And other questions that arise when a college hosts the NCAA tournament.

By Michael Reardon

Frank Mastrandrea ’88, assistant athletic director, chuckled about the event that rapidly consumed his life.

“The worst is yet to come, and ignorance is bliss,” Mastrandrea said, as he sat in his Fieldhouse office on a luminous and frigid January morning.

At the time, he was fully immersed in planning the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships, aka “The Big Dance,” the highlight of the college basketball season. The challenge of hosting a massive, logistically complex multi-day event was intensifying, and Mastrandrea was feeling the pressure. Holy Cross, as tournament host, would be under the microscope across the country as tens of thousands of college basketball fans, media, officials, players and others descended on Worcester for the better part of a week.

Now that the tournament is part of NCAA history, the College can look back with pride as the host of a successful major national event, where all those thousands of people were treated to great basketball games and warmhearted hospitality. And Mastrandrea is no doubt catching up on some much needed sleep and getting reacquainted with his family.

Rabid college hoops fans jammed the DCU Center on Friday, March 18 and Sunday, March 20 to see some of the best college basketball teams in the country compete in the first and second rounds of the tournament. Fans were electrified by the exciting games played by student-athletes who may someday compete in the National Basketball Association.

The nation thrilled to the action on the DCU Center court, but comparatively few people were aware of the pressure-packed, behind-the-scenes planning of the event. Director of Athletics Richard M. Regan Jr. ’76, Associate Athletic Director Rosemary A. Shea ’87 and Mastrandrea worked for years with Sandy Dunn, general manager of the DCU Center (formerly the Worcester Centrum), city officials and business leaders to bring one of the premier events in all of sports to Worcester.

The city joined Boise, Charlotte, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Nashville, Oklahoma City and Tucson as first- and second-round sites.

Planning for the tournament was a monumental and at times overwhelming task. The amount of work behind the scenes to prepare for that week was staggering—and intensified as March drew closer. All the while, Mastrandrea, Shea and Regan firmly believed a sense of humor was essential to surviving the stress.

“I was looking forward to April,” Mastrandrea said with a smile. “But we were all pretty calm. There’s a certain calmness that comes over you when you realize you can’t have your hand in everything. Things will go wrong, but you can’t let it bother you. With something this big, we knew there would be little bumps. You just have to move on.”

In their Fieldhouse offices, a sense of calm did prevail. One morning in the weeks leading up to the tournament, Mastrandrea fielded questions from media seeking credentials to cover the event; Regan poured over NCAA tournament regulations; and Shea worked with staff to organize ticket packages. However, beneath the unflappability and good humor was mounting pressure to make the tournament go off with nary a hitch and ensure that NCAA officials, coaches, student-athletes, media and fans had a terrific and memorable week.

“You get teams that have never been to the tournament before, and it’s special for them,” Mastrandrea said. “You want to make it a great experience for them. On the other hand, for a team like Duke, this is just a stepping stone. But, you try and make it as enjoyable as you can for everyone.”

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Although the tournament itself was hectic, the Holy Cross planners were busiest during the last four days leading up to the games. Much of the work could not be done until after it was known which teams would be coming to Worcester. “Selection Sunday”—in which college teams from across the country are chosen to play in the tournament—was March 13, just a few days before the first game was to be played.

“Selections were made Sunday night and teams arrived here for practice on the following Thursday,” Shea said. “Nothing prepares you for the wave that comes after ‘Selection Sunday.’”

Shea was the only one among her colleagues planning the 2005 tournament who was working at Holy Cross in 1992—the last time the College hosted the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships. She was not involved in planning the event at that time, but as media relations assistant, she gathered statistics, put together media guides and served as practice coordinator.

“I remember they were great games,” Shea said of the 1992 tournament. “People still talk about them and what a great experience it was for Worcester. The first day of the tournament is always an exciting one. There are usually some upsets, and you get teams coming out of nowhere and advancing.”

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The road to hosting this year’s NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament began almost five years ago. Because the NCAA plans for tournaments several years in advance, a bid to become a host site for 2005 was submitted by Holy Cross and SMG (the DCU Center’s management company) in June 2000. The NCAA conducted a site visit to Worcester in September of that year in order to evaluate the DCU Center, airports, local hotels, and the ability of Holy Cross to administer the tournament according to the NCAA’s policies.

