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    Beyond the Boxscore

    It's the Final Four of Jim Nantz's life: Puts Butler's story above 1985Villanova; feels Houston's done itself proud

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 4, 2011 | 6:42 pm
    • It's the Final Four of Jim Nantz's life. Because he's back in Houston callingit.
    • Nantz is certain that if Shelvin Mack and Butler topple UConn, it qualifies asthe greatest upset of all time.
    • People keep telling Nantz how nice everyone in Houston is.
      Photo by United Services

    CBS puts its employees up at a plush hotel during Final Four week where everything is taken care of for them. Free meals are offered in a ballroom, around the clock. Courtesy cars stand at the ready to take them wherever they want to go in Houston — whenever.

    It's a sweet setup. And it's even better if you're part of "the talent."

    Still, Jim Nantz turned down the CBS hotel for the first time in his career this week. The voice of the network traded in the killer suite waiting for him for a somewhat cramped, old bedroom in the Royal Oaks subdivision.

    "Not River Oaks," Nantz quickly points out. "Royal Oaks."

    It's in this quiet community, amongst all the trappings of his childhood, with his mother down the hall, that Jim Nantz prepared for Monday night's national championship game.

    "All my old pennants are there on the walls," Nantz says. "My posters from when I was a kid. I'm lying there amongst all these artifacts of my childhood while getting ready to call a Final Four. It's a great reminder of the dream. That's where it all started with a dream."

    Others may see faults with the Final Four Houston ended up with — lament the absence of more traditional powers or a crossover Jimmer Fredette star — but not Nantz. This is his dream Final Four. Because it's in Houston. Because it's showing off the city he loves most, the one that caused his beloved late dad to take a questionable career gamble just to get his family there.

    "The most frequent comment I've received is, 'I didn't know people in Houston were this nice,' " Nantz says. "Everyone's truly made the visitors feel welcome."

    In a Final Four without a single basketball player from Texas, Nantz has emerged, in many ways, as the Houston conscience of the event. He is the one who can bring the feel of the city home to the millions of people across the country watching Monday night's Butler-UConn showdown.

    In many ways, he's the most prominent Houstonian on the mega stage.

    But Nantz, who lives in Connecticut now, an easy drive from CBS' New York headquarters, re-immersed himself in his Houston first. He blew off the network hotel, and all the boys will be boys hanging out of a sports broadcast crew.

    "I just thought to myself, 'When am I ever going to have a chance to do this again?' " Nantz tells CultureMap from his center court broadcast position, hours before any game. "When I ever going to have a chance to sleep in my old childhood room and go broadcast an event like this? When am I going to be able to wake up and go have breakfast cooked by my mom before calling one of the biggest sporting events in the world?

    "It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I'm on the road all the time. When I have a chance to be home, I really want to be home. It's hard for me to describe just how special this Final Four is for me."

    Nantz comes across as hokey (OK, more than hokey) at times. Until you spend some time around him. Then, you realize, it's truly not an act. This 51-year-old multi-millionaire really does still somehow possess an almost kid's wonder about the games.

    There's no one in the world more excited to see if Butler can knock off UConn than Jim Nantz. I've interviewed dozens of broadcasters, have come across dozens more at parties (some of my best friends work at sports networks) and I've never ran into anyone else like Nantz.

    The guy isn't selling anything. He just believes — in the power of a story, in the good of the audience. It's probably his greatest gift — even more than the booming voice his dad gave him. It's why so many slightly cynical sportswriters cannot get into his broadcasts and why so many regular folks adore them.

    Nantz could convince a group of Botswana bushmen that UConn-Bulter is the most important thing in the world based on the power of his own belief.

     The Storylines

    Seasoned college basketball observers might not regard Butler as a true underdog, but Nantz thinks that's too shortsighted of a view. He will play up Butler's Cinderella cred to a national audience, knowing that many of those viewers will be watching one of their first college basketball games of the season.

    Small school (enrollment of less than 4,500) from a small conference (Horizon League) — a school from Indiana, the home of Hoosiers no less — gets its chance at One Shining Moment.

    "Now you're thinking like me," Nantz says. "It's all about the storylines. I can make a case on Monday night, that if Butler should win it, it's the greatest upset story in the history of the NCAA Tournament. Think about it. With all due respect to Rollie Massimino and Villanova (which shocked a powerhouse, Patrick-Ewing-led Georgetown team in the 1985 championship game as an eighth seed), Villanova is from the Big East. I loved Rollie and that Villanova story, but it's not the same as this Butler team.

    "And North Carolina State in 1983 (which shocked Phi Jama Slama on Lorenzo Charles' dunk of an air ball a the buzzer), that team had a number of pros on it. It played in the ACC. This Butler team is a whole different deal. It's not the same Butler team that made the Final Four last year. I picked them to make the Final Four last year. No one picked Butler this year. I can turn to that camera and state the case to America that this is the greatest upset story we've ever seen in college basketball."

    First Nantz gathered all his relatives in Houston for a Friday night family dinner — 21 people strong, relatives only. Another big event first for the man who will go straight from Monday night to the Masters. (CBS golf analyst Nick Faldo is here too and the two men will board a jet for Augusta together).

    "It's such a thrill to have everyone together like that," Nantz says. "It's just grabbing a moment that, again, I may never get a chance at again."

    Nantz smiles. Whoever gets the One Shining Moment Monday night, one thing is certain. When he is back sleeping amongst all those pennants on the wall from now on, he'll be reliving the call from the Final Four of his life.

