Carsons. Good restaurant but I almost called an Uber rather than walking back.
Same boring games on the floor during time outs every game.
I went to most of the games, including the final day.
A lot of it was a snooze fest.
BG made the final, but has had lots better teams in the past 10 years.
Moreno will be a good player. Hard to evaluate bc he was 6-7 inches taller than anyone in the state tourney, and a foot taller than anyone for BG
The attedance this year was terrible.
There are multiple long time outs and over a hour between games in the SAME SESSION.
Food at the game is very expensive and very mediocre
Not many good "walkable" restaurants from the arena. We walked down to Carsons. Good restaurant but I almost called an Uber rather than walking back.
Same boring games on the floor during time outs every game.
I went to most of the games, including the final day.
A lot of it was a snooze fest.
BG made the final, but has had lots better teams in the past 10 years.
Moreno will be a good player. Hard to evaluate bc he was 6-7 inches taller than anyone in the state tourney, and a foot taller than anyone for BG
I remember growing up in Indiana before class basketball when it was really Hoosier Hysteria. 1 tournament, everybody gets in, 1 state champion at the end. Once 1 game ended, the teams for the next game were running on the floor for warmups. Great memories.
It’s been at Memorial Coliseum and Freedom Hall. Since 1979 (or 1980) it’s been at Rupp.
This year’s attendance was low. Maybe time to look at the Yum Center?!?
Good points, all. The State Tournament has been on my bucket list for 60+ years and will likely be there when I die. Too much walking and poor amenities in Rupp. If it comes to the Yum! or NKU, I am all in.
Yes, Freedom Hall used to host, the last time being in 1994. From 1965 to 1978, it hosted every year, then six times since. The state football championships were once played in PJCS, too. The last time was 2008. The tournament then moved to BG for about 8 years, then shifted to Lexington.
We live in Crestwood, so South Oldham is our home school. All 3 of my boys will be there in the next 3 years, oldest next year! I was in FLA golfing, but my wife took the boys to the elite8 games and she said attendance was not good. South had several hundred people there and Jtown maybe a 1-200. Makes no sense not to try and move it around!
Maybe because Lexington is more centrally located than Louisville is.
True
So why is attendance down?
I’m not sure it matters where it is, people are not showing up. For whatever reason(s)
It’s been a few years since I lived in Kentucky, but it seems to me that Louisville is much closer to the center of the state than Lexington is. It’s literally 217 miles from Paducah and 203 miles from Ashland!
Seems to me that Freedom Hall could be custom fit to host the Sweet 16. I’m sure it could use the business. If Ky and IU start playing each other again, Freedom Hall should host it. The state fair board probably doesn’t have the funds for improvement or the will to improve it.
I went to the 94 tournament. Was a hell of a final. Talked to some people from podunk Kentucky, and they said that if their team wasn't in it, there's no way they would have come to Louisville to watch it, and if it wasn't in Louisville a whole lot more people from their community would have come to watch their team. People in some areas do dislike Louisville so much that they will not come to events in Louisville to drive attendance down. Heard that at different times at other events as well, not just sporting events, and especially the state fair. That one has a lot of resentment but it's too important to the state economy to be moved and risk either someplace not having the facilities to accommodate it, or the biggest population center of Jefferson county not attending as well as if it was in their backyard.
The population in Jefferson County is 800,000. Or about 20% of the Commonwealth population of about 4 million. As Pushup noted, Louisville is closer to the rest of the state and is a much better venue.
Frankfort and KHSAA love Lexington and the Eastern portion of the State. Louisville will never be the recipient of any objective judgements. The Sweet 16 is a flawed and out-dated structure, where a County like Harlan that only has 25,000 residents receives a slot, where Jefferson County has only 2 ……
If the Tournament remains open to all schools, then enlarge the tournament to where cities like Louisville, Lexington, BG, Covington, etc are represented with the number of schools that better reflect population. If there were more schools from the larger urban communities, there would be much greater interest and larger crowds.
Frankfort and KHSAA love Lexington and the Eastern portion of the State. Louisville will never be the recipient of any objective judgements. The Sweet 16 is a flawed and out-dated structure, where a County like Harlan that only has 25,000 residents receives a slot, where Jefferson County has only 2 ……
If the Tournament remains open to all schools, then enlarge the tournament to where cities like Louisville, Lexington, BG, Covington, etc are represented with the number of schools that better reflect population. If there were more schools from the larger urban communities, there would be much greater interest and larger crowds.
Ask the folks in Paducah, BG, or Owensboro. Lex is more central to the mountain counties that seem to run the state.