“As part of the bidding process, prospective hosts submit materials to support how they meet those criteria,” explained William R. Hancock, consultant to the NCAA Division I Men’s Championships. “Specifically, we ask for facts and figures about the facility, such as capacity, locker rooms, media space, number of daily arrivals and departures from nearby airports and descriptions of hotels, including the distance from the competition venue. Holy Cross was committed to making the event successful.”

In December 2000, the NCAA notified Holy Cross that the tournament would be coming to Worcester. After that, there was a three-year lull. Planning activity did not pick up again until August 2003 when Regan and Shea traveled to Indianapolis, home of the NCAA, for a seminar for future tournament hosts. They went back to Indianapolis in August 2004 for another seminar and, last year, attended the NCAA Division I Men’s Championships in Raleigh, N.C., to observe behind the scenes how the tournament is run.

NCAA officials returned to Worcester in January of this year for a last two-day site visit. The NCAA requires the host institution to hold a basketball game in the same arena where the tournament will take place to ensure the venue is appropriate for the tournament. Holy Cross moved a men’s basketball game against Iona to the DCU Center so that NCAA officials could observe a game in progress.

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Regan said Holy Cross did not make a substantial profit as a result of hosting the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships, explaining that this was not the school’s intention. Rather, he points to the prestige that comes with serving as a host of the tournament.

“It was an honor to be selected,” Regan said. “It raised the profile of the College. People across the country watched the tournament. It gave the institution some visibility.”

Noting that the “amount of detail is overwhelming” in planning for the tournament, Shea says that, for months, Regan, Mastrandrea and she each carried around a door-stopper-thick, 225-page NCAA manual issued to all tournament hosts. According to Shea, the manual spells out exactly how the host institution must conduct the entire tournament, from hotel accommodations to drug testing of student-athletes.

“This was the most specific document you’ve ever seen,” Mastrandrea agreed. “They’re so specific they tell us the number of colored markers we need.”

He points out other examples of the details covered in the manual, such as: how many somersaults a cheerleader can perform (no more than one rotation); the duration of team practices (50 minutes); the specific number and type of supplies for media (i.e., four blue/black markers); the number of school logos allowed on the basketball court (two logos that cannot measure more than five by five feet, and lettering no more than 42 inches high); the allotment of drinking cups permitted for media, teams and cheerleaders (15,000); and length of television interviews (no more than four minutes).

The NCAA was also a stickler about the types of food that could be served in places like the media buffet room. With permission, a host could substitute a food recommended by the NCAA with local cuisine. But it wasn’t easy.

“In an effort to bring some local flavor to the event, we wanted to replace one of the NCAA’s recommended hot items with clam chowder,” Shea said. “There were high level staff members at the NCAA office deciding if soup was really a meal.”

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Hancock said the NCAA believes it is important that the tournament have the “same look and feel” everywhere in the country. Guidelines for everything from what the public address announcer can say to the size of a manufacturer’s label on a school band member’s uniform guarantees there will be that consistency.

“The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee wants the teams, media and fans to be treated the same in Worcester as they are in Tucson and Oklahoma City and Charlotte,” Hancock said. “The only way to do that is to have a clear set of policies for all host institutions.”

And make no mistake: Holy Cross planned the tournament according to the strict guidelines set down in the manual—but that did not stop Mastrandrea and Shea from poking a little fun at the NCAA and its obsession with regulating every last minute detail of the tournament.

“There is a section that reads, ‘review seating assignments during each half to ensure authorized person is in seat and not a freeloader,’” Mastrandrea said. “The fact that the word ‘freeloader’ is in the book was my favorite part.”

“No detail is too small for the NCAA,” Shea added. “We provided the banner dimensions for the officials’ and media tables at least six times. I think that brides have been measured for their wedding dresses fewer times than we had to check sizes for NCAA banners and table skirting.”

As tournament manager, Shea had the most crushing workload of anyone in the athletic office. For the past year leading up to the tournament, she was the person who submitted all the plans, documents, maps and diagrams to the NCAA office. In addition to handling ticket orders, she was also the primary contact for the teams, officials and NCAA personnel during the tournament.