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    Beyond the Boxscore

    Houston in line to get more Final Fours after 2016: NCAA officials expect it tobecome a regular

    Chris Baldwin
    Apr 5, 2011 | 7:07 pm
    • The success of Bracket Town meant almost as much to the NCAA as the success atReliant Stadium.
      Photo by Bruce Bennett
    • NCAA official Greg Shaheen praised Houston's Final Four efforts.
    • Kemba Walker wasn't the only one who flew high at this Final Four.
      Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

    When even NCAA officials are making jokes about the lowest-scoring NCAA Championship Game since 1949, you know they had a good time in Houston.

    That's what happens in the Final Four wrap-up press conference Tuesday. Greg Shaheen — the highest-ranking NCAA official in the room — opens his portion with a crack about the offensive woes Monday night.

    Shaheen notes that if more people had the motor shown by Houston Final Four Local Organizing Committee interim executive director Doug Hall then "we might have had a game last night where both teams scored 60 points."

    "You were on overdrive," Shaheen says to Hall.

    Yes, there is a whole lot of love in the room when the Houston LOC and the NCAA meet for the last time before this 2011 Final Four becomes part of the record books — and thoughts begin to slowly turn to the 2016 Final Four that will be held in Houston and the 2015 regional at Reliant Stadium before that.

    It does not figure to end in 2016 though. Shaheen — the NCAA's interim executive vice president of championships and alliances — tells CutureMap he expects there will be even more Final Fours in Houston in the future.

    "I don't see any reason why Houston wouldn't become a regular part of our rotation," Shaheen says.

    Shaheen would be the first to say that the NCAA's Basketball Committee will make the final call like usual on future sites, but he says the committee is thrilled with Houston's performance.

    "This is what a showcase event should look like," Shaheen says of a Houston event that set the Final Four record for total attendance (145,747 at the two nights of games) and also drew an estimated 140,000 to the Big Dance Concert Series (the concert figure is based on an "approximation" of the number of people who came through Discovery Green during all three concerts that lasted several hours each) and another 49,000 to Bracket Town at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "This is what a national championship should feel like.

    "It should be exhausting the next morning and be a seamless effort."

    Later Shaheen quips, "UConn is not the only winner here."

    Instead, Texas might be the biggest winner of all. For the Lone Star State has emerged as the NCAA's big event darling. Texas will host three Final Fours in a six-year stretch (Houston in 2011 and 2016, Dallas in 2014). And that type of dominance is not expected to end anytime soon either.

    "In the modern era, for both the men's and women's championships, I don't know that any state has emerged like Texas," Shaheen says. "And I think you have to include San Antonio (host of the 1998, 2004 and 2008 Final Fours) in that equation as well. There are a lot of things Texas offers the championships that are unique."

    Standing off to the side in the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency — which served as the headquarters for the coaches convention during Final Four week, housing all the big names who weren't coaching in the games — Robert Dale Morgan is sure of what makes Houston such a lure.

    Morgan, the president and executive director of the 2011 Houston Final Four LOC, held a similar position for Houston's 2004 Super Bowl and many credit his vision with helping the city see its big sports event potential, with a Super Bowl, Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Game, Major League Soccer All-Star Game and now a Final Four all having been held here since 2004. Not that Morgan wants that recognition.

    He chooses to sit in the crowd rather than on the stage at the wrap-up press conference. He probably could have blended in to, wearing a Houston Final Four hat with his suit, if so many people on the stage didn't point him out. Bob Beauchamp, chairman of the Houston Final Four LOC, calls Morgan, "the best in the business."

    "Having six million people who care," Morgan says in explaining how Houston's positioned itself as the host city with the most. "Having a dozen Fortune 500 companies. And oh by the way, we have really great weather 300 days out of the year."

     Trash Talk Between Friends

    Houston hands off the Final Four to New Orleans, next year's host. The transition is a bit of intentional symbolism by the NCAA which wants to recognize how closely the two cities are linked and the Bayou City's role in helping after Hurricane Katrina.

    This will be the fifth Final Four that New Orleans has hosted and the city's LOC executive director John Koerner can't help but point out to Houston, the new city in "the rotation," how great every one of the NCAA Championship Games held in the Big Easy has been.

    "New Orleans has hosted some of the most memorable finals ever," Koerner says. "We had Michael Jordan's shot, Keith Smart's shot, Chris Webber's infamous timeout and Hakim Warrick's block at the buzzer."

    And from its first Final Four, Houston has? Well, a whole lot of clangs — and Butler's record-low 18.8 percent shooting.

    Not that anyone in the NCAA is holding it against the Bayou City. The organization credentialed 1,387 media members for this Final Four, loved the visibility brought about by having it in one of the America's biggest cities. Even if you have to wonder how much everyone was into it locally. The TV rating in Houston for the unsightly Butler-UConn national championship game only ranked 30th out of the 56 major media markets.

    Shaheen's not dwelling on that. Instead, he's sticking around Houston to take in more of the city without the pressures of the mega event.

    "I don't have a flight home," Shaheen says, knowing that Southwest Airlines' grounded jets have made it much harder than usual to land one last minute. "So I'll be staying here two, three, four, five more days. I may be looking to get an apartment and just become a resident."

    Shaheen laughs. Who says NCAA suits don't have a sense of humor?

    When they are happily in Houston, they sure do.

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