Final Four Does Not Give Butler Home-Court Advantage

By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season

All this talk about Butler playing in front of a home crowd this weekend has me doing one thing: disagreeing.

At a neutral-site sporting event like the Final Four or the Super Bowl, is there really such a thing as a home-field advantage? I don't think so.

A Final Four tournament is not held at an intimate setting. It's not a tightly packed group of 13,000 jammed into one school's rickety-old, on-campus barn.

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YOUR THOUGHTS: Does Butler Have A Home-Court Advantage?

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Final Fours are played at huge, shiny palaces with great new amenities. Lucas Oil Stadium will welcome more than 70,000 on Saturday and again on Monday, most of whom won't be rocking the Butler blue. Many will be using company seats to impress clients, not rooting for the home team.

Butler is actually the host school for the Final Four, but participating universities get unfortunately so few tickets and most of the rest are acquired either via a lottery that's quietly promoted during the previous year's Final Four, or of course through scalpers.

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EXTRA: Complete NCAA Tournament Coverage

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Sure Butler's players might enjoy sleeping in their own beds most nights this week, but not leaving town might actually do just as much harm as good. They'll likely be bombarded with phone calls and text messages from friends with ticket requests or other distractions.

By the time tipoff rolls around shortly after 6 p.m. ET Saturday, we'll see just as much Michigan State green as anything else. Sparty can travel, especially when it's just a four-hour car ride down Interstate 69 to Indianapolis from East Lansing.

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