The Not-So-Great Outdoors

There were two interesting news stories this week about college sporting events being played in non-traditional venues that I wanted to weigh in on.  First, it was announced today that Saturday's college football game between Northwestern and Illinois, to be played at Wrigley Field, will only use one end zone for offense because the other end zone is too close to the outfield wall, prompting safety concerns from NCAA and Big Ten officials.  Earlier this week, Michigan State announced intentions to play a basketball game, preferably against North Carolina, on a docked aircraft carrier on Veterans Day, 2011.

The east (right) endzone is way too close to Wrigley's famous ivy-covered wall.

In general, I think outside-the-box thinking like this is great for sports.  Taking sporting events out of their natural environments is a great way to generate news coverage, capture the interest of fringe sports fans and break up sometimes-monotonous regular seasons.  We've seen the NHL have phenomenal success with their Winter Classic outdoor game, now a New Years Day sports staple, and both the NBA (preseason) and the WNBA (regular season) have had positive experiences with games played outside.  In each of these instances, the non-traditional venues were well suited to host their respective events and the games went off without incident.

This week's newsworthy events, however, are potentially troubling.  While Big Ten officials were put in the difficult position of choosing between safety and conformity for Saturday's game at Wrigley, NCAA officials are concerned about how a basketball game on an aircraft carrier would work logistically.  It's one thing to stage a uniquely-located sporting event; it's quite another to have that event interfere with how the games are supposed to be played.  As somewhat of a traditionalist (don't even get me started on Major League Baseball's playoff expansion plan), I can't support either of these events until I'm confident that, regardless of where the games are played, they're still played the right way.  I value coaching strategy enough to maintain that having the offense always move west can alter the outcome of a football game, and imagine that unforeseen conditions might wreak having on what would otherwise be a fantastic hoops matchup between the Spartans and Tar Heels.

Sports need to think differently in order to continue to grow and attract new fans.  When the sanctity of the game is at stake, though, I think leagues and teams need to take a stand and err on the side of game standardization.  The purity of both football and basketball is a large part of what makes those games so great, and it would be a shame (and a shortsighted business move, in my opinion) to continue to throw that all away to earn a few extra dollars.