Shea’s experience and hard work were invaluable to planning this year’s tournament.

“If Rose and Frank weren’t here,” said Regan, “I don’t know what I’d have done.”

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Despite the attention to detail, glitches are inevitable in planning the event. In 1992, the NCAA added the letter ‘h’ to ‘ Worcester,’ misspelling it ‘Worchester’ on some of its materials. The same thing happened again this year—shirts sent to Holy Cross had Worcester spelled with an ‘h’ on them.

“Overcoming the mispronunciation and misspelling of Worcester was one of our biggest challenges,” quipped Shea.

Shea marveled at the changes that have occurred in the years since Holy Cross last hosted the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships. Noting the emergence of technology as the biggest change in how the games were covered behind the scenes, Shea recalls that she and others typed out game statistics on typewriters in 1992. And, when they wanted to use computers on “Selection Sunday,” she said, they had to go to the student computer lab because there were not enough computers in the athletic department.

“It’s almost incredible that we made the whole event happen in 1992 without personal computers, laptops, Internet, cell phones, voice mail or e-mail,” Shea noted. “Earlier this year the NCAA asked for digital photos from the last time we hosted the tournament. The only digital technology we used then was for watches.”

Mastrandrea’s biggest job was issuing media credentials. He knew major media outlets like The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and TheBoston Globe would be on hand, but without knowing until “Selection Sunday” which teams would play in Worcester, he could only estimate how many media credentials he would need to issue.

Because it was also impossible to put together media guides until the teams were named on “Selection Sunday,” these last minute tasks kept Mastrandrea awake at night. In the months leading up to the tournament, he estimated that up to 300 media members could be in Worcester that week.

“It was like planning a wedding for 300 of your closest friends,” he said. “I was trying to plan for the worst case, but there are only so many seats in the first round. You are going to tick somebody off. As best as possible, I wanted to take care of those who have been good to Holy Cross.”

The emergence of online media was another challenge for Mastrandrea—he had to consult newspaper circulation figures and television and radio market areas to determine which traditional media outlets received credentials. For online media, the NCAA required that the outlet receive at least one million unique users a month in each of the 12 months leading up to the tournament and that it cover college basketball on a daily basis.

“The NCAA has been very progressive in saying you have to recognize these people as media,” Mastrandrea said.

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The success of the tournament also hinged on the effective use of about 100 volunteers from Holy Cross, the community and other colleges and universities.

“As we gathered volunteers, people said they did this 13 years ago and that they wanted to do it again,” Shea said. “People really enjoyed doing it. No matter how small the task, they wanted to be part of it.”

Mastrandrea needed approximately 50 volunteers just to handle media. Jobs included handing out press credentials, escorting team coaches and student-athletes to the interview room for postgame interviews and holding microphones for media to ask questions.

These jobs were not nearly as glamorous as they seemed, said Mastrandrea.

“Being a coach escort is a hard job,” he explained. “The escorts have to bring the coaches and players to the interview rooms at certain times. It’s not a fun job for the escort of the losing coach. The escort has to knock on the door of the locker room and get that coach to come out to do the interview.”

Many of the volunteers in the DCU Center “worked 12 hours and only saw maybe five minutes of basketball,” said Mastrandrea.

Others volunteered at hotels—some of which were as far away as Marlboro, Westboro and Framingham; the NCAA required that rooms in 10 hotels no more than 20 miles from the arena be reserved for the NCAA officials, media, teams, game officials, school bands, cheerleaders and mascots. In all, approximately 1,000 people, who were somehow officially attached to the tournament, stayed in the region’s hotels.

Volunteers, or “team liaisons,” as some were called, did everything from escort teams from airports to hotels, to running errands for coaches.

After all the meetings, phone calls, stress, sleepless nights and attention to every last detail, in the end one question remained: Did Mastrandrea, Shea and Regan enjoy the games or were they buried in work during tournament week, running in several different directions at once?

“I sat down and enjoyed it for a minute,” Shea said. “I let it sink in. I enjoyed that moment.”

Then she went back to work.

Michael Reardon is a freelance writer from Southampton, Mass.