Jalen Suggs’ buzzer-beater at the end of overtime in the recent 2021 Final Four game, propelling unbeaten Gonzaga into the final game against Baylor stirred memories of my only visit to the Final Four, exactly thirty years earlier, and perhaps three hundred yards away from the spot from which Suggs launched his iconic winning shot. Alas, Gonzaga could not complete their unbeaten season, as they were crushed by Baylor in the final game.
The Hoosier Dome (subsequently rebranded, “RCA Dome,” before its demolition in 2008) was host to the 1991 Final Four, featuring previously unbeaten UNLV, Duke, North Carolina, and Kansas. Lucas Oil Stadium was built a block away from the old domed stadium, and opened for business in 2008, supported by a $122 million sponsorship deal with Lucas Oil Products.
My wife and I attended the Saturday Final Four games in 1991 at the Hoosier Dome, as guests of Indianapolis Colts owner, Bob Irsay. As a result of a rather circuitous transaction, I ended up with two tickets to the games, in a luxury suite leased to Irsay’s ex-wife. The newspaper publisher for whom I worked back then, in suburban Chicago, leased office space from a company, entitled, “Colt Realty,” which was owned by, you guessed it, Bob Irsay. As a professional thank you for doing business with them, my boss was offered these two tickets, but he didn’t have much interest in them.
On the other hand, I was ecstatic when he offered them to me - as a University of Kansas graduate, and with the Jayhawks having been crowned Final Four champions just a few short years earlier, a trip to the Final Four, including the Jayhawks, was a surprising and welcome treat.
My wife and I arrived at the game, and met the assortment of characters with whom we would be spending the day, including: Bob Irsay; a couple of Bob’s sycophantic buddies; Bob’s much-younger trophy wife; a few ne’er-do-well relatives of Bob’s; and Bob’s ex-wife, with her similarly-positioned, bitter, divorcee friend. Bob had (Ed. note: Warning: tasteless double-entendre alert!) talked his way into his ex-wife’s box, inasmuch as his box, on the fifty-yard-line, was not well-positioned for basketball, given that a large portion of the seating area had been curtained off from viewing.
The 1991 Hoosier Dome was not as enlightened as was the 2008 Ford Field, at which my daughter and I watched regional tournament games (at least, we think we did), seemingly from across the river, in Windsor, and marveling at Davison’s Steph Curry’s skills on the court (we think) - Ford Field had placed the court squarely in the center of the field, in an effort to record the largest number of fans ever to attend a basketball game. One question: If a fan attends a basketball game, and the players appear to be mere ants, rather than basketball players, have they really attended a basketball game?
Anyway, back to the surreal experience that was our 1991 Final Four event. My wife and I had come to the game prepared to root for the Jayhawks, and probably Duke, in the first game, because my brother-in-law was a Duke student at the time, and their opponent, UNLV was undefeated at that point, and nobody likes a team that runs the table (yet another reason to dislike Bobby Knight, whose 1976 Hoosiers recorded the most recent undefeated season - as if you’re frantically searching for a reason to dislike Bobby Knight - I’m pretty sure that Letterman’s Top Ten List included such a list back in the day - a list that would only have scratched the surface; the previous four undefeated teams were all named UCLA, helmed by the respected and likeable John Wooden - with apologies to Leo Durocher, evidence that “Nice guys don’t have to finish last.” As fans, we dressed in Jayhawk regalia, head to toe; the other denizens of the luxury box were dressed in what might be termed, “Smart Yachting Casual,” and clearly believed they were attending a cocktail party, rather than a major sporting event. But, no matter - I’ve demonstrated my inability to dress properly for the occasion on more than one occasion.
The Hoosier Dome’s luxury boxes opened to a couple of rows of seats in front of the box, available to guests in the box, and marked off only with a metal railing. The seats continued, on a downward slope toward the field level. So, essentially, we box residents were cheek by jowl (folksy, no?) with the rest of the fans at the games. It was this geographic proximity which provided one of the more amusing sights of the day: Bob Irsay, and one of his buddies standing just outside the sliding door to the box, yelling at the fans in the regular seats to sit down so that they could watch the game. There’s no way I could be making that up - no one would believe it.
Much as one wouldn’t have approached Benedict Arnold and initiated a conversation with, “So, that whole treason thing - crazy, right?” or, in an attempt to kindle a discussion with Yoko Ono, one wouldn’t begin, “What was that like, breaking up the Beatles?” I wasn’t compelled to ask Irsay about his moving the entire Colts franchise operation, via fifteen moving trucks in the middle of the night in 1984, to its new home in Indianapolis. It’s been a lot of years now, but I suspect that there’s a pretty sizable number of Baltimore Colts fans who don’t harbor particularly warm feelings about Bob Irsay. Perhaps Irsay will be featured in an upcoming episode of the hit reality show, “Billionaire Sports Team Owners Behaving Badly” - I’m just kidding - he wouldn’t be able to crack the top ten, what with the racist former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and that whole massage parlor extravaganza involving the New England Patriots owner.
Sometime later in the day, Bob’s chief lieutenant sidled up to me, and casually asked, “So, how do you know Bob?”
As I recounted my circuitous route to the Final Four, I could see his mind making a mental note to ensure that, in the future, “These relatively valuable, high-end sporting event tickets don’t inadvertently end up in the pocket of some schmoe off the street.”
In any event, we thoroughly enjoyed our sole trip to the Final Four, perhaps because the Jayhawks won that day (Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!), and UNLV lost, sparking a glut of tickets for the Monday night final game available for sale from disappointed UNLV fans on the steps of the Hoosier Dome. Duke beat Kansas on that Monday night, which they did a lot back then, to claim the Final Four Championship.
It’s interesting (to me, anyway) that this story includes three Indiana-centric elements: the 2021 Final Four; the 1991 Final Four; and Bobby Knight’s 1976 Hoosiers. Maybe that’s why the classic underdog high school basketball team movie, Hoosiers, released in 1986, resonates.