The last Final Four arena: When the Meadowlands hosted, 30 years ago

This weekend, the national championship for college basketball is going to be decided in a 70,000-seat football stadium. A generation-plus of fans has grown up accepting this as the nature of things. But it wasn’t always that way.

The Final Four used to take place in actual basketball arenas. The last time it happened, and the only time the marquee event visited New Jersey, was in 1996 at the Meadowlands. Thirty years ago, when Rick Piinto-coached Kentucky beat Syracuse and Jim Boeheim for the title, it was in front of 20,000 people at Continental Airlines Arena (which had been renamed from Brendan Byrne Arena just a few months earlier).

Since 1970, the Final Four has taken place in the Northeast exactly three times – in 1976 and 1981 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, and in East Rutherford in 1996 (Madison Square Garden was perpetually tied up with the NIT during Final Four week). How did the Meadowlands lure the NCAA to the swamps of Jersey, and why has it sworn off arenas since? It’s an interesting story as told by two of the key people involved.

“We were ready to give them the building for a month if we had to,” said Michael Rowe, who at the time was executive vice president and general manager of the Meadowlands Sports Complex. “It was a love affair. ” A 'full-court press' with help from Raft, Coach K Rowe and his cohorts began wooing the NCAA seven years in advance.